‘The only attraction in history to entice riders with the prospect of donning the persona of a crazed amphibian, Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride is a true anormality. Of Disneyland’s original 1955 “Fantasyland Three” dark rides, Mr. Toad has only been constructed twice – half the number of incarnations Peter Pan’s Flight and Snow White’s Adventures have received. And overall, it is not too surprising – while Snow and Pan told something like their original stories, Mr. Toad spun off on a weird alternate reality that relied on your familiarity with a not-heavily-publicized postwar short feature to even understand the basic elements of what was going on.
‘Toad was always the most basic of the Fantasyland dark rides, even in 1955. While a number of characters appeared “in the round” at Snow White and Peter Pan, Toad featured entirely two dimensional characters. Depth in the sets was achieved through basic forced perspective and the spacing out of cut-out painted flats. Characters were often animated using the most basic methods, and there were not too many. What Toad depended on to be effective was the speed of the car, the twistiness of the track, and some basic simple effects like placing rubber lifters in the path of the car to simulate an uneven surface. This is still what makes Toad work today.
‘Of course, the attraction’s piece de resistance was its’ sinister and utterly absurd climax. Anybody of an impressionable age who has raced down that dark tunnel towards the oncoming “train” will never forget the terror of that scene, nor the surprise following when the cars deposited you in Hell to be accosted by rubber demons. This concept seems to account for much of the reason a dark ride was even attempted of Mr. Toad to begin with.
‘Is it possible that humans are simply hardwired in a way which, inevitably, certain tactile experiences are lasting because they’re essentially, innately appealing? Although much of the brilliance of Country Bears and America Sings, for example, is in their structure, they work because they are innovative variations on the time honored tradition of the proscenium arch. So, apparently, sitting still and moving your head from side to side to an effort to keep up with a show is innately appealing to the primordial ooze which we crawled out of. So, apparently, is sitting in a tiny car rattling down a dark rail waiting in mortal terror for the next bend in the track.
‘Dark Rides have been popular for well over 100 years now, and possibly because they, moreso than the roller coaster or omnimover or anything else, most recall the dream state and the irrationality of our own collective unconscious. Great dark rides feel like the whole thing is totally out of control. Is this why Mr. Toad works so well? Toad emphasizes the method of conveyance as the justification for the content, and the irrationality of the twists in the track are not because that’s what dark rides do, but because you’re a totally out of control amphibian riding a hot ticket to Hell. Form dictates content dictates form. And it increasingly seems like any way you cut it, Toad is a masterwork of a dark ride.’ — Passport to Dreams Old & New
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The experience
‘Passengers begin their journey by crashing into a library, where MacBadger is seen teetering atop a ladder with a stack of books. They then crash through the fireplace, where fiberoptic effects simulate the scattering of embers on the floor. Narrowly avoiding a falling suit of armor, the passengers break through a set of doors to find the interior hallway of Toad Hall in disarray, as weasels swing from chandeliers. Guests then enter the dining room, where Mr. Mole is eating at a dinner table and gets knocked aside.
‘Upon leaving Toad Hall, guests travel through the countryside, passing Mr. Rat’s house, aggravating policemen and terrifying a farmer and his sheep. Making a right turn, guests head for the docks and get the impression that their car will plunge into the river, but quickly make a sharp turn in a different direction and enter a warehouse full of barrels and crates containing explosives. Guests crash through a brick wall as the warehouse’s contents explode. They then head out into the streets of London, narrowly avoid a collision with a delivery truck, and enter Winkie’s Pub, where Mr.Winkie the bartender holds two beer mugs. He ducks down, leaving the mugs spinning in the air.
‘Passengers then enter the town square, where the cars wreak further havoc on the citizens. A working fountain featuring Toad and Cyril Proudbottom stands in the center of the town. Behind this statue is one of Lady Justice peeking out from under her blindfold. Next, guests enter a jury-less courtroom, where the riders are proclaimed guilty by a judge (based on the film’s prosecutor for the Crown). The cars then enter what is presumed to be a dark prison cell before abruptly turning right and landing on railroad tracks. The vehicles bounce along the tracks in the dark before colliding head-on with an oncoming train.
‘Passengers then arrive at the ride’s final scene: a tongue-in-cheek depiction of Hell not inspired by any scene in the movie or book. The entire room is heated, and the scenery features small devils who bounce up and down. Passengers also see a demon who resembles the Judge from the courtroom scene. Near the end of the scene, a towering green dragon emerges and attempts to burn the riders to a crisp. A glowing light is seen in the back of its throat and choking, coughing noises are heard while the motorcar speeds away. Granted a reprieve, the passengers eventually “escape” to the ride’s loading and unloading area, where they disembark.’ — Walt Dated World
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The ride
Disneyland version #1
Disneyland version #2
Disneyworld version (1971 – 1998, Track 1)
Disneyworld version (1971 – 1998, Track 2)
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Welcome to Virtual Toad
‘When Walt Disney World announced plans to close Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride in 1998, Spencer Cook of Clearwater, Fla., was among the protesters. But the ride, based on a Disney film version of The Wind in the Willows, was scuttled in favor of one featuring Winnie the Pooh.
‘There’s a large online fandom for “extinct” Disney rides, as reflected by such sites as yesterland.com. Mr. Cook, 37, was not content with simply penning tributes or posting photographs, however. Instead, he recreated the ride itself through 3-D animation. The site included a fully interactive Virtual Toad QTVR Walking Tour, which, as of early 2012, covered roughly 1/5 of the ride, and was scheduled for completion in 2016.
