It’s that time of the week again when we provide you with a jam packed podcast full of news, reviews and Cornerhouse chat.
This week it's a petrol fuelled, sports special as we discuss new release Senna, the moving documentary about the legendary motor-racing champion Ayrton Senna. Not only do we tell you what we thought of the film but you’ll hear from Asif Kapadia, the director, who was here this week for our special Senna preview and post-screening Q&A. As well as all this you’ve got our mini whats on guide, a staff recommendation and our fun quick-fire film round. Enjoy!
A little later than usual but here is this weeks Cornerhouse podcast. This week we discuss French-Canadian indie film Heartbeats and our Programme Manager Rachel Hayward has just got back from Cannes so she fills us in on the highlights of this year’s festival. We also catch up with major international artist Rashid Rana ahead of his solo exhibition here in the autumn. And then we have our regular mini what’s on guide and our staff recommendation of the week.
Top British artist Jamie Shovlin joins us this week, as we chat about Jamie’s upcoming visual art exhibition, exploitation movies and new film release, Julia’s Eyes. Happy listening!
This weekend saw not one but two FutureEverything events hosted at Cornerhouse.
First up was Show and Tell For Sendai in the modern, crisp and creative atmosphere of the Cornerhouse’s Annex. 9 groups had up to 15 slides each and no more than 5 minutes to illustrate their project.
Sat around familiar faces from the local creative community, the aim of the session was to encourage creativity and collaboration. Sendai has a very creative industry, similar to Manchester, and they are keen to make links in the UK, and re-build their reputation, after the Tsunami in March 2011 destroyed everything in it’s path.
The audience seemed to adore the “To be continued…” collection by Design by Day, a range of personal projects that Louise and Angela do in their spare time. Their ideas ranged from trying to make a £5 note that was never there, out of parts of other monetary paper; using “creative nouns” words as a centre for artwork, arty t-shirts, and “insect people” where people’s photos were “jazzed up” with editing software.
For the geeks amongst us, Brendan Dawes from Magnetic North gave us an insight into how he “takes play seriously”. Taking his inspiration from the book “101 things to do in a shed” he showed us a selection of his hand-made geekery. Even though he doesn’t actually own a shed, he’s made an iphone charger out of an Altoids tin, a 3d printer, a wooden weathervane that connects to the internet, and a lovingly made keepsake box which displays random love texts between him and his partner (even though, Brendan explains, his partner asked for something very different – “when she said I want this really lovely Channel face cream, what she really meant was I want an Arduino based box showing our love”).
Other interesting concepts from the groups, included a giant Swan pedalo that gets out and about in the community, tree scanning, an open source microfiche film, an interactive post-war buildings map of Manchester, the search for the perfect burger, and a graphic design database of all you need to know about British foods.
The agency, WOW, in Sendai, said they appreciated all the help and aid they were currently receiving from around the world, and suggested that if people wanted to make donations, their chosen charity was the British Red Cross.
Then I moved downstairs to Cinema 2 for the second event of the day.
The seats filled up in anticipation of a special preview, ahead of the UK premiere in June, of the film Life In A Day. Produced by Ridley Scott, directed by Kevin MacDonald and edited by Jo Walker, the names alone give you the feeling you’re in for something truely special. Then, to create the film completely from user-generated content via YouTube, from 192 different countries, with different formats, the concept of how big this project must have been to complete, is phenomenal.
The film clips were all recorded on 24th July 2010 and the opening shot sees elephants playing happily in the water underneath a full moon, being viewed by night vision. Then the morning begins. We see people rising with the sun (and already at work) and are taken on a journey, jumping from continent to continent, following the stories of all these YouTube users. We see the day come and go, weather conditions change; births, marriages and deaths, soon forgetting that you are watching video not professionally produced.
This film tries to give a glimpse into people’s lives and it’s interesting to see there are so many similarities and difference between people across the globe. There are shocking contrasts of living conditions in eastern slums, and luxury, westerners on the other side of the world, think is “normal”. Themes throughout the film include religion, travel, sports, electrical appliances, relationships, clocks, and even hints towards war and the people affected by them.
We return to some special characters within the film, to learn more about their stories. They include a mother battling her second round of cancer and the effects on her family; a single father trying to survive after his wife’s death; and a cyclist going around the world for his 36th day in a row, getting emotional over a fly in his soup.
This film would appeal to anyone who’s interested in an un-biased look at the day-to-day life of the world, or even someone who just likes watching and posting videos on YouTube. It’s a very voyeuristic film, that will make you question what people around the world are doing, right now. One thing I must advise is that you don’t walk out before the credits have finished as there’s a lovely extra “tasty” bit at the end.
To round up, both events connected very well together. You could get inspiration and an idea of how creative people spend their downtime in the Show and Tell presentations; then watch the film to see how others spend their time around the world. Cornerhouse is clearly interested in your opinions on why we all now feel the need to broadcast our lives. In my opinion, if we learn more about others’ lives and the way they live, the more we can understand and appreciate them, that’s got to be a good thing, hasn’t it?
So every week we provide you with lots of interesting info and chat about our programme here at Cornerhouse in one bitesize podcast. You'll be able to hear from artists, academics, filmmakers, our staff and you - our customers!
This week we discuss a rare and stunning film from Chad called A Screaming Man. Co-curator of our current exhibition, Dr Joe McGonagle, tells us about some of the films in our Arab and Maghrebi film season. We hear from a gallery visitor who has been especially moved by New Cartographies. As well as our mini whats on guide and staff recommendation of the week which looks at an innovative Future Everything event.
Enjoyed this podcast and want to hear more? Listen to our podcast archive here.
