Radiohead’s Ok Computer album turns twenty five
23 May 2022
Last Saturday, 21 May 2022, marked twenty five years since British band Radiohead released their third studio album Ok Computer, in 1997. To mark the occasion Ed O’Brien, the group’s guitarist, took to Instagram to share insights into the way the band thought and worked.
Wow… feels like an age away.. 1997 belonged to a different era .. we were just kids.. with unswerving focus and drive .. no partying just the desire to make better and better work.. it was fucking exciting .. people seemed to get what we were doing and the gigs were getting more powerful.
“1997 belonged to a different era”… I copy that.
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Brazen Comics Festival Sydney 2022
21 May 2022
Some late news to hand for anyone with an interest in graphic novels, and comics, who’s in Sydney tomorrow: the Brazen Comics Festival is on at the East Sydney Community and Arts Centre, in Darlinghurst, Sunday 22 May 2022, from 10AM until 4PM.
Brazen Comics Festival is a one day comics festival. The festival will amplify, highlight, and celebrate the voices of women, non-binary, and gender diverse people in comics, and foster a connected, welcoming, and supportive community of comic fans and creators in Australia. Brazen Comics Festival is accessible and welcoming to all.
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events, festivals, graphic novels
The Impact, a film by 50 directors and 50 writers
21 May 2022
Made up of thirty-seven short films, The Impact, trailer, counts down the final two hours on Earth before a catastrophic meteor strike. Grim storyline aside, The Impact is a feat of filmmaking, with fifty directors and fifty writers collaborating to produce the feature. I’m not sure if we’ll see it on Australian film screens, but The Impact premieres in London on Tuesday 31 May 2022.
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Sally Rooney’s books are better than their film adaptations
21 May 2022
That appears to be the case for the Irish author’s 2018 book Conversations with Friends, writes Robert Moran for Stuff:
All the forensic psychological nuance that Rooney feeds us through Frances – her neurotic overthinking, her spiky self-loathing, her overworked efforts to affect nonchalant charm – those chaotic moments that lend Frances her skewed humanity, are dulled, if not lost, on screen. What you’re left with is lingering shots of Frances staring out a rain-streaked window, presumably deep in existential thought, but who knows?
Disappointing. I know I just about always look forward the screen adaptation of the novels I like, despite an innate weariness to the book to film thing…
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novels, Sally Rooney, screen adaptations
Struggling Australians turn to crowd funding to pay the rent
20 May 2022
Melbourne based journalist Stephanie Convery, writing for The Guardian:
The unbearable costs and instability of the rental crisis are pushing more people towards crowdfunding for accommodation, with housing-related appeals on one of Australia’s biggest fundraising platforms more than quadrupling over the past year. The campaigns range from requests for assistance with rental arrears and covering the costs of temporary accommodation, to appeals for help to buy caravans or other forms of mobile accommodation in the face of homelessness.
We are frequently told Australia is a rich — or at least well off — country, making situations like these unfathomable. There may be inequality, often the result of a lack of momentum, but how something basic like reasonably priced rental housing remains a problem beggars belief. I fear whatever the outcome of tomorrow’s federal election, there will be little change to the status quo. Because, you know, this a state issue, not a federal one.
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Australia, elections, politics, welfare
Arts and culture polices in the 2022 Australian election
20 May 2022
Australians go to the polls tomorrow, Saturday 21 May 2022, to choose who will govern the country for the next three years. While issues such as climate change, the pandemic, and regional security have dominated the election campaign, matters arts and culture have been largely absent from the spot light.
In terms of policy in this area, the incumbent Liberal National Coalition government appears to offer little, while the present opposition party, Labor, has policy that Ben Eltham, a lecturer at the School of Media, Film, and Journalism at Monash University, describes as “surprisingly modest.” Eltham, together with four other policy experts, have compared the proposals of both major political parties, and graded each of them.
Meanwhile, Ben Francis has set out the difference between the Greens, Labor, and the Liberal National Coalition, arts and culture policies in slide format.
