Culture Diary w/c 13-01-2020
Our pick of this week’s arts, design, film and music events from around the North of England and the rest of the UK – and loads of it’s free!
Monday – Day for Night 6.10pm @ the BFI Southbank, London – £25/£6
Starring Jacqueline Bisset and Jean-Pierre Léaud, Day for Night is French New Wave director François Truffaut’s 1973 film about filmmaking. Ostensibly a melodrama dealing with the international production of a film called Je vous présente Paméla, it is – as all pictures that fit into this niche genre in some ways are – a love letter to the cinematic form itself. Even its English title refers to the technique employed to shoot a night scene while filming in daylight. Veteran critic Philip French called it his favourite of these – “the one I love” – and with dust barely settled on debates over what counts as cinema these days, Truffaut’s is a name inextricably linked with its elevation to an art form.
Tuesday – Exhibition Opening: Interruptions: Bryony Gillard and invited guests 6pm @ The Holden Gallery, Manchester – FREE
With Interruptions, artist Bryony Gillard has curated a programme of film using her work Unctuous Between Fingers as a departure point. Alongside the 2019 work, she has selected a complementary set of shorts by women – ranging from veterans Carolee Schneemann and Jayne Parker to contemporaries Sophie Mallett, Olga Koroleva and Vicky Smith – to “challenge binaries and reclaim sliminess and its cultural and social connotations”.
Wednesday – Exhibition Opening: Jerwood/Photoworks Awards 2020: Silvia Rosi & Theo Simpson @ Jerwood Arts, London – FREE
Exploring migration, family history, heritage and origins, Togolaise/Italian Silvia Rosi’s photography (above) is personal, playful and poignant. Alongside Theo Simpson, she is the recipient of the latest Jerwood/Photoworks Awards. They make for a strong but very different pairing. Simpson’s is a photography confounding the medium’s definitions, combining, but also operating in the spaces in-between art, design and architecture resulting in a layered practice. For the third Jerwood/Photoworks Awards, the two have been supported to make new work, exhibited here for the first time.
Weathering With You / Your Name Double Bill 6.15 @ FACT Liverpool – £17.50
Animator, filmmaker and manga artist Makoto Shinkai’s latest anime Weathering with You has received stellar early notices. A revelation at the box office in Shinkai’s native Japan, the action follows high school runaway Hodaka, as he contends with the responsibilities of life on your own. On top of the biting reality, it always seems to be raining. His fortunes – and the weather – change dramatically on meeting Hina, who seems able to stop the rain and clear the sky. Officially opening in UK cinemas this Friday, this special screening is joined by the director’s previous hit, Your Name.
Thursday – Exhibition Opening: Visual Rights 6pm @ Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool – FREE
In times of social, political and climate turmoil, what responsibility do art and artists have to engage and reflect the often complex and uncertain issues at hand? With new exhibition, Visual Rights, Open Eye turns its lens on the distribution of power and asks “How do we visualise power? What does it look like, and for whom is it visible?” Across six different projects, the exhibition brings together international photographers to interrogate its affects on the environment, borders, landscape and technology, amongst other things.
Friday – Exhibition Opening: Beija Flo: ‘Inside The Walls’ 6pm @ OUTPUT gallery, Liverpool – FREE
For those already familiar with the name, Beija Flo might be best known to you as a musician (indeed, she is booked to play Liverpool Sound City in May). Here, Flo fuses activism, performance art and education for exhibition Inside The Walls, a “very personal collection of music and art about how I saw and captured my body, and how it was touched, over a specific period of time”. Current single Nudes is the exhibition’s focal point, alongside which, expect poetry, video, self-portrait photography and illustrations. The opening is followed with an after party of performance, spoken word and DJs at Kazimier Stockroom.
Saturday – Some Girls Wander 8pm @ Liverpool Philharmonic Hall – £8
Winner of Best Feature Film at last year’s Brighton Rocks International Film Festival, indie writer/director Geoff Woodbridge’s Some Girls Wander takes on the experience of homelessness. Through leads Jade Mark and Keith Parr, playing an ex-cinema manager, who sees the world through cinematic moments, the darkly comic film addresses issues of child abuse, mental illness and the ease with which people can become homeless.
Sunday – Ecstatic Dances: Manchester, featuring Poul Høxbro 5pm @ the Stoller Hall – £18/£11
With air time on BBC Radio 3, NTS Radio and Melodic Distraction, amongst others, Manchester Collective are building a reputation based on daring, innovative programming. Of course, innovation can be challenging. Their programming has risk taking aural experiences in spades, and Ecstatic Dances featuring Danish multi-instrumentalist Poul Høxbro assuredly fits that bill. Dubbed ”The Great Man of Small Instruments”, expect flutes, bells, bones (animal rather than human) and drums: “Ancient music, brought vividly to life for 21st century ears”.
Mike Pinnington
Images/media from top: Beija Flo – video for Nudes; Silvia Rosi, Project 4, 2019 © the artist; Hagit Keysar, Barak Brinker, Animation by Moshe Zilbernagel, Jerusalem’s No Fly Zone © the artist; still, Some Girls Wander
