Introducing Marie Craven, film-maker

 It's a great pleasure for me to introduce you to the works of

Marie Craven

I'm sure some of you already know Marie and her works, but this post brings together some parts of her story which may not be well known.

Marie Craven is a film-maker in Queensland, Australia, who has been making short films since 1984 in widely eclectic styles. Over the decades her films have screened at many international festivals and events, gathering multiple awards. During the decade from 2007 she was also a vocalist with electronic musicians around the world, collaborating via the internet. Her main music project during this time was a prolific collaboration with Welsh music producer Paul Foster, together forming the duo Cwtch. Since 2014 her primary creative focus has been on videopoetry, making over 70 films in the genre, again involving many online and international collaborations with artists in a variety of media. Over the decades, she has also been a writer about film and a curator of programs, most recently touring the Poetry + Video program through Europe in 2019, and creating for it a permanent online exhibition. Currently she is co-editor of the Moving Poems website with US poet and film-maker Dave Bonta and UK film-maker Jane Glennie.

FILMS

Maidenhead (1995)

Maidenhead from Marie Craven on Vimeo

This 16-minute film was the biggest directing project of my life, financed by the Australian Film Commission and completed on 35mm celluloid. I wrote it from dreams, workshopped the script with actors, and completed it in 1995. A synopsis: Maidenhead is a series of chamber fictions inhabited by a young woman named Alice. Linked in a dream-like way, these short stories describe Alice's survival in a world of bizarre logic and strange emotions. It's a place where miracles unfold in the bathroom and desire appears on a bus, where menacing joggers roam the suburbs and there's something sinister about hats.

Rodeo Days (2019)

Rodeo Days from Marie Craven on Vimeo

Rodeo Days is about my Australian ancestry. Employing archival footage of 20th century rural life, it is a hybrid of experimental film, spoken word narration and music video. The music track is one of so many produced in collaboration with Welsh electronic music producer Paul Foster, and our music duo called Cwtch. My father and his brothers and sisters lived through a childhood of poverty in the Depression era of the 1930s. As the boys approached early adulthood, they took to the rodeo circuit, traveling wide distances between events, a life on the road. Talented horsemen, they became well-known as rodeo champions. The film brings together experiences from childhood, family accounts of those rodeo days, and impressions about the history of anglo-Australian society and my uneasy place within it.

The Sea (2018)

The Sea from Marie Craven on Vimeo

This project started with an online music collaboration with US electronic music-maker Sidney Irvine, for which I provided vocals. I adapted a poem by Canadian writer Juniper Roan to create the lyrics for a track we called The Sea. The idea for the video came a few years later. For this I animated and visually fragmented some superb images of sea and ocean from the royalty-free website Unsplash. Then I fragmented the images further by jump-cutting to the music beats. In this way, the overall piece became a downtempo music video, fused with videopoetry and abstract art.

Metamorphosis (2020)

Metamorphosis from Marie Craven on Vimeo

I stumbled upon the poem of Metamorphosis in my Facebook feed, where I regularly find new poems from international writers with whom I have online connections. Immediately I was drawn to this poem by UK writer and translator, Jean Morris. The piece was inspired by a famous woodcut print by M.C. Escher, Metamorphosis II (1939-40), and takes a mirror structure which felt apt as a reference to the geometries that appear in Escher's art. Jean's viewing of the art work suggested a vision of someone who might be similar to Escher himself, a character who the poet could relate to personally, as could I. In another part of the virtual globe, I had been in contact for several years with Spanish film director, Eduardo Yagüe. We had previously talked about a possible collaboration between us and this film became the one. Almost without words, Eduardo and I decided that he would create the camera footage, including direction of his chosen actor, Pedro Luis Menéndez. I was to edit and do all post-production for the film. Further discussions took place by group emails between Australia, Spain and UK. It was a fabulous online collaboration, with music by long-time collaborator Paul Foster in Wales.

Marie

LINKS

Homesite: mariecraven.net

Cwtch music duo: cwtch.bandcamp.com

Poetry + Video program: poetryplusvideo.com

Moving Poems website: movingpoems.com

About "Ex Machina"... Richard Leigh

 Email from my friend Richard, received yesterday 13/1/23

Wo!