Unfortunately this dream project doesn’t have a happy ending. Cook’s virtual recreation of the infamous WDW Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride was shelved in 2008 indefinitely when he had a kid. What he finished was still up on his site until 2019 and it was pretty easy to see why it inspired so many. Now it’s gone, dead, but here’s hoping that he picks it back up one day.’ — NYT
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The Hidden Mickeys in Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride
‘A Hidden Mickey is a representation of Mickey Mouse that has been inserted subtly into the design of a ride, attraction, or other location in a Disney theme park, Disney properties, movie or other Disney product. The most common Hidden Mickey is a formation of three circles that may be perceived as the silhouette of the head and ears of Mickey Mouse, often referred to by Disney aficionados as a “Classic Mickey”. Over time, the term Hidden Mickey has come to refer to a range of possibilities from a more complete representation of Mickey Mouse (such as Mickey mixed in with a crowd or in the background), or a representation of another character. Mickeys may be painted, made up of objects (such as rocks, or three plates on a table), or be references such as someone wearing Mickey Mouse Club ears in a painting. Hidden Mickeys can take on many sizes and forms.’ — Wiki
In line outside after you pass under an archway, you are facing the carrousel, just after you pass the window/doorway that shows you the inside line, look up, hanging from the corner of the roof is a pinecone looking thing. It’s texture is made up of overlapping circles, and the top row along with one from the 2nd row form a hidden Mickey. It’s pretty easy to see. There is also one hanging near the main door. REPORTED: mathew 27 MAR 99
The Mickey outside the arch on Mr. Toad’s Wild is just a pinecone and is too common to be a Mickey. They can be found all over the park! WISHFUL THINKING: Gregory Holcomb 21 APR 99
Mickey Mouse’s shadow in Toad Hall’s leaded window. In the lobby on the ceiling. REPORTED: Robbie 31 AUG 96 Yup It could be…… CONFIRMED: Ambular & Lauren 04 MAR 97
In the line, if you look up in the rafters right before you go through the turn style, you will notice three red berries in the shape of a Hidden Mickey. REPORTED: Andy & Farrah 30 JAN 97
There are some rafters with berries drawn on them. The rafters are located just after the boarding area of the ride. Look carefully at some of the berries, and some are in groups of 3 and form a Mickey face CONFIRMED: Jack B 13 JUL 98
Outside in line, half way, in the bushes on the left side a Hidden Mickey is cut out of the end of the hedge. REPORTED: KT Baker SHANGO-GRADNIT’97 15 JUN 97
I saw a cut out in a bush by the line in Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. CONFIRMED: Erica 27 OCT 98
In the bush on the left there is really a Hidden Mickey cut out. CONFIRMED: Marla 28 OCT 98
While waiting in line, inside the building, is a picture of Mr. Toad. He is large… and to the right of the cast member sitting down loading the ride. This large painting on the wall shows a Hidden Mickey in Mr. Toad’s face. His eyes look like Mickey’s ears and nose bridge looks like the top of a Mickey “hat”. So I guess this would really be a Hidden Mickey Hat! REPORTED: DP 28 MAR 98
While waiting in line outside, you walk by the large leaded-glass window in front of the ride. The Mr. Toad statue is there, waving. Look above the statue towards the ceiling. There are two curtains arranged in such a manner as to form a Mickey head. The large circular curtain in the middle is the head, and the bunched up curtain to the sides of the head is the ears. When you go inside, look at the curtains from the back. There is no logical reason for that large circular curtain to be hanging there in the middle; in fact, it appears as if the center curtain was added AFTER the side curtains. This is deliberate, and is, in my opinion, a Hidden Mickey. REPORTED: Pianoman 28 OCT 98
While standing in line in the cue, once inside, you pass by a statue of Mr. Toad. Look deep into his eyes… you’ll see two Hidden Mickey’s. They are Mr. Toad’s pupils! REPORTED: Shawnee 07 FEB 06
I was in line for Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride and while I waited I was inside right by the Mr. Toad statue the one by the window and you could touch if you want to, but I was looking at it then I realized I was looking at a Hidden Mickey. If you look in the eyes of the statue, the white highlight in the pupil is painted clear as day as a Hidden Mickey. CONFIRMED: Nick Nygard 21 FEB 06
When you enter Toad hall there is a shield above the door. On the shield there is a car. The has the shape of Mickey’s head. REPORTED: David and Brian MaWhinney 26 APR 98
In the ride, there is a halogram of a Mickey head on the door. You will see the Mickey only in the dusk hours of the day. When you enter the ride you go through a set of doors and then you turn and come back out again. When you turn to go throught the second set of doors as you pass through them look in the lower right hand side of the right door. There in the corner is a small Mickey head put there by the imagineers during construction. This was one of the two that the imagineers placed in the park. I was shown this one from Mickey one of the cast members at the park. Have fun finding this one it is great! REPORTED: Julimo 13 NOV 00
After you pass the toad statue on your left, you will make a u-turn to the right. Just as you get to the turnstile, look at the crew member running the ride. There is a flower bouquet to the right of the crew member. There are three white flowers in the middle of the bouquet in the shape of a Mickey head. REPORTED: TWINS 17 AUG 96 CONFIRMED: FRIENDS 07 SEP 96 LOST: Ambular & Lauren 04 MAR 97
In Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride after you pass through the first room, you enter a small area where there’s a statue of armor that will fall towards you. On each elbow, the armor is shaped like a sideways Mickey head! REPORTED: Sara 24 JUN 02
As the ride starts you can see a shadow of Mickey on either the left or right hand corner of the window. I want to double check this in “Mouse Tales: A Behind-The-Ears Look at Disneyland” because I know it’s a real one. I just wanted to let you know in case you see it before I find it REPORTED: Michael Campisi 10 MAR 96
