'Human Flow', by Ai WeiWei

 A film I would have loved to contribute to...
Out in the US this week and worldwide soon.

Human Flow - Official Trailer  

Published on 18 Aug 2017

A ground-breaking new documentary about the global refugee crisis from Ai Weiwei.

» SUBSCRIBE: http://bit.ly/AmazonStudiosSubscribe
» Now in Select Theaters!
» Check out more Human Flow : humanflow.com

About Human Flow:
Over 65 million people around the world have been forced from their homes to escape famine, climate change and war in the greatest human displacement since World War II. Human Flow, an epic film journey led by the internationally renowned artist Ai Weiwei, gives a powerful visual expression to this massive human migration. The documentary elucidates both the staggering scale of the refugee crisis and its profoundly personal human impact.

Captured over the course of an eventful year in 23 countries, the film follows a chain of urgent human stories that stretches across the globe in countries including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, France, Greece, Germany, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Kenya, Mexico, and Turkey. Human Flow is a witness to its subjects and their desperate search for safety, shelter and justice: from teeming refugee camps to perilous ocean crossings to barbed-wire borders; from dislocation and disillusionment to courage, endurance and adaptation; from the haunting lure of lives left behind to the unknown potential of the future. Human Flow comes at a crucial time when tolerance, compassion and trust are needed more than ever. This visceral work of cinema is a testament to the unassailable human spirit and poses one of the questions that will define this century: Will our global society emerge from fear, isolation, and self-interest and choose a path of openness, freedom, and respect for humanity?




Amazon Studios, Participant Media and AC Films present Human Flow, a film directed by Ai Weiwei. The producers are Ai Weiwei, Chin-chin Yap and Heino Deckert. Andy Cohen of AC Films with Jeff Skoll and Diane Weyermann of Participant Media are the executive producers.

Get More from Amazon Studios:
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The goal of Amazon Studios is to turn original stories into great entertainment.

Human Flow Official Trailer [HD] | Amazon Studios
https://youtu.be/DVZGyTdk_BY

Amazon Studios
https://www.youtube.com/AmazonStudios

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Ai Weiwei on "Human Flow," criticizes hardening attitudes on refugees | "We all bear responsibility"

Published on 27 Sep 2017

Ai Weiwei's new documentary "Human Flow" looks at the hardening attitudes towards refugees and the less fortunate. He also talks about his own safety as an outspoken artist in China.

Welcome to The National, the flagship nightly newscast of CBC News

Lady Nade presents 'Waiting For You'

 In association with Avalon Films Uk, Kilver Court Secret Gardens, Taylor Guitars &  Oriolo.co.uk

Lady Nade presents her 'Waiting For You' Official Video:

Lady Nade | Waiting For You

 www.ladynade.co.uk

Published on 13 Oct 2017

Lady Nade - Waiting For You (Official Video)

Filmed & Directed by : Avalon Films Uk
Sponsored Location: Kilver Court Gardens
Endorsed by Taylor Guitars
Featuring Jewellery: Oriolo Designs
Make Up/Stylist: Natalie & Ella Wright

Debut Album Out Now on Kitchen Studio Records
Shop: www.ladynade.co.uk

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Follow Lady Nade online:

https://www.facebook.com/ladynade
https://twitter.com/ladynade
https://www.youtube.com/ladynadevideos
https://instagram.com/ladynadecreations
https://soundcloud.com/lady-nade

"A GHOST STORY"

Oh... My... G...

I've seen this two-minute trailer, I'm already hooked.

"A writer writes a novel, a songwriter writes a song. We do what we can to endure"...

"We build our legacy piece by piece, and maybe the whole world will remember you or maybe just a couple of people, but you do what you can to make sure you're still around after you're gone"...


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A GHOST STORY Official Trailer (2017) 

Casey Affleck, Rooney Mara

Romance Fantasy Movie 

Published on 2 Apr 2017

A GHOST STORY

Music and politics: UK Grime, the new punk?