Tess and I just watched “Ex Machina”.

Still recovering.

Haha

What a brilliant movie. Nothing particularly new (for 2023 at least!)

but what an outstandingly engaging treatment of the conceptual territory.


5-stars! *****

Great way to cap off our summer-movie marathon :)

rl

So I responded:

Well, what can I say Richard... I've been telling you about it for three years now! Better late than never!


Yes, it’s a superb achievement in concept, writing, casting, performance, visual design, and audio ... the whole shebang!


I don't think you've ever give us a 5* rating before Richard?


Richard, you express it so accurately in just a few words.


"but what an outstandingly engaging treatment of the conceptual territory"


Alex Garland is one hell of a clever writer and director... a super talent. But there are so many major talents at the top of the tree. He also made "Annihilation" which is very good, has some wonderful ideas, it’s more of a sci fi nightmarish adventure but still includes some wonderful conceptual moments.

With “Ex Machina” I'm staggered by the level of his achievement.

In terms of the interlocking concepts, it is original, very different from 2001. Hal being a computer built into the fabric of the spaceship lacks the mobility and dexterity which Dave has and it’s those attributes which enable Dave to close Hal down.

AVA is a wonderful conception. Garland has taken the liberty of making an “it” into a feminine “person”. I don't know what people think about personalising an "it" as a stunningly beautiful female machine, fem-bot... delicate, beguiling, capable of complete seduction, yet at the same time unrelentingly cunning, eventually escaping the prison of her god/creator and reaching the outside world which has been her unstated goal from the very beginning.

And then there's the beautiful moment when she whispers to the Kyoko, Japanese dancing model…

 

We don't hear or know what is said between them but we assume they share a proto language because a plan of action is passed from AVA to the other. 

Many viewers must wonder why AVA is female in design and whether that's pure sexism on the part of the writer/director, but of course it is essential for the plot and the play of concepts including the machine's ability to seduce both the guys who have been programmed by culture to become captivated by the "object of sexual beauty/desire".

However Richard, the construction of the two humanoid robots, especially AVA, with her transparent body parts full of electro-chemical activity is a miracle of a concept unified in design and synthesis on film, an incredibly difficult technical demand. You can read all about that in production notes. AVA is perfectly actualised despite all the complex motion tracking mapping which was required to achieve the on-screen result.

 

Going back to the point about AVA's gender... that is also very smart, especially when compared with sex dolls and "femalised" robots as well as manicured seductive female voice chips in answering machines and such. 

But this film takes it one step further... the AVA fem-bot has been given "personality" and seductive attributes, but remains essentially an "it" in feminised form. When released from the prison in which "it" was created, "it" is then free to roam the world looking for targets to seduce and manipulate for its own purposes… there are many potential targets out there who will fall prey to its feminised charms just as Caleb and we too have been seduced by AVA.

So Richard, despite all the suspension of disbelief "credibility" gaps in plot points which may arise in any story or movie, I was entirely and utterly seduced by this film.

I'm so glad you finally got around to viewing it.

pt

From Richard:

Yes! Like you, I too was seduced.

 

The whole gender thing was so brilliantly dealt with because this was a story about ‘two bros’ in very much what has also been a real ‘bro culture’ — whether we like it or not. Nathan (played by the perfectly cast Oscar Isaac) set it up so well at the start by saying “Hey let’s drop the whole employee-employer thing, this is a week of just two bros hanging out”. 

And also, later, when Caleb questions the sexualised nature of these creations, Nathan simply states it was an easy obvious choice to run with, and something that suited him, in his god-like state.

 

Actually, I woke up this morning still mesmerised by the talent of Alex’s writing AND the impeccable acting of Ava (played by Alicia Vikander); those incredibly tiny movements of her face and eyes sensing and responding to Caleb during their conversations. Here she was listening and watching, picking up on his tiny, almost imperceptibly small nuances of facial inflections and ‘capturing’ meaning in it all.

 

How incredibly realistic in so many ways. A brilliant observation of how much more machines are ‘reading us’. At every turn we’re being examined. The frontier of the science of AI is expanding fractally into every crevice of possibility.