The Mickey is on the left stained glass window as you go out through the fireplace its in the lower right hand side and painted in a purplish color CONFIRMED: Tod Rees 26 MAY 96 CONFIRMED: Meg 17 JUN 96 CONFIRMED: FRIENDS 07 SEP 96
There is a tiny shadow of Mickey in Toad Hall. You can see him as you burst through the leaded-glass window. He is near the center, close to the sill. CONFIRMED: Maeve C. 01 FEB 97 CONFIRMED: Candace and Eric 07 AUG 98 CONFIRMED: raul bustamante 11 AUG 00
After you pass that falling knight in armor at the beginning you go through a door into a hall of weasels. Its on that door (the left of the 2 swinging doors), in the “glass” part, very bottom left: a perfect shadow profile of that mouse. He’s very faded and small. I was shown it by a cast member after the ride broke and the lights were on. CONFIRMED: bill 14 DEC 00 CONFIRMED: anon 08 OCT 01 CONFIRMED: Jason 27 JAN 02
This is my new favorite Hidden Mickey. I’d been looking and looking for the Mickey on the window at the beginning, and I finally found him. The ride then broke down, and my brother and I had to walk back out the way we came. I was able to take a closer look, and it is awesome! CONFIRMED: Jaycub 11 JUN 02
There is a sillouette of Walt Disney holding or shaking Mickey’s hand. It can only be seen with the aid of a flashlight. REPORTED: CHAR BERTEAUX IV 05 MAY 97
On the second door is a hidden Mickey REPORTED: Cheryl 21 MAR 99
After you go throught the fireplace and then U-turn, there are pictures along both walls…. the second picture on the left side has a hidden Mickey at the top of the picture frame….. it’s upside down. REPORTED: Paul 20 FEB 97
I thought I saw a Mickey in the train headlights just before it runs you down and you go to hell. There is one large light(the head)and two smaller ones above it (the ears). REPORTED: Andrew Johnson 30 NOV 01
On the Fantasyland Mr. Toad Ride there may be a hidden Mickey on the train that is about to hit you. I can’t be sure though. CONFIRMED: Collin Craghead 28 APR 02
If you are standing by Mr.Toads Wild ride, facing Its a Small World, walk slowly towards it and concentrate on the clock. As it opens, peek on the inside of the left door to see a pale outline of Mickey. REPORTED: anon 27 FEB 99
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Hell
‘Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride in Disneyland starts out tame enough. After boarding an early-20th-century automobile, you roll through the halls of an English manor filled with animal characters from The Wind in the Willows. Other stops on your joyride include a farm, a pub, and a TNT factory. Your reckless driving eventually lands you in court, where a judge finds you guilty. It feels like a fitting ending, though a bit of a downer for Disney. But your journey doesn’t stop there. Following the trial, the ride takes a literal and figurative turn onto the tracks of an oncoming train. A crash erupts as the vehicle is enveloped in darkness. In case your fate wasn’t clear enough, your car then enters the mouth of hell. The judge who sentenced you now sports horns and bat wings, and pitch fork-wielding demons dance to his maniacal laughter. Raging flames cast an eerie glow over the dim space. The last thing you see is a dragon behind a stalactite cage preparing to blast fire over you and your fellow passengers. This last section—which has nothing to do with the film that inspired the ride—spans less than 30 seconds, and when you finally emerge into the brightly-lit boarding area you may wonder if you imagined it.’ — Mental Floss
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The movie
Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride (released as The Wind in the Willows in the United Kingdom) is a 1996 British adventure comedy film based on the Disneyland ride, adapted and directed by Terry Jones, and produced by Jake Eberts and John Goldstone. The film stars Terry Jones, Steve Coogan, Eric Idle and Nicol Williamson. It was a box office bomb and had distribution problems in the United States. At the time of the US release, Jones, who was working on a documentary in New York, was told by telephone that the film was being shown in a cinema in Times Square. Jones rushed down to the square only to discover that the cinema was “one of those seedy little porno theatres.”‘ — Quad
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Second to lastly
Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride Trailer
Evacuation from Mr Toad’s Wild Ride
Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride – Source Audio – Toad Hall 1971
Little Big Planet 2: Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride by AaronDBaron
p.s. Hey. ** Jeff Coleman, Hi, Jeff. I’m not there and don’t know the specifics, but, being a logical set of person, I feel like I can say with some authority that those voices are not from people here or probably from anyone other than your imagination? I definitely don’t hate you, au contraire, so you needn’t worry about that. Man, I really hope things get better for you. That sounds really scary. What non-actress were you referring to? Sorry, I’m spacing. The ‘Jerk’ film is surprising excellent. If it’s streaming somewhere else, and I don’t know, I’ll pass the locale along. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Yeah, right? I think you’d need an additional magic power or two to make immortality work properly. What did you get your dad? Are you looking forward to your Hungarian return at all? Have you reached the point where you feel any nostalgia for the place? Love either taking me out for a pizza dinner or making me not want to eat pizza so much, G. ** Ferdinand, Hey, man, good to see you! I will definitely check out the track once I finish this thing. Great, thanks! Everyone, Ferdinand, fine fine creator of artful things and long-time blog d.l. has a treat in store for us, and here he is to explain and point: ‘I recorded this vocal track while fiddling on a old Boss Dr Rhythm drummachine to the beat of “So Alive” by Love and Rockets and somehow it turned into this channeling of Social and Abandonment anxiety or something. Anyway I just uploaded it on youtube in order to share it here, thinking it might resonate with the blog. Please do check it out.’ Take care, sir. ** Jack Skelley, Happy anything, Jacko. Oh, lucky you on the McBride/Acker gig/ assignment. Pray tell or pray hint? And the DeLear too. Jeez, I miss having PRB in my hood, I gotta tell you. I hope and pray that you are a fellow adorer of Mr. Toad’s Disneyland property. Surely. Love infinitized, me. ** _Black_Acrylic, It’s pretty suave, as I recall. ** A, Hey. Okay, I’ll hunt down the King Kong issue. And the trailer. I’m out of the loop. The only Assayas movie I love is ‘Irma Vep’. The others seem hit and miss, but I haven’t seen them all by any means. I haven’t seen ‘Saltburn’ or the Haynes yet. I’m more interested in the former. Okay, inbox me, cool. The film: we’re ready to finish it, we’re just trying to find some funds so we can do that because we have none at the moment. But, yeah, it’ll be complete before very long one way or another. Take care, bud. ** Kyler, I don’t remember my phrasing precisely but I do believe I was just thanking you for the kind words. Charles Ludlam, what a great. I went to his funeral. True sadness. ** Steve Erickson, Definitely. Most of the great older experimental filmmakers basically only get to show their films in galleries and museums at this point, with only Anthology Film Archive and Film Forum in LA and few other places like that otherwise available. I mean, ‘PGL’ was screened in many, many more art contexts than in theaters. It’s a grim situation, but thank goodness the art world is so open. I think avoiding PayPal like the plague is a capital idea. I wish there was another big, popular option. ** Meg Gluth, Hey, Meg! Thanks. Yeah, we’re going to get the film finished for absolutely sure, and soon. We’re immensely happy with it and confident about it, and we’re fighting to get it to the finish line without a second thought. I will tell Zac hey and pass along your kind offer. Again, really excited to see what you and Oscar conjure together. Collaboration with a likemind is so great, isn’t it. So percolative, even though I guess that’s not a word. I’m blown away that I found that with Zac. Love, me. ** Marcus Whale, Hey, cool, thanks for coming back. Excellent about ‘Ecstacy’. I’ll be very excited to hear it as soon as it’s real. I will go straight to the last track on the Jute Gyte album. Sounds very needed. Stephen O is a good pal of mine, and even I was blindsided by the Khanate release. Best of the best to you. ** Misanthrope, Air is underrated. Well, I guess it’s highly rated, but maybe it doesn’t get actual verbal thanks enough. Cool about your mom’s successful b’day. Yikes on the labyrinthine mishap with the laptop. I don’t have health insurance either. I really, really need to get some. Procrastination at its stupidest. ** Darby 🎁💝, Yep, Marcus’s avatar — do they still call them that? — did a good thing to my eyes as well. I believe you about calisthenics. I used to (have to) do them in high school, and no complaints. I used to do yoga for years, but I got bored. My internet is too slow at this very moment for some reason to look at that video, but I will as soon as it’s up to speed. Yes, you have the story of the aptitude test precisely correct. Maryville? No, never heard of it. I’ll look it up, though. Um, I don’t think I knew anyone who had a lobotomy. Did I? No, I don’t think so. I knew some people who had really serious shock treatments. Which didn’t help them unless I’m forgetting. I got the humor in that guy’s statement. You prose translated it into an entertainment. I hope your year continues to pan out marvellously, and that I’ll get to hear all about that. That’s a nice NMH quote right there. ** Okay. Today I’m being quite self-indulgent by restoring a very old post that tells you more than you ever wanted to know about the sublime and massively influential amusement park attraction Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, my favorite amusement park attraction of all time, and now you all just have to find a way to enjoy the post or get around it somehow. And I will see you tomorrow.
‘Isaac Julien’s studio is his editing suite. “My toolbox is my computer,” smiles the genial artist, a Turner-Prize nominee in 2001. Julien makes complex three-screen video installations that are the products of months of work by teams of people; the latest, True North, cost around $500,000 to make.
‘True North and its companion piece, Fantôme Afrique, are on show at the Victoria Miro Gallery, London. They turn the gallery’s upper rooms into two halls of flickering celluloid: one sun-soaked with scenes of Burkina Faso, the other saturated in the ice-blue of Scandinavian snowscapes.
‘Enveloping sound effects pulse and beat their way through the films, rising to fever pitch, then melting away. These are intoxicating, dreamlike works – two parts of a trilogy Julien is making about voyaging – that meditate on cultural mixing. Fantôme Afrique contains a particularly surreal and beautiful ruined building rising out of the desert: it looks like a church but is actually a mosque, a poetic symbol of the futility of man’s constructed divisions.
‘It all seems a long way from the harsh realities of the Bow council estate where the artist grew up in the 1960s, his parents immigrants from St Lucia. And indeed, in the first decades of adult life, more literal and conventional filmmaking was Julien’s chosen form of artistic expression. After training at St Martin’s School of Art, he made his name with his documentary on the 1920s black American poet Langston Hughes, Looking for Langston, and the feature film on urban British blacks Young Soul Rebels, which won the critic’s prize at Cannes in 1991.
‘The 1980s had been a fertile time for nascent black, British cinema, of which Julien was a leading light. The young Channel 4 was committed to funding films on and for minority groups, and the uprisings of inner-city blacks in 1981 made it a pressing concern. There was an urgency to what’s been described as “making the crisis speak”. Further, Julien was gay: the crisis, for him, included the campaigns against Section 28 and the unequal age of consent. His early preoccupations – race relations and homosexual love – were firmly set out.
‘Now, however, explains Julien in his soft, measured tones, the agenda has shifted. “My older films were concerned with identity issues because those were what were affecting me. But those subjects don’t have the same register today. My new work responds to the crisis of globalisation. We live in a world where, because of digitalisation, because of the communication revolution, we’re becoming much more aware of things beyond ourselves. The question of geography has become a central theme.”