 Very interesting article:

Grime is the new punk – here’s why

12 octobre 2017
The Conversation UK
Mykaell Riley

Principal Investigator, Black Music Research Unit, University of Westminster

If you’re British and don’t know much about grime, you’re in the minority. The influence of the music genre has ballooned in the UK in the last year, and it’s on track to become as disruptive and powerful as punk. 

In the last year, album sales of grime music have grown significantly faster than the total UK music market (93% vs 6%) and the number of grime events on sale through Ticketmaster and Ticketweb has quadrupled since 2010. Our new study into the public reception of grime music found that 73% of Brits are aware of grime, with 40% having listened to it at some point.

In line with this trend, between this award season and the last, the genre has attracted more red carpet appearances, awards and accolades than any other. We’ve also witnessed the usual grime attire of baseball caps and designer tracksuits become more interchangeable with dinner jackets and bow ties. And why not, if you can have your brand enhanced by Emporio Armani (in the case of Dizzee Rascal), or feature on the front cover of GQ magazine (as did Stormzy).

Social media report and average listener. Mykaell Riley, Author provided

For the first time, our research corroborates these claims. We surveyed 2,000 grime fans and 58% of these said they voted for Labour during the 2017 election, with one-in-four (24%) saying that the #Grime4Corbyn campaign influenced their vote. It’s clear that #Grime4Corbyn gave a voice to the younger generation and influenced the way they voted. 

Those more familiar with the genre will know that this success is hard-won and reflects the efforts of an underground, predominantly black British music community, that has pioneered this scene since the early 2000s and beyond. Back then, in the bedrooms of East London council estates, the next generation of young producers and MCs were creating a brutal, edgy, uncompromising music. It was the sound of social deprivation emerging from the shadows of reurbanisation and gentrification.

Leap forward to the present and the genre once dubbed the sound of London’s social underclass has blossomed. With its successes in both the singles and album charts, its arrival on the festival circuit and its growing international following, grime continues to defy industry assessments of its potential. 

This is why it still could provoke the most disruptive cultural transformation of the British music industry since punk. With the leading names now regulars on the festival circuit and capable of packing London’s Wembley or the O2, grime has verified its credentials. Grime still has some distance to travel with regards to its international profile but within the UK, it has already secured recognition from the music industry as the most successful black British music genre – and not unlike punk, transformed perceptions and approaches to popular music.

Favourite artists. Mykaell Riley, Author provided

Live shows have also transformed ideas about grime’s audience, often seen jostling and bumping into each other in response to the performance. At early gigs, primarily attended by young black men in small venues, this activity would have been described as aggressive and potentially violent. But today, at larger venues and festivals and with it’s change of audience it’s more likely to be described as “moshing”. 

So the tide, it seems, has turned. Or has it? Grime is still struggling to transform negative perceptions within the London Metropolitan Police force, who use the controversial Form 696. This is a risk assessment form that is applied solely to events that “predominantly feature DJs or MCs performing to a recorded backing track” – and is therefore seen by many as discriminatory. It has been used by the police to shut down a number of grime events on the grounds of “public safety”, negatively impacting on the income streams of performers and promoters alike.

Nonetheless, in 2017, grime demonstrates the promise of a complex and diverse music industry. It also shows that a journey fuelled by enterprise, entrepreneurialism and creativity has the potential to overcome such lingering negative perceptions to achieve even greater things.

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Raoul Peck appelle le Président haïtien Jovenel Moïse à ne pas soutenir la candidature du Qatar à la tête de l'UNESCO

L'UNESCO vote ce jeudi pour remplacer Irina Bokova à la tête de l'organisation Onusienne.

Le Qatari Hamad bin Abdulaziz al-Kawari et la Française Audrey Azoulay sont en tête des votes pour lui succéder.

Un message de Raoul Peck, ancien ministre de la Culture d'Haïti : 



Raoul Peck

43 mins · 

Dans le cadre des élections à la direction générale de l’UNESCO, les autorités haïtiennes auraient apporté leur voix au candidat Qatari. 

Les tractations diplomatiques et arrangements géopolitiques ne peuvent occulter le fait que le Qatar reste un État suspecté de violations massives des droits humains à l'encontre de sa population et de travailleurs migrants.

