My hometown, Kamloops, population 85,000 people, is having its annual film festival now. By the time these films come to Kamloops, they’re all pretty much available on DVD already, but what a treat it is to see these films on the silver screen. I couldn’t pass on seeing Control.
How awesome Control is, directed by Anton Corbijn, telling the story of the last few years of the life of Ian Curtis, singer of the band Joy Division.
The film is a first feature for Corbijn, who has had a career photographing bands (including Joy Division) since the 1970s, and has had much success making music videos from the early 1980s until the present.
He brings such control to Control, which the characters of the film can’t escape from. They seem trapped by the shadows, by the brick, by the wallpaper, by the black & white, by their bodies and their minds. The antithesis of this control is the epilepsy of the main character Curtis. As I recall, there’s only two or three scenes in the whole movie which actually leave the city — the scene where the young Curtis proposes to his girlfriend, the scene where the band is driving back from London and he has a seizure on the side of the motorway at night, and the awesome final shot of the movie, which pans up from the church, and black smoke is expelled from the chimney, and the distant hills are seen. It’s a release.
How intense the movie is. And how intense the music is.
I just heard recently for the first time of the North Pacific Gyre. Apparently, it is a huge collection of floating garbage covering twice the surface area of the state of Texas. It floats in the Pacific Ocean somewhere between Hawaii and California. All the garbage there is said to weigh more than 3.5 million tonnes. The thought that something like this might exist first came to me on an isolated beach on a small island named Ikema. Ikema Island is in the island chain of Okinawa. This island chain traces a line from the southern tip of Japan to the island of Taiwan. Directly north of Ikema Island is the peninsula of Korea. Further south is the Philippines …
I discovered this gem of a video today. An interview with the owner of a hotel where Yasujiro Ozu wrote the scripts for many of his most important films.
Last night, I saw a free screening of this movie by Michael Franti, I Know I’m Not Alone. The movie captures the journey of Franti’s journey to Iraq, Israel, and Pakistan. On the film’s website, Franti says in a statement, “This film came out of my frustration with watching the nightly news and hearing generals, politicians and pundits, explaining the political and economic cost of the war in the Middle East, without ever mentioning the human cost.” The film is very simply made and edited. Franti is our guitar-playing guide and intermediary to the lives of the people he encounters. It’s a simple set-up, but much more intimate — you feel like you’re there, too, with the people. The film’s website is here: http://www.iknowimnotalone.com/
Here’s more of a straight-up music video, not shown in the movie, but featuring one of the movie’s main songs:
I made this in late February 2007, three weeks after beginning a new life in Kamloops, BC, Canada. The video was submitted for a video contest at the Kamloops Art Gallery with the theme, “The Place Where I Live.” It subsequently won the contest.
Bangkok - film from 2002, strobing light photos (taken by Seafran in 2006). Video edited by DoAn Forest. Music produced by Seafran (www.myspace.com/seafran)
