Friends of the Armchair Traveller

  "REPETITION"           YES, I'M REPEATING MYSELF,                                                                           MORE,                                                                                                 AND MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM    I THINK WE'VE ALL SEEN THIS PIECE.  I POSTED IT ON ARMCHAIR TRAVELLER ON F/BOOK MANY YEARS AGO...  BUT A LITTLE REPETITION MAY STILL GO A LONG WAY.   IS THERE ANY ONE AMONG YOU WHO HAS NOT REPEATED HER/HIM/SELF?  I LOVE THIS WORK AND FEAR IT ALSO. THE L...

DORA “Untitled,” 1935. Photograph by Dora Maar / Courtesy Centre Pompidou / Philippe Migeat / RMN-GP    Dora Maar,  The years lie in wait for you  (around 1935). The William Talbott Hillman Collection  ©ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2019. AN OPEN INVITATION  FOR ANY OF OUR FRIENDS  TO ADD TO THIS PAGE! pt

                   What You Should Know About the Mardi Gras Indians For more than a century, New Orleans’ Black residents have donned Native-inspired attire to celebrate Carnival "Scholars generally agree that the Mardi Gras Indian  tradition is linked to early encounters between the  region’s Native and Black communities.  Founded by the French  in 1718, the city of New Orleans stands on land originally inhabited by the  Chitimacha Tribe .  As early as 1719, European colonizers brought  enslaved people from the western coast of Africa to the nascent port city, which eventually  became a hub  of  the United States slave trade." https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-you-should-know-mardi-gras-indians-new-orleans-180981663/? Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton February 21, 2023

 David has sent us this piece by Drew Pennebaker: Ian Gibbins, a South Australia-based experimental filmmaker and video poet drew my attention to this eye-popping film by D.A. Pennebaker when he posted it to Facebook.  I knew of Pennebaker's work from back in the 1970's when I first encountered his name while at university. But I had no idea he had ever created anything as visually rhapsodic as this.  Although different in several respects, it reminds me of Stan Brakhage's 'The Wonder Ring' which uses reflections in the window of a moving train to create a visual work of art. Hope you enjoy it! DJK

Antoinette Starkiewicz   Many years ago my friend Nigel showed me a copy of this little gem of a film created by Antoinette Starkeviewicz in 1974. It was her first animated film made when she was a student at London Film School. I never had the pleasure of meeting Antoinette. I only got to know of her fine film because my good friend Nigel Buesst preserved a 16mm film copy from many years ago and had it digitised by Callum at Memorylab. I made this new upgraded copy from Nigel's file of the film to clean it up and sharpen it a bit.  Bill Mousoulis sent me this: "Here are some photos of the Long Play screening in 2018, with PUTTING ON THE RITZ and GEORGE AND NEEDLES playing. John Ruane's short that he shot was played also: PORTRAIT OF A PAPER BOY.' Antoinette with Nigel at Long Play screening in 2018 Unfortunately the copy we have here may not be true to the colour as presented in Antoinette's original film owing to deterioration over the years, older film prints t...

  Vale Ken! A farewell to muffin@labyrinth Last week I received this sad note from Inge, a close friend of Ken Mogg: Dear Peter, Just a sad note that our friend Ken Mogg passed away yesterday, 2nd Feb 2023. He had been in and out of hospital with breathing problems, was  not eating properly, and had gone into a care home just recently, maybe a week or so ago. His sister rang me and said he had passed away peacefully yesterday. I hope you are well. Love -- Inge. Ken and Inge made the effort to attend a screening when some of my films were shown at the AFW workshop some years ago. (Photo taken by Bill Mousoulis)  So many years have passed since I first met Ken at film screenings at the Bughouse in Carlton, the MUFS screenings and Melbourne Film Festival screenings in the late sixties. We got to know each other better when we shared an office for about a year at Melbourne State College, 1974. We shared a great enthusiasm for the works of many directors but foremost was our l...

 Two years ago! Almost two years ago I was experiencing a very bad time with my Facebook account. It was also a period when Facebook took aim at the whole of Australia by denying coverage even to our nation’s emergency services. Facebook news ban stops Australians from sharing or viewing  Australian and international news content https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-18/facebook-to-restrict-sharing-or-viewing-news-in-australia/13166208 At the same time my friend Darko Duilo whom I met via Facebook, and whom most of our friends know from his Facebook days, was placed under a 6 week ban, which subsequently became a “ban for life” from Facebook! I don’t know and I don’t think Darko knows why that came about, what terrible sin had he committed? what it was that he had done which fired them up so much? So for many reasons, including all of the above, I decided to give Facebook the flick, just as I gave the Catholic Church the flick many years earlier: I excommunicated myself to sav...