Ce positionnement est aux antipodes des valeurs que promeut l’UNESCO qui se veulent humanistes et universalistes. 

Il serait par conséquent regrettable qu’Haïti qui lutte encore pour l’égalité, la liberté et la démocratie confie sa voix à un État qui maltraite si souvent ces idéaux.

Je demande donc solennellement au Président Jovenel Moïse de ne pas soutenir la candidature du Qatar.

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In the context of the election of the UNESCO’s director-general post, the Haitian authorities have apparently given their voice to the Qatari candidate. 

Diplomatic negotiations and geopolitical arrangements can not overshadow the fact that Qatar remains a state suspected of massive human rights violations against its population and migrant workers.

This positioning is at the very opposite of the values ​​promoted by UNESCO which are humanistic and universalist.

It would therefore be regrettable that Haiti, which still struggles for equality, freedom and democracy, entrusts its voice to a State, which so often mistreats these ideals.

I therefore solemnly ask President Jovenel Moïse not to support the candidacy of Qatar.

Raoul Peck 

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Hamad bin Abdulaziz al-Kawari and Audrey Azoulay -- both former culture ministers -- win 18 votes apiece in battle to replace outgoing director-general Irina Bokova

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PARIS – 12 October 2017: Egypt’s candidate for UNESCO’s director-general post, Moushira Khattab obtained 18 votes in the fourth round of the voting process on Thursday, to be equaled with France’s candidate, while Qatar’s amassed 22 votes, according to Egypt Today's reporter in Paris. 

The board will cast a voting between Egyptian and French candidates early Friday to determine which will run for the fifth round of elections with Qatar's Kawari. 

Earlier on Thursday, Lebanese UNESCO director-general candidate, Vera Khouri (four votes), announced her withdrawal from the race in favor of the Egyptian candidate, just as the Chinese candidate Qian Tang (five votes) did too. 

Pham Sanh Chau of Vietnam withdrew before the third round. The first round was held Monday, and the second was held on Wednesday where Azerbaijan's nominee had withdrawn.  

The winning candidate must obtain 30 votes. 

The new director-general of UNESCO will be named on October 13. Then, 195 members in the General Conference will be appointed in view of recommendations from UNESCO’s Executive Board. 

"Le Poète aveugle"

Opening this week in Paris:

texte, mise en scène, images Jan Lauwers & Needcompany

avec 

Grace Ellen Barkey, Jules Beckman, Anna Sophia Bonnema, Hans Petter Melø Dahl, Benoît Gob, Maarten Seghers, Mohamed Toukabri, Elke Janssens, Jan Lauwers

musique 

Maarten Seghers

costumes 

Lot Lemm

costume Mohamed  

Bachir bin Ahmed bin Rhaïem El Toukabri

dramaturgie et surtitrage 

Elke Janssens

lumières 

Marjolein Demey, Jan Lauwers

son 

Ditten Lerooij, Marc Combas

conseil dramaturgique 

Jef Lambrecht, Lucas Catherine, Taha Adnan

traduction française 

Olivier Taymans

du 11 au 22 octobre 2017 

du mardi au samedi à 20h30 et le dimanche à 16h

spectacle en anglais, arabe, français, néerlandais, norvégien, tunisien surtitré en français

Grand Théâtre durée 

2h30 entracte compris

« Lorsque l’esprit est hésitant,
Il se laisse submerger par le monde,
Homme faible embrassé par une catin.
Lorsque l’esprit est devenu confiant,
Le monde est une dame de rang,
Qui refuse la caresse de ses amants. »

Abu al ‘ala al Ma’arri, vers 950

Accueilli pour la première fois à La Colline, Jan Lauwers appartient à une génération d’artistes qui réinventent une écriture mêlant parole, musique, installation et danse, comme autant de matériaux de fabrique de théâtre, le libérant ainsi de ses codes. Dans une liberté absolue dans le geste artistique, tout fait spectacle.