‘As Julien’s concerns have broadened, so he has moved from the cinema to the art gallery context. Since 1993 he has worked on single-, double-, and triple-screen film pieces that continue to use race as the prism through which he interrogates the world, but where his stories are open-ended, multi-referential.
‘A recent example is the fantastical Baltimore, a film set in three Baltimore museums. In one scene effigies from the city’s Great Blacks in Wax Museum stand amongst the Old Masters from the Walters Art Museum. Martin Luther King and Billie Holiday meet El Greco and Raphael in a comic culture clash. It’s something the film world would never have funded. “The Film Council doesn’t even think that art cinema should exist in Britain,” says Julien. He jumped ship to the art world in search of artistic freedom. “Film, here, is still quite structured round the idea of entertainment and the linear progression of a storyline, which means you don’t have a lot of control. Artistic creativity is not prioritised in the same way it is in an art gallery. Besides, the art world is so much sexier than cinema these days.”
‘Julien’s work divides the critics, a by-product, he believes, of his controversial subject matter. Despite its entrancing beauty, True North will be stirring up debate because it suggests that it was a black man, Matthew Henson, who reached the North Pole first in 1909, not Robert E Peary, as received history has it.
‘And next on the agenda is a piece Julien describes as “about the migration of people who never really reach the end of their journey”. The African bodies found washed up on the coasts of Spain provide one instance, the drowned Morecambe Bay Chinese cockle-pickers another.
‘So, in a way, Julien has left his roots behind, but in another he keeps returning. His parents’ migration defined his early experience of the world – now he examines the movements of others across the globe.
‘From the streets of the East End to the wastes of the North Pole, what he calls the “transnational subject” continues to fascinate him – and provide him with one of the most potent, pertinent themes available to the contemporary artist.’ — Serena Davies
Martina Kudláček I have the diary notes you made during the Small Boats shoot, as well as a few still photographs from the set. There is one mesmerizing image of a woman in the ballroom in the magnificent Palazzo Gangi: your main character, Adriana, played by the actress Vanessa Myrie. You have worked with Vanessa for years: She’s the protagonist in all three films in the Cast No Shadow trilogy, and she was in Baltimore.
Isaac Julien I’m very interested in the idea of working with characters as models, characters taken from life. Robert Bresson, the French filmmaker and writer, spoke about the idea of using non-actors, and I’ve been utilizing Vanessa as a character who builds over the series of films. When we see Cast No Shadow at BAM this fall, it will be quite interesting to see how that character, being in all three films, will get read. I’m attracted to the idea of a certain intertextuality, the way in which a character from one film gets quoted into another.
MK She’s almost transcending space; she’s the key, this model, in the Bressonian sense of the word, who goes from one filmic space to another.
IJ That’s right, and when it comes to the theatrical version of Cast No Shadow, she’ll actually be on the stage as well. She will break through the fourth wall, escaping the boundaries of the filmic space to enter an actual performance space. That idea was developed out of a conversation in the journal October between Silvia Kolbowski and Manthia Diawara, who talked about the ways in which characters get quoted from one film to another. Diawara was talking about characters embodying a certain trans-textural quality: “the movement of cultural styles from character to character in film: hybridity, multiple subject positions. As opposed to this, immanence is the trapping of a cultural role in a character.” I was very interested in appropriating that quality that stars might bring from one movie into another, and seeing how that works in an art space. It was an experiment, if you like. Another filmmaker, Derek Jarman, has worked with Tilda Swinton across several films in this sense. In fact I am working with Tilda Swinton on a film about Derek Jarman, a strange kind of biopic about his life. So the influence of both Jarman and Bresson has had a clear impact on my thinking about performance. That’s why I dislike the fact that the Vanessa Myrie character has been cited as just my muse. She’s a character that embodies many signs. For instance, in Small Boats her character is Adriana, whose name comes from the mythical character (the Adriatic Sea is named after her), but she is also a stand-in for a particular survivor of what is referred to as the “Sicilian holocaust,” a woman we interviewed while researching the piece. She was one of the sole survivors of a boat tragedy in which more than 90 people were lost to the sea trying to get into Sicily from Libya. I see Vanessa’s character as an amalgam of sorts, in a cinematic sense. There is an indexical aspect to her character for me. She is of course very beautiful in a “queer” sense. Perhaps a more “natural” or rougher-looking character might better suit some folks. But then they might be looking for a more documentary approach to the subject, and they should be looking at a TV program for that sort of realism. But in terms of realism, there are some very tough things happening along the Mediterranean coast that have instigated the making of Small Boats. Dead bodies washing up on the coast, interrupting holiday suntanning on the beach . . . It’s the clash of the two activities that forms a disturbing geography of this space. Historically, though, the Mediterranean is a space of transition between Europe and Africa.
MK I didn’t want to say muse, but you said it.
IJ I try to circumnavigate that reading because it trivializes the ways in which I might be working with her in the trilogy. A muse is, to my mind, a vehicle; a certain expediency would be in use, or fascination or obsession, or something not terribly serious. But there’s something quite serious about Vanessa’s usage in the trilogy. She is always a sort of witness. She’s “miming” a character like Matthew Henson from True North, but in modern day; or she is a cyborg in Baltimore; or she is a sort of Walter Benjamin–like character, an angel of history, in Fantôme Afrique. There is this transcendental aspect that I’m interested in exploring in relation to her characters. Trespassing from one location or film into another, she represents the cosmopolitan subject transversing different locations like a nomad. I have spoken elsewhere about how we might think of a “migratory aesthetic” representing the flow of capital or the movement of bodies …
MK I wonder, in the context you were just talking about, using models, what is Vanessa Myrie’s background? Is she a non-actress, innocent in the Bresson sense? He writes in his “Notes on the Cinematographer”: “No actors. (No directing of actors.) No parts. (No learning of parts.) No staging. But the use of working models, taken from life, being (models) instead of seeming (actors).”
