Beginning by Dea Kulumbegashvili, how to explain the ending?
16 August 2022
Beginning, trailer, is the 2020 debut feature of Georgian filmmaker Dea Kulumbegashvili. Yana (Ia Sukhitashvili) is the wife of a Jehovah’s Witness minister, David (Rati Oneli). They have a young son Giorgi (Saba Gogichaishvili). But Yana begins to question her life after their small church is fire-bombed by a group of extremists, during a service one afternoon.
She is frustrated by local police who have little interest in investigating the attack, even though security camera footage clearly identifies the perpetrators. After being assaulted by a man, Alex (Kakha Kintsurashvili), who claims to be a police officer, Yana sinks deeper into despair, but also finds a steely, though grim, resolve. Beginning is equal parts meditative and unsettling. We sense Yana at times on the verge of catharsis, yet never quite attaining the peace of mind she seeks.
But what of Yana’s shocking act at the conclusion of the story? Is her victim intended as a surrogate for the police officer, Alex, whom we see die, possibly having been poisoned, on a dried out riverbed? Does Yana see the patriarchal abuse of women as a cycle with no end? But a cycle she’ll do the unthinkable to try and curb? This is what I saw in the final scenes of the film.
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Dea Kulumbegashvili, film, Ia Sukhitashvili, trailer, video
Kylie Moore-Gilbert: the difficult return to a normal life
15 August 2022
Kylie Moore-Gilbert is an Australian academic who spent over two years in Iranian jails after being accused of spying, despite no evidence backing up the claims ever being published. Last week Moore-Gilbert wrote about being incarcerated, and the challenges of rebuilding her life, on returning to Melbourne in November 2020.
I am a 35-year-old childless divorcee with a criminal record. It was never meant to be this way, of course. A few years ago I was on track to achieving that comfortable middle-class existence of husband, dream job and a mortgage on a house in the suburbs. I was driven, I was hard-working, I was ambitious. After years of juggling full-time study with multiple part-time jobs I had finally gained an unsteady foothold on the precarious academic ladder. I was working on my first book, an adaptation of my PhD. I taught undergraduate and masters courses, and supervised research students. I used to think I had life more or less figured out, and myself too for that matter.
Incidentally, Moore-Gilbert’s memoir My 804 Days in an Iranian Prison, is among shortlisted titles for the 2022 The Age book of the year award. Winners will be announced when the Melbourne Writers Festival opens on Thursday 8 September 2022.
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Australia, books, current affairs, literary awards
Untapped a collection of out of print Australian books
15 August 2022
Untapped is working with Ligature Press, the Australian Society of Authors, Melbourne Law School, and libraries across Australia to make out-of-print books available once more. A growing selection of titles — dating back to 1926 so far — can be found in their collection.
Untapped is a collaboration between authors, libraries and researchers, working together to identify Australia’s lost literary treasures and bring them back to life. It creates a new income source for Australian authors, who currently have few options for getting their out-of-print titles available in libraries.
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Australian literature, books, history
Climate change aggravates the spread of infectious diseases
15 August 2022
In the same week a reminder that climate change exasperates the emergence and spread of infectious diseases is issued, news that polio has been detected in New York sewage, and an instance of a virus, Langya henipavirus, spreading from animals to humans in China, are reported. This on top, of course, of COVID, and the more recent Monkeypox outbreak.
The continual release of greenhouse gases (GHGs) is escalating several climatic risks, which, in turn, worsen human pathogenic illnesses. The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic, which amply demonstrated the social upheaval driven by infectious diseases, offers alarming hints to the possible outcomes of impending health crises caused by climate change.
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climate change, environment, health
A Guide to Dating at the End of the World by Samuel Gay
13 August 2022
I couldn’t go passed the title… A Guide to Dating at the End of the World, trailer, the debut feature of Queensland, Australia, based filmmaker Samuel Gay, which is set in the state’s capital, Brisbane.
The story follows unlucky-in-love Alex (Kerith Atkinson), a thirty-something woman who wakes one morning to find she’s apparently alone in the city, after a Large Hadron Collider experiment somehow dissolves everyone else.