Une remontée dans le temps de l’Espagne du XIe siècle, celle de Cordoue et de sa mosquée-cathédrale, celle des chevaliers en quête du tombeau du Christ en Terre sainte, est matière à réflexion sur l’Islam d’aujourd’hui et l’échange entre les peuples. Dans une scénographie toujours en mouvement, vêtus de costumes chamarrés et entourés d’une montagne d’accessoires, les comédiens de différentes nationalités, cultures et langues témoignent de leur héritage, des folies effroyables qu’ont connues leurs aïeux. De cet héritage oublié, enfoui, naît le besoin de porter et dire au monde, faisant de nous des poètes aveugles.

Production

Needcompany
coproduction Kunstenfestivaldesarts, KunstFestSpiele Herrenhausen, FIBA – Festival Internacional de Buenos Aires, Künstlerhaus Mousonturm
avec le soutien des autorités flamandes

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Teaser :

Published on 15 Sep 2017

Le Poète aveugle de Jan Lauwers
présenté du 11 au 22 octobre - Grand Théâtre
http://www.colline.fr/fr/spectacle/le...

Do androids dream of electric... devices?

Do androids dream of electric... devices? 

Ah Apple... My original (and now vintage) made-in-2003 i-Pod is living its final hours... 

How could you leave me little android machine? 

This piece of technology has been me with ever since my Czech adventures and through that trip in Chicago when the war in Iraq was launched, up until my walk-to-work days in Nairobi, my trips to India and Mexico, my dozens of other journeys through Africa and of course my London hours of bus- and tube-rides. 

The very same little machine! 

Do I need a 2049 version? Or maybe simply some new music...?

Most listened-to tracks? 
Radiohead competes with Arcade Fire, Tori Amos, and a certain band from Bristol...

'Carriage For Two' - Tricky live in 1998

Tricky - 'Carriage For Two' -  Live at Chris Rock Show 1998

"Carriage For Two"

Water, now I've got me a daughter
Carriage for two
I call my baby Boo

Hey T, I've got a little black girl
And this little black girl's beautiful
Carriage for two
Now come on, yeah

Carriage for two
I call my baby Boo
Hey T, I've got a little black girl
And this little black girl's beautiful
I try to do what's dutiful

Water, water, now I've got me a little daughter
Carriage for two
I call my, I call my baby Boo
Hey T, I've got a little black girl
And this little black girl's beautiful

I try to do, I try to do
I try to do what's dutiful
I'll teach her to lead
And no, never must she let go

Your father's rich
I teach her to lead
But never must she let go
Your father's rich
Your father's from the get-go

Them that's got shall get
And them that's not shall lose
It's all the Bible says
It's easy when you lose

Mama may have and Papa may have
But God bless the child
But God bless the child
That's got his own

Them that's got shall get
Them that's not shall lose
It's all the Bible says
It's easy when you lose

Mama may have and Papa may have
But God bless the child
That's got his own
But God bless the child
That's got his own

Beautiful, just beautiful
Is beautiful, is beautiful, is beautiful
And water, it's beautiful that daughter

And God bless the child
That's got his own
God bless the child
That's got his own
Got his own, got his own

Your father's rich
Your father's from the get-go
Your father's rich
Your father's from the get-go

And so many times never was this easy
I wish you're strong, baby, don't you cry
So tiny

John Akomfrah - "Purple"

 If there is one talent that I would trade for all others though, if I really had to pick one, I think he'd be him: John Akomfrah.

Ok, maybe I exclude the talents I've worked with and am too closed to, like Raoul Peck, who's a very good friend of Akomfrah's anyway. Just to be fair!

If you haven't seen any of his films, more artworks through video that simple "films" however, you must fix this gap!

John Akomfrah has now a new show at the Barbican Centre, in London, I mentioned it here a few moth ago: Purple.

John Akomfrah. Still frames from Purple, 2017. Six screen film installation

John Akomfrah

Purple

6 Oct 2017—7 Jan 2018,The Curve

British artist and filmmaker, John Akomfrah creates his most ambitious piece to date - an immersive six-channel video installation addressing climate change, human communities and the wilderness.

At a time when, according to the UN, greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are at their highest levels in history, with people experiencing the significant impacts of climate change, including shifting weather patterns, rising sea level, and more extreme weather events, Akomfrah’s Purple brings a multitude of ideas into conversation. These include animal extinctions, the memory of ice, the plastic ocean and global warming. Akomfrah has combined hundreds of hours of archival footage with newly shot film and a hypnotic sound score to produce the video installation.