IJ Bresson is referring to the idea of the performance as something that could be accessed from the everyday, that there’s a certain capacity for anyone to be in a film and to be directed. He’s using the idea of non-acting as a way of critiquing that aura of performance. This is something that I’ve been really interested in developing for some time, and that extends to Small Boats. We worked with a group of clandestines, immigrants, in Palermo for scenes in which we were filming their journey in the sea, and some people refer to Vanessa’s being kind of model-like, as in a Vogue-type model, but I’m very interested in the idea of querying that. With her there’s a definite idea of gender performativity or queering of gender, which are codes to be tampered with as well.
MK There’s a certain hybridity to her.
IJ There is. There’s a gender-question aspect, and I’m attracted to her powerful and unusual appearance; there’s a certain otherness to her look. A female-masculinity. It’s something that’s developed from her cyborg character in Baltimore. In most of the works she has that male-female aspect, which I am parodying and developing. You can never tell books by their covers. In my work nothing is as it seems.
MK This photograph in the ballroom has so many other associations as well—
IJ Of course, that ballroom is the main space where the [Luchino] Visconti film The Leopard [1963] takes place, which is a very famous, very long scene [in which the prince hosts a celebration for his upstart nephew and the nephew’s commoner fiancée, symbolizing the end of the old order]. There’s a signifying of that film and the use of that location in Small Boats. The Visconti Leopard was about Italian unification between north and south, between Sicilian society and Italian society, which are two distinct societies, and also about the decline of the Sicilian aristocratic classes. [The film is adapted from the 1958 novel The Leopard by Giuseppe di Lampedusa, himself a prince.] So I was very interested in occupying that space in the 21st century as a way of commenting on the ways in which Sicilian society has changed, Sicily being a place that’s got a long history of migration built into it—including the migration of Sicilians to America, and the Ottoman Empire invading Europe from this point.
MK The prince, the main character in The Leopard, is in a time of transition. There’s one famous quote where he says, “The middle class doesn’t want to destroy us, they simply want to take our places very gently.” There is a necessary change, accompanied by a loss as well. In political terms it seems that the industrialized countries feel their privileges threatened. Does the prince in the Visconti film play a role in your piece? At an earlier stage, you called this piece Small Boats/Better Life: were you thinking about a revolution for a better life?
IJSmall Boats is really about the so-called clandestine immigrants who have been coming by the thousands to places like Sicily and islands like Lampedusa for some time, and of course they are looking for work, but someone has to pay for Italy’s pensions or do jobs that Europeans don’t want to do, whether they are working illegally or not. There’s this transitional moment in The Leopard, and I’m very interested in this other transitional moment, which is the contemporaneous moment in Sicilian society. The subtitle Better Life was ironic. Many people who seek a better life on their way to Sicily end up having that better life in heaven, so to speak. They are fallen angels in Walter Benjamin’s sense. So there’s a slight ironic placement with the Vanessa Myrie character, but also in the piece itself there’s something oscillating in these spaces and locations and one is not quite sure what that is. In an article that RoseLee Goldberg wrote recently, she discussed the fact that I purposely cover up my tracks to the trajectories of my research to produce something else. So perhaps one is producing a piece where certain tensions will lie that suddenly pop up unexpectedly to the surface, creating something unfamiliar. The fantastic space of the Palazzo Gangi is a cinematic reference that allows me to relocate these questions that I think need to be re-articulated today in Sicilian society, and indeed in relationship to the world’s general perception to questions of people moving from one location to another, which I think is seen in fairly negative terms in Europe.
MK Do you follow a detailed script, or try to maintain an open form with room for improvisation? The locations are so charged with history and visually compelling in cinematic terms—
IJ There’s not always a script, but there’s always a lot of research. We’ve been researching Small Boats for the past three or four years, and in that sense even though there is a script, there’s very specific imagery that I want to construct: I mine the news reports for images that I make into tableaux vivants, such as a scene from a newspaper photograph of corpses wrapped in silver foil on a beach. So there is a certain reading of the archive through the actual landscapes and reconstructions that I make. But you’re absolutely right in saying that the actual locations do resonate.
MK You’re making notes during the research, sketching out a score that could be compared to a music or dance work—a sort of notation?
IJ Yeah. We’re thinking about shooting something, thinking about the structure of something visually, that perhaps resembles a musical score. The structuring motif is much closer to the structure of musical notational sequences than a strict narrative.
MK For Bresson, cinematography is the higher function of cinema, and your work is highly crafted in terms of aesthetics. You have such a strong cinematic vision. Let’s talk about your collaboration with your camerawoman, Nina Kellgren, with whom you have worked for 20 years. She first made Looking for Langston in 1989 with you. How do you prepare your shots? They are so exquisite, and so strongly felt and seen.
IJ One of the problems with cinema is that it has forgotten that it is an art form. In Britain, in fact, they hate it, and that’s why one has had to return to the space of art to remember it. We don’t really have art cinema in Britain. Nowadays film is thought of as a skill to be honed for getting Oscars. The art cinema got killed off after Derek Jarman’s death in 1994. That’s been one of the reasons, at least in the English context, that art became, I would say, obsessed with cinema in the mid-’90s and that we’ve produced video artists like Douglas Gordon or Steve McQueen, or the Wilson twins. It’s been the space of art where we’ve been able to give back attention to making pictures.
