Ever been the only one in the cinema?

I don’t normally post things about movies I’ve been to see, but tonight was kind of noteworthy in a strange way. I went to the cinema and I was the only customer.  Would I
have gone if I had known this would be the case?  That’s difficult to say, but it was a kind of unusual experience.  In the end the ladies working as projectionist and bar staff at my local arthouse cinema came and joined me in the auditorium, we decided on a having 30 second interval and we chatted about the movie afterwards.  I discovered that neither of them had already seen the film yet, which made me feel slightly better about forcing them to stay to run the film for just me.

So, what was it that I went to see?  A Finnish film by director Juho Kuosmanen, The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki.  It’s a boxing movie with a romantic dilemma at its heart. Based on a true story from 1962, it is stylishly shot in high contrast black and white making the step back to the sixties easy to make.  Olli the central character, is preparing for the fight of his life to win the world title…..and then, he falls in love, just when he needs to be focusing every cell in his body on the physical and mental preparations to face the challenge posed by his American opponent.

Apart from saying that I really enjoyed it, I’ll leave a glowing review about the movie from The Independent and a metascore from IMBD.com of 91% to do the real film promotion.

So why was I alone in the cinema on a Sunday night?  Are we not ready for Finnish film in the small, but very international town that I live in?  Were people put off by the theme being boxing?  My two companions for the evening were rather perplexed, it wasn’t even raining.  The same cannot be said for 1962 Finland where it seemed to be torrentially raining for large sections of the film!

An image and language project completed (CLIL activity)

I posted a while back about an extended content and language integrated learning project that I have been working on.

Book project and digitalization

The project in short has involved groups of pupils (aged 14-15) who have completed the following:

• Researched and analyzed, a group of artworks from the history of art that in some way have a relationship with one another
• Singled out one artwork and wrote a story (in English, their second language) for younger children in which the afore mentioned artwork played a significant role, and in this way is introduced to the younger readers
• Produced illustrations to accompany the story
• Photographed the images and combined them with the text to produce layouts for each page on their iPad
• Printed and bound the book for a finished project

That was the working process, and as my previous post illustrated there has been seen some good work made, the digital layout work being particularly pleasing to see.

The whole project though has today taken its final turn. I went with a group of nine of the pupils and a selection of the books to visit a primary school, De Fonkeling, where they are also working hard to get more English into the curriculum.

Here, my pupils then read the story books to the oldest children at the primary school (aged 11), explained the project and showed the illustrations.

I entered the school with a group of perhaps slightly nervous fourteen and fifteen year olds, but I left with a group who were clearly surprised by the attention that they were given and the rounds of applause that they received at the end of each story. The younger children played their part fully, filling feedback questionnaires about what they had heard and reacting so enthusiastically.  All in all, a very rewarding and authentic experience at the end of a long project.

Reality, what was that again?

A sunny day in Rotterdam and three different exhibitions that connect in an interesting way by asking questions about our perceptions and understanding of the world around us and the differing realities that we experience in our minds.

‘Gek op Surrealism‘ (Mad about Surrealism) in the Boijmans museum in Rotterdam was the first port of call, followed by ‘Hyperrealism‘ and ‘ Human/Digital‘ across the park in the Kunsthal.

The Surrealism show featured work from the museums own collection and from several private lenders. Dalí, Ernst, Miró and Magritte were all well represented in the three hundred plus works on show. Seen as a group the exhibition presents an extensive and at times confusing collection. Maybe this is inevitable and not entirely inappropriate for an art movement made up of individuals with such diverse approaches.  Paintings, drawings, collages, film, photographs, poetry and texts all feature.

It was principally the work of René Magritte that I wanted to see. His simply executed paintings have always drawn my attention, particularly the ones where he seems to be questioning our interpretation of what we see and what we experience as real and as image.

Then it was on to the Kunsthal for the Hyperrealism show with the seventy, other quite large scale, works from the early days of the photorealists through to the present day.  Chuck Close and Audrey Flack amongst others representing the ‘old guard’ along with a selection of more recent followers of this tradition.  Photorealist work is a bit of an island in contemporary art.  In many ways, the development in terms of subject matter and content doesn’t seem to have changed so much.  Artists still seem drawn to the reflective qualities of shiny materials and light sources.  They also seem often to continue to be captivated by the otherwise rather insignificant apertures that they open on everyday life.  This might be a contemporary still life of bottles on a restaurant table or children’s toys.  Equally it might be a light reflected in the polished body work of a car or reflected neon in a wet road surface.

There does seem to be the challenge of creeping towards a better sense technical excellence, but whether this ultimately brings us towards anything more than an increasing ‘wow’ factor is the question.

Don’t get me wrong though, I did enjoy the exhibition. Yes, there is that constant feeling of a double take as you approach these images that lurk somewhere between a painting and a photograph. Ultimately though, what I find most interesting is the way that all the images seem to force us to stop and consider the reality of the familiar world around us.  The trivial, the unnoticed and yet constantly present, thrown into quite literally sharp focus, in these often incredibly polished works.

Downstairs in the Kunsthal is the ‘Human/Digital’ exhibition. An exhibition of recently produced digital artworks.  Here too we are often forced to consider and reconsider the reality around us alongside digitally created realities. These can be places that may or may not actually exist, but through the ever-improving technical advances challenges us, like the Surrealists and the Hyperrealists to ask questions about the world around us and the layers of perceived reality in which it is built up.