Alex meets John on a blind date set up by her friends, and declares that she ‘wouldn’t see him again even if he were the last man on earth!’ The next day Alex wakes to find that a scientific experiment seems to have wiped out the rest of humanity. The streets of Brisbane are deserted; her annoying boss has disappeared; no longer does she have to put up with her friends trying to set her up with losers. Alex finds that she has the City of Sunshine to herself — at first it’s bliss. No traffic, no queues, no deadlines — though the novelty wears thin after a few weeks of harmless carjacking, home-invasions and tinned food. Until Alex discovers that there is someone else still alive, and it’s John!
The premise reminds me a little of The Quiet Earth — made in 1985 by late New Zealand filmmaker Geoff Murphy — though minus the star crossed lovers. A Guide to Dating at the End of the World premieres in Brisbane on Friday 26 August 2022.
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film, LHC, Samuel Gay, trailer, video
Book plotlines tropes and clichés a publisher may reject
13 August 2022
The world is full of writers and the stories they’d like to write. American author Joseph Epstein, writing for the New York Times, quotes research suggesting eighty-one percent of Americans think they “have a book in them”. That’s a lot. Unfortunately, aspiring writers vastly outnumber book publishers, meaning many manuscripts stand to go unnoticed and unpublished.
It might not seem like much help, but Strange Horizons — a magazine publishing speculative fiction — once put together a list of the types of sci-fi stories that they’ve seen submitted too often, and subsequently did not feature. I suspect they’re not the only publishers seeing such ideas either. Knowing what might be rejected then, might help you write something that won’t be.
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books, novels, science fiction, writing
Pirates are not about buried treasure and maps leading to it
13 August 2022
It seems there’s a lot I don’t know about pirates, except they are the scourge of the oceans. What they are not about — among other things — is buried treasure, and hiding maps leading to the booty.
On the other hand, if you are an insider, there’s a code that both binds and protects. Pirate crews can also be egalitarian, with their leader being chosen by ballot, according to Rebecca Simon, a historian who studies pirates past and present.
Many pirate ships had rules called articles. Some articles prohibited drinking on board because alcohol could cause trouble. Gambling was usually banned, too. There were rules about compensation if someone suffered a severe injury such as losing an arm or a leg.
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100 years a film by John Malkovich locked in a safe for 100 years
12 August 2022
Written by American actor John Malkovich, who also stars with Marko Zaror and Shuya Chang, and directed by Robert Rodriguez, 100 Years, teaser/trailer, is a film made in 2015 that will not be released — all things remaining equal — until 2115.
The only physical copy of the movie was placed in a time controlled safe at the Cannes Film Festival in 2016, which apparently will not open until Monday 18 November 2115. While details of the plot remain sketchy, it seems a certain brand of cognac features prominently.
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entertainment, film, John Malkovich, Robert Rodriguez, trailer, video
Jacoténe wins Triple J Unearthed High with I Need Therapy
12 August 2022
Talking of Triple J… Emerging Melbourne based Australian soul and pop singer Jacoténe has won the radio station’s Unearthed High for 2022, with her demo single I Need Therapy. Those vocals though…
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Triple J losing listeners to commercial radio, go figure
12 August 2022
Government funded, alternative music Australian radio station, Triple J has been losing listeners for sometime among their target demographic of 18 to 24 year olds, but recent surveys show the decline has picked up pace, as Tim Burrows at Unmade writes:
However, the fall for average listening to Triple J is much worse. Now, a much bigger proportion of that young listening audience is choosing commercial radio. In 2014, there were an average of 22,000 members of Triple J’s target audience listening at any given time. In the most recent survey in 2022, that had fallen to 10,000 – a fall of 55%.
What puzzles me is the migration to commercial radio though. Listeners haven’t gone to TikTok to discover and listen to music — at least not all of them — instead they’re tuning into commercial radio stations. Surely the ads that choke commercial radio broadcasts don’t have some sort of hitherto unrealised appeal to Generation Z?
I’m somewhat outside Triple J’s target audience, but one reason I still tune in (stream in) is precisely because there are no cheesy commercial jingles. There are ads of sorts on Triple J, but usually for other shows, and music related events and happenings. Certainly not the kind you encounter on commercial channels though.
And surely 18 to 24 year olds aren’t being turned off by Triple J’s focus on new Australian music? Interestingly, radio listenership in general is down some seventeen percent among those aged 18 to 24, so while the jays are losing audience share, they’re not the only ones.
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