NaVloPoMo Screening

Yesterday was the NaVloPoMo screening in Brighton, as organised by my housemate Beth.  NaVloPoMo was a project by a group of videobloggers who aimed to post a video for every day in November 2007.  The screening showed a selection of these videos, featuring participants from around the world.

Events like this have a beautiful combination of intimacy and distance.  A room in Brighton has about 40 people watching videos made by about 40 people around the world, some showing intimate glimpses into their lives.  The films ranged from experimental shorts to video diaries to people talking to camera to…  Afterwards people had an opportunity to chat to some of the filmmakers over a drink and I got to talk to some interesting people.

Among my favourite shorts:

The night before I’d been dreaming about listening to the sea with shells.  Sitting next to Ruth and I at the screening was a woman with a bag of shells.  She’d bought them at the beach, as she said she collected them.  I listened to the shell she had, but it was the wrong shape to hear the sea clearly.

The first weekend of 2008

It’s been a good weekend.  I had a quiet night Friday, cooking for a couple of friends, then set out early the next day for London.  I started by visiting the Jeff Bark exhibition, Woodpecker.  The images were incredible, the lighting making the scenes dreamlike.  Sadly  I didn’t have the £10,000 I’d need to buy a print so didn’t linger lest the gallery figure that out.

I walked from Chelsea to Tate Modern along the Thames.  On the way I passed by Tate Britain and popped in to see whether the Fairy Feller’s Masterstroke was currently on display.  It was: the painting is much smaller than I expected, but incredibly striking.  In particular the faces on the fairies are strange and wonderful.

 

When I reached the Tate I wasn’t much in the mood for looking at pictures, and spent the time catching up with a friend I’d arranged to meet instead.  I then headed back to Brighton, spent a couple of hours writing, then turned North again for a ‘Fake New Year’ party.  I caught up with some old friends, met lots of new people and had a thoroughly good time.  Photos will probably turn up on flickr somewhere.

Sunday has been quiet.  This morning I went to the playground with my godson and discovered I’m a little too wide to comfortably go down the slide.  In town I went shopping, where I found a copy of Murakami‘s Norwegian Wood for a pound.  I didn’t like The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles (the aimlessness of the main character annoyed me) but I’ve heard some interesting things about this one.  I also found a copy of BS Johnson‘s novel (although 20,000 words stretches the definition a touch) Christie Malry’s Own Double-Entry.  The introduction to the book was incredible and deserves a post of its own.

I’m now settling in for a long slow Sunday evening.  I have nothing else left to do but writing and prepaing for the week ahead.

Happy New Year, War is Over

It looks like the war on terror is over, in Britain at least: "The words "war on terror" will no longer be used by the British government to describe attacks on the public, the country’s chief prosecutor said Dec. 27 …  The Director of Public Prosecutions said: ‘We resist the language of warfare, and I think the government has moved on this. It no longer uses this sort of language.""

New Year

I decided to start the new year with a swim, so joined Mr. Spratt at the beach yesterday afternoon.  The water was cold, but not as cold as I’d expected.  We didn’t stay in long before retiring to the pub, and I was only at the pub for a while before retiring home to bed – the 5am finish the night before had sapped my strength.

Everything is now back to normal after the Winterval celebrations, which means focussing on my goals for 2008.  I’m hoping for a very good year.