Nina Kellgren has been interested in foregrounding the language of pictures, and we’ve been able to make interventions into television and into film in a more classical sense, and now that has shifted into art. In a couple of days I’m going to be attending a forum for documentaries called Britdocs, and this year the theme is “the art of documentary.” One of its bylines is that documentary filmmakers have a lot to learn from artists. So thinking about the ways in which the art of filmmaking has gotten lost has united Nina Kellgren and myself over the years in our practices.
MK It is great that you have such continuity in your collaboration with her. How did you two meet?
IJ She was a co-cinematographer of a film I made in 1986 called The Passion of Remembrance. That’s a film that we both feel slightly ambivalent about. The project where we really utilized our interests was Looking for Langston. That film was admired for its cinematography; even cinematographers like Ellen Kuras were very enthusiastic about it. Looking for Langston represented a pivotal point: For us it was all about how to create the space to secure that way of thinking about images. These days when she’s not working with me, Nina is a feature film cinematographer and also works in advertising, which is also a space that’s very attracted to the idea of making images. Of course they’re images to sell something, but the line between art and advertising has always been blurry in Europe, where the two slip in and out of one another quite often.
MK You started out using film equipment and film stock, which has different aesthetics from digital video.
IJ Yes, and even though the digital medium works very well for some scenarios, for how I like to film, which is on location using landscapes, film is much more flexible. Film has a painterly quality; it’s immensely elastic in that it can cope with quite contrasting scenarios. I probably do have a bias toward film as a material, and although in the end one usually shows the works in a digital medium, it’s quite interesting to think about things originating in the medium of film and then being digitally worked on. I have been doing that since 1993, when I made The Attendant.
MK Digital video also gives the liberation of moving around with a handheld camera, working with available light; it’s a different approach. The British filmmaker Mike Figgis [shoots in digital and] talks about having happily regained the freedom of improvising with the actors, being flexible.
IJ Yeah, it’s completely liberating in those terms. It’s really about what you want to film, and how you want to film it.
MK Some of your work is made to be seen in the movie theater space, but you are now moving into other spaces, with your installations, to give the audience a visual experience in a museum or gallery. How do you approach the fact that the audience is not sitting still in front of the screen, like in a movie theater, but are walking around? In the work you’re now planning, you have chosen the form of a triptych.
IJ I still have a commitment to people being part of a cinematic experience. At the same time, what we see in that context is quite restrictive, I’d say, unless you’re in Paris. I’ve been working with the audience’s active relationship to the image for quite a long time, since 1999, so I’m really excited about my gallery show in New York this fall, at Metro Pictures. Going from three screens to six or seven, which is how many I’ll have in that installation, entails a shift between the cinematic and the conceptual. I’m interested in the translation of the cinematic into another context. The interdisciplinarity of my practice becomes extrapolated into another arena when it’s in the theater. When Cast No Shadow shows at BAM in November, for instance, that will be its connection with live performance, with dance. It’s about trying to make work where in one instance the audience might be stationary but in another it’s part of the spectator’s movement that also makes the work. I’ve been specifically interested in that since my show at the Pompidou in 2005, with Fantôme Creole, but I’m very excited about what I want to develop in the gallery space. It’s keeping the idea of experimentation alive that attracts me to making work in an art context. It’s an exciting challenge.
____________ 16 of Isaac Julien’s 27 films & installations
________ Territories (1984) ‘Isaac Julien’s Territories uses experimental forms to look at life in Britain in 1984, focusing on the experience of the Black British. The film recognises that the different power dynamics that determine this experience are difficult to reduce to straightforward explanations and instead uses the term ‘territories’ to reflect the multiple agendas and experiences at work. These agendas – or ‘territories’ – involve race, class and sexuality. The film explores these ideas in different ways. In part one it considers the example of carnival, noting how mainstream culture reduces this complex cultural event by labeling it as a remainder or reminder of an ancient retrogressive custom. Julien’s film instead suggests that carnival provides an opportunity for the issues of race and class to be worked through and explored by the carnival participants on each and every occasion. This point is illustrated with a brief history of the Notting Hill Carnival, including a series of police clashes in the carnivals of 1976 and in the year of the film’s production. Another example is the implementation of compulsory police passes for carnival-goers – here ideological restrictions are turned into physical limitations.’— BFI
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_____________ Looking for Langston (1989) ‘For Julien, the central question within the film was how to portray Langston Hughes as a cultural icon and, in terms of dealing with a repressed gay desire. He explores the ambiguous sexual subtexts of a period of rich artistic expression, and the enduring cultural significance of these pioneers’ work. Julien mediates with a cheerful perspective on Langston Hughes coming out. The exhibition shows a juxtapose between the past and the present. The Harlem Renaissance was a flowering of African-American social thought that was expressed through the arts in the 20s. Extracts from Hughes’ poetry is interwoven with the work of cultural figures from the 1920s and beyond, including black poets Essex Hemphill and Bruce Nugent, constructing a lyrical and multilayered narrative. An interesting aspect of Looking for Langston is the controversy surrounding it. Though Julien contrasts the present with this elegant past – the voiceover references the ravages of AIDS which were at its height during filming – the work showcases a serious comment evaporated in its hazy look. Isaac Julien: “The most interesting question for me proved to be: what did black artists actually want to say? What would their art look like if its internal dialogues were made accessible to a wider audience? ‘Looking for Langston’ came out of just such a conversation, one connected to black gay desire and to photography. But it was really born of thinking about the textuality that belongs to the innermost life of one’s consciousness.”‘— Wall Street International