 

Early on, for example, basic voice recognition (as distinct from general noise and, say, music) was seen as a great achievement.

Now machines can ‘understand’ context and tone, and I suspect, even accents.

Early on, machines could only detect basic, large movement.

Even my 2018-model phone can detect faces and lock-onto them to properly focus and expose.

Name any area or attribute of human mastery and I’m convinced that there’s some boffin working in some corner of AI research to ensure that it will soon be also mastered by the machines. To see that combined in one Ava machine is incredible, but also not that much of a leap for us to make in our heads now.

 

But it also drives home that point about our distinctive position as human beings, and why that scene of Caleb cutting himself in the bathroom is so powerful and important. Is he going mad? He’s questioning, as we ourselves question what it means to be human. In fact Caleb throughout the movie is us — we see it all through him. What are WE? Ava is exposed, transparent in her machine-ness for all to see (making an extra twist in the whole Turing test — another thing Tess asked at the start, “But I thought the test was when the machine was hidden”, another moment which writer Alex Garland immediately answered on screen, addressing that very point). So now Caleb asks, if that’s what SHE is, what am I? Who are we? What does it mean to be human?

 

I think this is why this most profound and philosophically deep question of all is left to near the end.

 

Whether it’s ‘consciousness’ or not seems almost irrelevant. All three main characters seems equally capable of playing self-aware mind games with each other, manipulating and controlling, struggling to gain the upper-hand. I think writer Alex is suggesting – by having Caleb cut and bleed so much – that what makes us human is our EMBODIED-NESS. We are living, breathing, bleeding animals. That ‘living’ nature is both a deep mystery and a profoundly critical difference. And perhaps that’s what we’re all still trying to work out — why does that matter?  

Why does it matter if functionally, on the surface, it manifests the same way, if the stuff that machines can do is ultimately the same as what we can do. 

 

It’s a mighty fine question to leave us pondering.

 

What a triumph of a film.

rl

Me to Richard:

Well Richard, you have just written a new post for the blog! I'm so pleased you got on board with this fine work. Excellent writing and you cover pretty well all the issues. You should be reviewing films for the New York Times! 

 

One of my favourite moments is where AVA says "Lie!", so sweetly, so softly, so emphatically, and she turns the whole apple cart upside down on Caleb and on us!.

 

But really there are many profound moments throughout the film like where Ava sees her own face mask model in the corridor…

Another astonishing moment is when Nathan smashes Ava's arm in the corridor of horrors, leaving the dangling wires extending from her smashed arm... the moment where we the audience feel her shock at losing a limb. Yet another moment confronting us with our own "embodiment".

There's so much more we can say Richard... it's such a great piece of work.

pt

Richard to me:

Haha, too kind. 

I think the problem of reviewing films like this is that you end up revealing too much of the plot for anyone who hasn't watched it. Probably needs editing / grammatical fixing, but I'm fine if you want to post it. 

Cheers,

rl

SOMETHING ABOUT BILL

Peter invited me to present Bill Morrison`s ("cinema of decay" main figure) work for our blog. First time I came into confrontation with local (Split; Croatia) academic authorities in relation with Bill`s cinema opus was years ago during "Dystopia" (2008) presentation period. Bill was stupidly ridiculed with collective Goebbelsian allusive inversion of his identity into the local religious idiot and political shithead best known for eating rotten human livers. Fifteen years later those same people are working on his visit to Croatia. (I do not care and never was). I did not pay to watch "The Village Detective: A Song Cycle" (2021) and I do not like idea that neo-chekists should seek for me around Hitlerian culture institutions for grabbing some stardust and downloading the torrent after hearing accordion sound of freedom. Let them eat what they vomit. 

This is Bill`s wwww page: 

https://billmorrisonfilm.com/ And some You Tube links:

 

So, I hope that my bill is paid... with this short tribute to Bill... and my new "decay of cinema" piece link: 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNwCl9nfTrA&feature=youtu.be

 unlike Bill, I work fast... 

 Greetings from Split; Croatia... 

 Darko Duilo ...

Thanks for that Darko, I hope others may add to this page.