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arts, Australia, elections, politics
Adèle Haenel exits reactionary racist patriarchal film industry
19 May 2022
French actor Adèle Haenel, who won best actress prizes in the César Awards and the European Film Awards, for her role as Héloïse, in Céline Sciamma’s 2019 film Portrait of a Lady on Fire, has walked away from film making, she said in a recent interview:
“I don’t make films anymore,” Haenel said. “Because of political reasons. Because the film industry is absolutely reactionary, racist, and patriarchal.”
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The 2022 National Indigenous Music Awards
19 May 2022
Like many festival and award ceremonies, the National Indigenous Music Awards (NIMAs) have been forced to proceed with virtual/online events in the last couple of years. In 2022 however the NIMAs return in an in-person format, and will be held in Darwin on Saturday 6 August 2022.
The National Indigenous Music Awards (NIMAs) are recognised as one of Australia’s most prominent Indigenous music awards and have been celebrating Australian music for 16 years. The NIMAs showcase the rich musical landscape of Australia and highlight the music coming from all corners of the country. The Awards bring together acts who are yet to make their mark on the world alongside those who have achieved international acclaim, such as Gurrumul & Jessica Mauboy.
Nominations for the awards are currently open.
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Australian music, Indigenous music, music
Before, Now & Then, by Kamila Andini, Sydney Film Prize contender
18 May 2022
Before, Now & Then, trailer, by Indonesian filmmaker Kamila Andini, is one of twelve films in competition for the Sydney Film Prize, at the 2022 Sydney Film Festival:
Kamila Andini tells a very personal story set against the backdrop of tumultuous political times in Indonesia in this beguiling period drama. Nana (a luminous Happy Salma) loses her family, including her husband, in the war in West Java. Years later, now in the 1960s, we meet her again. Her poverty now a thing of the past, she has remarried a significantly older man, Mr Darga, who is wealthy and a philanderer. Though her life is comfortable, Nana’s dreams are still occupied by the past.
A chance discovery of a carelessly forgotten item of clothing leads Nana to discover that Darga is having an affair with an even younger local woman, Ino. What follows is unexpected. Rather than a confrontation, Nana and Ino become friends, and take comfort in each other, jointly imagining a path to freedom. Meanwhile, through talk in the town of secret communists, and on radio broadcasts, the political tensions that will alter the future of Indonesia are made clear.
Before, Now & Then, also known as Nana, is competing against eleven other films for the Sydney Film Prize, the winner of which will be announced on Sunday 19 June 2022.
- Alcarràs by Carla Simón
- All The People I’ll Never Be by Davy Chou
- Blaze by Del Kathryn Barton
- The Box by Lorenzo Vigas
- Burning Days by Emin Alper
- Close by Lukas Dhont
- Fire of Love by Sara Dosa
- Godland by Hlynur Pálmason
- The Quiet Girl by Colm Bairéad
- Utama by Alejandro Loayza Grisi
- You Won’t Be Alone by Goran Stolevski
It looks like a tight contest to me.
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film, Kamila Andini, Sydney Film Festival, trailer
Poor financial incentives deter emerging Australian writers
18 May 2022
“Artists in this country are used to living one paycheque away from poverty.” With those words, Evelyn Araluen, winner of this year’s Stella Prize, had everyone’s attention. The proceeds from the literary prize mean Araluen will be able to pay down some debt, and work two jobs instead of three.
But that’s not the reality for many other writers — even those who are published — in Australia, if working two jobs, while still focussing on their art, is meant to constitute reality.
Most writers are forced to take other work, because the rewards for writing all those books we like to read are virtually non-existent. It’s a state of affairs, warns Melbourne based literary agent and author Danielle Binks, that will force young and emerging authors to consider other lines of work all together:
“Kids are already hung up on how much money you can make and whether you can do this for a living … I tell them the reason I write – the reason we all engage in books, art, theatre, anything – is that art changes people and people change the world. But I’m convinced there’s a whole generation of artists, and writers in particular, who will not choose this path.”
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