Winner of the 2017 Artes Mundi Prize.

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And here is what the Guardian has to say about it (extracts):

Link to read the whole article:
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/oct/01/john-akomfrah-purple-climate-change?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

John Akomfrah: ‘Progress can cause profound suffering’

For the British artist, global warming, the subject of his ambitious new video installation, is a process rooted in technology and exploitation

Sunday 1 October 2017

John Akomfrah grew up in the 1960s, in the shadow of Battersea power station in south London. As a child, he remembers “feeling as if I was enveloped in something whenever I played on the street. You could sense it in the air, you felt it and saw it, whatever was emanating from the huge chimneys. We were being poisoned as we played, but no one spoke about it. The conversations in the pub tended to be about football rather than carbon monoxide poisoning.”

Fifty years on, the local has become the global. Akomfrah’s latest art work, Purple, is an immersive, six-channel video installation that attempts to evoke the incremental effects of climate change on our planet. Shot in 10 countries and drawing on archive footage, spoken word and music alongside often epic shots of contemporary landscapes that have been altered by global warming and rising temperatures, Purple eschews a linear narrative for an almost overwhelming montage of imagery and sound.

Like all of Akomfrah’s work, it requires the viewer to surrender to sensory overload, while remaining alert to the often oblique connections being made throughout. “I kept thinking back, while making this work, to the local, working-class community I grew up in and how innocent we were in terms of trusting authority. One of the complex questions I am asking is about the relationship between our locality and the bigger issue of how we belong on the planet. Who can we trust with our collective future?”

(...)

More than once, Akomfrah describes Purple as “a response to Anthropocene”, the term coined by scientists for the geological age in which we are now living, a period defined by the influence of manmade activity on climate and the environment. A major source of inspiration for Purple is a 2013 book called Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology After the End of the World. Written by Timothy Morton, an English academic, it posits the idea that global warming is the most dramatic illustration of a “hyperobject” – an entity of such vast temporal and spatial dimensions that it baffles our traditional ways of thinking about it and, by extension, doing something about it.

(...)

All these big themes are embedded in Purple, but may remain elusive to those unfamiliar with the tropes of conceptual art and experimental, non-narrative film-making. I was baffled, for instance, by recurring appearances of those mysterious silent figures who stand mute before often elemental landscapes on Alaska, Greenland and Skye. “In a very real way, I’m present in the film. I’m the figure in the brown shirt who gets rained on,” says Akomfrah, laughing. “It sounds a bit mystical, but for me everything starts with place. Wherever we filmed, it began with me asking the landscape the same question: ‘What can you tell me about the nature of climate change?’ As an artist and film-maker, I’m dependent on the responses I get from the environment.”

Is he aware, given the often bitterly contested nature of the public climate change debate, that a multiscreen, non-narrative conceptual art film that provides no answers may be greeted by a degree of scepticism, if not outright dismissal, from those on both sides demanding hard facts and evidence? “Well, I’m an artist. I make work for a gallery. I’m not attempting to make a science documentary. I’m coming at it from a different perspective by asking the question: what is philosophically, ethically and morally at stake here if we continue on this course? I don’t think you need to be licensed by the scientific community to ask that sort of question about the times we live in or to reflect on the anxiety many of us feel about the future of the planet. My son is old enough to become a father. On a purely personal level, it certainly felt like the right time for me as an artist to be asking these questions.”

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Purple is exhibited from 6 Oct to 7 Jan at the Curve, Barbican, London

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More of John Akomfrah's work:

The Stuart Hall Project (2013) - John Akomfrah (Trailer) | BFI

Published on 16 Aug 2013

The Stuart Hall Project (2013) - John Akomfrah (Trailer) | BFI. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/subscribetotheBFI

Released on BFI DVD on 20 January 2014
http://www.bfi.org.uk/blu-rays-dvds/s...

A John Akomfrah film about revolution, politics, culture and the New Left experience.

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