We’re taking part in an exciting Europe-wide event on Sunday 8 May, with a free screening of Lux Film Prize 2010 winner, Die Fremde (When We Leave).
Feo Aladag’s debut feature tells the story of Umay, a young German woman and mother who walks out on a violent relationship with husband Kamal, taking her son Cem with her. Fleeing Istanbul in the hope of seeking refuge from her parents in Berlin, Umay soon finds that the male contingent of her family is unhappy at her refusal to return to Istanbul. When this tarnishes the family name Umay’s husband rejects her - but demands that their son Cem returns to him. Before her child is forcibly taken away, Umay must quickly pack her bags. But in Umay's struggle for independence she initiates a large-scale family dispute which soon ends up as a life threatening situation…
The Lux Prize celebrates the European film industry and promotes films which explore issues of European identity, values immigration, freedom and rights. To commemorate its win, Die Fremde will screen simultaneously in all 27 Member States of the European Union at 18:00 (GMT) this Sunday. So join us and cinephiles across Europe for this unique event!
The free screening of Die Fremde takes place on Sunday 8 May at 18:00. Advance booking (via telephone, 0161 200 1500; online; or in person at box office) is highly recommended.
Image from the series Press The Star, Then Say Hello, Dinu Li, 2007. With thanks to the artist.
Paul Herrmann, director of the photography network Redeye, is busy putting the finishing touches to the National Photography Symposium which takes place in two weeks time in Liverpool. But before that he'll be heading the next instalment of our professional development course for photographers. Ahead of the event, I caught up with Paul in between two meetings to get his top tips for photographers.
"Ideas don't emerge in a vacuum"
As Chris Boot once said, nothing matters more than the power, originality, coherence, quality and vision of your work. You need great ideas, and you need to express them well. Ideas don’t generally emerge in a vacuum; it can be helpful to have people you trust to give you feedback. Many photographers work as couples, or in small groups and collectives that they use to test their ideas. It’s always good if you get the opportunity to talk about your work in public – it forces you to concentrate your work and ideas.
"Build your very best shop window"
There are so many ways to get your work seen and be visible now. The web and social media are increasingly important. The artist Andy Keane recently joked “any artist who is not using Twitter should have their hands chopped off.”
Whatever is your main “shop window”, whether it’s your portfolio, your website, or books or postcards, it needs to be as good as you can possibly make them – and very importantly, easy for potential clients to look at.
But beyond the work itself there are some other important things to know about building relationships with potential clients, galleries, curators, and supporters, communicating about and marketing your work, and getting some basic business matters right. I could speak about it for hours, in fact that's why our next session last a full day!"
Talking about shop window, sometimes it's simple things that makes the difference in promoting yourselves. I chatted to the wonderful photographer Karen McBride on her last visit to Cornerhouse and I loved her Search Engine Optimisation technique (my words, not hers:): after using "Karen McBride photographer", "Karen McBride music photography" and other apt titles for her website, it's her latest choice that brought her the most visits, interest and clients....type her name into Google to get the full effect. You can't do that if you don't have the talent to back it up though!
The next session of the professional development course for photographers will take place on 19 May and will concentrate on the specific needs for photographers who want to make a living from exhibiting or publishing self-generated projects, including documentary or art photography; or obtain public art commissions. Paul will be accompanied by guest speakers artist Dinu Li and Lucy Johnston (Gallery Manager, Cery Hand Gallery) and will cover all the areas mentioned above as well as the crucial area of fundraising in detail.You can book tickets online on our website.
And don't forget to check the programme for the National Photography Symposium: with talks ranging from "Photography, Espionage and The State" to "Imagining the Photography Centre of The Future" and lots of opportunity to network, it's the perfect occasion to discover new fields of photography and meet colleagues from completely different areas of work
It's Thursday so it's podcast time. This week we discuss the major new release 13 Assassins by Japanese mega-auteur Takeshi Miike. Co-curator of New Cartographies, Dr Edward Welch, talks to Autograph ABP's Tom O'Mara, about their involvement in Omar Daod's work in Gallery 2. And we give you our mini whats on guide and staff recommendation of the week.
After our short Easter break last week we are back with another Cornerhouse podcast for you. This week we look at our two new releases, a documentary about Creation Records which of course mentions that small local band Oasis and French Cold War spy thriller Farewell.
We also delve deeper into an amazing family connection between one of our artists and one of our Cornerhouse team revealed by our New Cartographies exhibition. And of course we have our mini what’s on guide and a fab staff recommendation of the week which focuses on the NTLive performance of Frankenstein.
There are only a few days left to apply to contribute to our forthcoming exhibition Edition #3 The Hafsah Naib Video Systems. For the third installment of Edition, our annual month-long venture, which acts as a testing ground for innovation and cross-disciplinary collaborations, Cornerhouse is presenting a new commission by artist Hafsah Naib.
Naib is offering you the chance to turn your film idea into reality working with her and her friendly team of professionals – The Dirty Sun Loungers as part of this collaborative exhibition.If you’ve got an innovative idea for a tiny film, from a mini horror to a teeny comedy, that you’d like to share with Manchester and beyond then all you need to do is book a slot for the Screen Test Video shoot taking place at Cornerhouse on Fri 6 and Sat 7 May, where you will be asked to talk about your idea to camera. Three of the participants from Screen Test Videos will then be selected to work with Hafsah during the summer to realise their ideas, with the resulting films exhibited as part of the final exhibition which will be shown in Gallery 1 from Sat 20 August.If you’re interested in taking part, just email Hafsah direct at hafsahnibe@gmail.com to book a slot and for more details by Thu 5 May (places are limited so book early to avoid disappointment!).