You've got us off to a good start, with your personalised account of some of the difficulties you faced with local authorities...  I came to Morrison's films via "Light Is Calling" which I only stumbled across a few years ago... a film which I love deeply! So I come to his work without any baggage such as issues arising from people like the ones who gave you so much strife in your programming of avant garde and esoteric films.

Let me re-introduce "Light is Calling" to our friends. I did post a piece about it in early 2021 shortly after I fled from facebook.

What a piece of work it is! A cascading series of images arising from an old and greatly decayed movie made about 90 years ago, shot and printed on nitrate film which is an incredibly unstable medium... so the images have been disintegrating until the time when Bill Morrison got to them and treated them in the decayed form they had achieved when he found them. 

Then Bill Morrison makes this film from the remains of those images which includes fragments of storytelling underpinning the narrative of the original film. But the images and the storytelling arise out of the "ashes" like a Phoenix, from the decayed nitrate material, full of blotches and bubbles, expansions and contractions, all of which which give it new life and new texture, a seething bubbling broth from which evocative images partially emerge before subsiding again into the witches' brew, only to be reborn in some other manifestation moments later.

Completing this beautiful work a sublime music track matches the images to perfection.

Okay folks, after all that, here it is:

Don't be shy!

Don't hold back!

pt

A Passion for the Infinitesimal.

Life Inside a 

Drop of Seawater

 

SCIENCE | JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2023

A passion for the infinitesimal leads photographer 

Angel Fitor to discover countless creatures 

that live unseen in the ocean.

Clockwise from bottom right: 

a calanoid copepod, a hyperiid amphipod, a decapod larva and 

a pteropod, with jaws at its base and an anus at its pointy top. 

Angel Fitor, a marine scientist and wildlife photographer, is 

passionate about illuminating a hidden world that’s all around us. 

A drop of water contains a single 

Sapphirina 

a genus of copepod which has bioluminescent capabilities.

A male Sapphirina. 

The species is outfitted with iridescent plates on its back, 

which reflect sunlight and send out shimmering 

             signals through water.                

See the complete article published in the Smithsonian Magazine:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/these-gorgeous-photos-capture-life-inside-drop-seawater-180981297/?utm_source=smithsonian-daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20230106-daily&spMailingID=47841342&spUserID=ODExMTAyNDM4MTIyS0&spJobID=2380706964&spReportId=MjM4MDcwNjk2NAS2

pt

Maria Korporal: An Introduction to Her Work

Darko has recently introduced me to multimedia artist Maria Korporal.

Of Dutch origin, Maria lived in Italy for many years but she has lived and worked in Berlin since 2014.

Her artistic production includes video art, interactive projects, installations. Her multimedia work has been designed using a wide variety of techniques. The narrative aspect, both personal and social, plays a major role in her work which together with the directness of the images and the sounds leads to greater participation of the viewer. In her work she plays with virtuality and reality, with undergone and artificially generated experiences. Most of her projects deal with social and environmental issues, often with an ironic approach.

A good example is her project Korporal Zoo, a series of video works made between 2010 and 2018, which observe the animal and human world from several perspectives: cultural, social, environmental. 

Over the last two years Maria experienced the world as extremely turbulent and this had a direct impact on her work as an artist. After many years of focusing almost exclusively on digital forms of expression she started working again with analog charcoal drawings during the lockdown in the form of animation sequences. Thus, in the intimate atmosphere of her studio, many charcoal and pastel animations were created.

At the same time she developed new technical and digital skills, working with 360° video and virtual reality. In her most recent video works, such as Pervitin Power, Short Stories and WANDEL, she uses a combination of these analog and digital techniques to elaborate on certain themes.

Pervitin Power - Trailer from Maria Korporal on Vimeo.

The threat of climate change has been on Maria's mind for some time but the war in Ukraine and the resulting crisis in the Western world have changed her thinking more radically in relation to digital development and our dependence on technology. 

The core question of her multidisciplinary project QORPORAL QODES is:

How would we interpret digital signs if we were locked in a bunker without electricity and internet? 

In this work, the artist tries to find solutions to this problem in an interplay of analogue and digital – from flipbooks to virtual reality video.

QORPORAL QODES from Maria Korporal on Vimeo.

Maria Korporal's website:

https://www.mariakorporal.com/