Paul Wright’s debut feature film, For Those In Peril, won many plaudits on its release and even managed a BAFTA nomination this year. His film is a richly layered and deeply moving fantastical tale of an isolated community who are at odds with the soul survivor of a tragedy at sea. For Those In Peril is out now on DVD and a full article on … Continue reading Interview with Paul Wright (For Those In Peril).
Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Conclusions “The link between art and real history is the fact that works of art are structured like monads. History may be called the content of works of art. Analysing them is the same as becoming conscious of the immanent history stored up in them.” Adorno (1970, p.126). The bedrock of this essay has been to show how Ligeti’s … Continue reading Ligeti’s Atmosphères as a Musical Foreshadowing of Kubrick’s 2001- Part 4 (Conclusions)
Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. The Eternal Return and Zarathustra’s Gift. “-and must we not return down that other lane out before us, down that long, terrible lane – must we not return eternally?” – Nietzsche (1883/1986, p.241). The final section of this argument refers back to Nietzsche and his writing on the Eternal Return. His work on the subject, both philosophically in The … Continue reading Elemental Chaos and Eternal Return in Scriabin and Andrei Tarkovsky – Part 4 (Zarathustra).
Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. The ANS Synthesiser and the Final Parallel. “Has man any hope of survival in the face of all the patent signs of impending apocalyptic silence?” Tarkovsky (1987, p.229) Scriabin and Tarkovsky have a final meeting place outside of the philosophical. This meeting, on the one hand, seems almost to be coincidental but further inspection suggests that it is … Continue reading Elemental Chaos and Eternal Return in Scriabin and Andrei Tarkovsky – Part 5 (ANS Synthesiser + Conclusions).
Alone, alone, all, all alone, Alone on a wide wide sea! And never a saint took pity on My soul in agony. He despiseth the creatures of the calm, The many men, so beautiful! And they all dead did lie: And a thousand thousand slimy things Lived on; and so did I. – Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Paul Wright’s debut … Continue reading For Those In Peril (Paul Wright, 2013) – The Reality of Lore.
Part 1. Part 2. 2001: Narrative and Musical Parallels. “Ultimately, 2001 is a film that suspends that coordination of the human body, and thus human nature, in such conditions- even as it suspends our final judgments about human nature in its open-ended conclusion about our future development.” Decker – (2007, p.101). One of the biggest omens that a piece of music is given preference in … Continue reading Ligeti’s Atmosphères as a Musical Foreshadowing of Kubrick’s 2001- Part 3 (Musical Narrative)
There are a number of reception possibilities attainable when watching Grant Gee’s 2011 essay film, Patience (After Sebald). Any film based on a book or around an author is always going to separate its viewers into two groups; those who have read the original source material and those who have not. While the latter will be seeking to latch onto the their initial experience of … Continue reading Patience (Grant Gee) and The Rings of Saturn (W.G. Sebald) – Capturing Perception
Part 1. Part 2. Natural Forces and Cyclic Rejuvenation. “Critical neglect of this reference to Nietzsche is even more puzzling, however, when one considers that Nietzsche’s doctrine of the Eternal Return is a philosophical re-interpretation of the theme of Time for Time was, after all, a major obsession with Tarkovsky. As is well known, Tarkovsky’s preferred way of characterizing the art of filmmaking was as … Continue reading Elemental Chaos and Eternal Return in Scriabin and Andrei Tarkovsky – Part 3 (Natural and Cyclic Rejuvenation)
Despite living in an age of increased documentation, archive and detail, history can still be a tricky picture to paint. For so long, the old adage of it being written by “the winning side” has been a tried and tested bias exposed in whole chapters of recounted history. This has been a development based around prejudice whether through class, racism, sexism or other forms of … Continue reading The Missing Picture (2013) – Rithy Panh.
Part 1. Musical Techniques of Atmosphères and Disassociations with the Past. “Seen from this angle, with Atmosphères I was consciously reacting against the refinement of serialism. Musical texture in Atmosphères is also refined but in quite a different dimension.” -Ligeti (1983, p.38). Before even looking in any depth at the notational content of Ligeti’s Atmosphères, it becomes clear to the reader when looking over the … Continue reading Ligeti’s Atmosphères as a Musical Foreshadowing of Kubrick’s 2001- Part 2 (The Musical Past)
Celluloid Wicker Man 