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_____________ Young Soul Rebels (1991) ‘In his first narrative feature film, Young Soul Rebels (1991), director Isaac Julien aimed to champion “black independent cinema which deals with questions of sexuality, gender and national identity”. But too often, the script (co-written with Paul Hallam and Derrick Saldaan McClintock) uses its characters’ relationships to make political points, a serious mistake in a thriller, a genre that relies on cause-and-effect rules. The film raises several questions that it fails to answer. Why does the murdered boy TJ not know his killer, while his childhood friends Caz and Chris turn out to know him well? Why would anyone venturing into the furtive world of illegal and anonymous sex bring a ghetto blaster? Why is Cas, who seems so confident of his sexuality, so tortured by his feelings for Chris, TJ and Billy? Why does a black soul boy fall for a white punk rocker? Julien is undoubtedly a serious artist, as his recent Turner Prize nomination attests, and he captures the colour palette of the period perfectly; sun bleached summer is evoked through the washed out greens of park grass and the vivid costume choices. But too many themes are packed into the film. London in 1977 is recreated on a broad canvas, but although Socialist Worker was sold on almost every street corner, pirate radios stations were set up and raided regularly, punks, soul heads, skinheads and glam rockers didn’t mix anything like as much as Julien would have us believe.’— BFI
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_______________ The Attendant (1993) ‘The Attendant is actually set in a museum: Wilberforce House in Hull, England, which is devoted to the history of slavery. It’s a real place, though in Mr. Julien’s hands it looks surreal. The plot revolves around sexual fantasies aroused in a middle-aged black male museum guard — or attendant — by a young white male visitor. Much of the action takes place after closing time. As the guard paces the galleries, a huge 19th-century painting titled “Slaves on the West Coast of Africa”, by the French artist François-Auguste Biard, comes to life, its melodramatic scene of a white master bending over a dying black slave transformed into an up-to-date, leather clad sadomasochistic grouping.’ — TTV
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______________ Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask (1995) ‘“Frantz Fanon: Black Skin, White Mask” explores the pre-eminent theorist of the anti-colonial movements of this century. Fanon’s two major works, “Black Skin, White Masks” and “The Wretched of the Earth,” were pioneering studies of the psychological impact of racism on both colonized and colonizer. This innovative film biography restores Fanon to his rightful place at the center of contemporary discussions around post-colonial identity. Isaac Julien, the celebrated black British director of such provocative films as “Looking for Langston” and “Young Soul Rebels,” integrates the facts of Fanon’s brief but remarkably eventful life with his long and tortuous inner journey. Julien elegantly weaves together interviews with family members and friends, documentary footage, readings from Fanon’s work, and dramatizations of crucial moments in Fanon’s life. Cultural critics Stuart Hall and Françoise Verges position Fanon’s work in his own time and draw out its implications for our own. The Guardian writes: “There is artistry in abundance in Isaac Julien’s singularly ambitious portrait…. He does justice to the complexity of his intriguing subject.”‘— Cinema St. Louis
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FRANTZ FANON: BLACK SKIN WHITE MASK Q&A | BFI
______________ Paradise Omeros (2003) ‘Paradise Omeros was much celebrated at last year’s Documenta 11 in Kassel, Germany and has its UK premiere at the Edinburgh Festival this summer. The installation delves into the fantasies and feelings of “creoleness” – the mixed language, the hybrid mental states and the territorial transpositions that arise when one lives in multiple cultures. Using the recurrent imagery of the sea, the film sweeps the viewer into a poetic meditation on the ebb and flow of self and stranger, love and hate, war and peace, xenophobe and xenophile. Paradise Omeros is set in London in the 60s and on the Caribbean island of St Lucia today and is loosely based on some of Derek Walcott’s poems from Omeros. The Nobel prize winning poet Derek Walcott and the musician and composer Paul Gladstone Reid collaborated with Julien on the text and score for the film. Paradise Omeros is co-scripted by Isaac Julien and Grischa Duncker.’— Victoria Miro Gallery
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______________ Baadasssss Cinema (2002) ‘In this groundbreaking documentary from the Independent Film Channel, filmmaker Isaac Julien takes us back to the early 70s and the explosion of blaxploitation films, today one of American cinema’s most beloved cult genres. Featuring a wealth of footage from such classic films as Superfly and Shaft, and interviews with such key players as Richard Roundtree, Quentin Tarantino, and Pam Grier, BaadAsssss Cinema gets to the bottom of exactly what helped the blaxploitation genre achieve its revered cult status.’— Docurama
the entire film
______________ Shaking the Tree (2004) ‘Isaac Julien’s direction of Peter Gabriel’s music video “Shaking The Tree” is riotously beautiful, the embodiment of Gabriel’s continuing interest in the natural elements, a theme so often present in his lyrics.’— Eye for Film
the entire film
______________ True North (2006) ‘Northern oceans and frozen glaciers collide in the still winter of the bright and brutal Arctic North. Untitled (True North) was developed alongside Julien’s 2004 sound-and-video installation, which would eventually become the first part of a three-part evening-length performance Cast No Shadow, a Performa Commission for 2007. True North is based on the story of Matthew Henson, a largely forgotten black engineer who was one of the first individuals to reach the North Pole. Illuminating issues of race, gender, and globalization, this photograph depicts actress Vanessa Myrie, the heroine of Julien’s narrative, who acts as a stand-in for Henson. Her poised, graceful, feminine presence is in stark contrast to the notions of masculinity associated with Arctic exploration.’ — Artspace
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_____________ Derek (2008) ‘In voiceover, Derek Jarman’s friend and collaborator Tilda Swinton begins reading ‘Letter to an Angel’, a haunting and beguiling text she wrote in 2002. By then Jarman, one of Britain’s best–loved and most original artists, had been dead for eight years. An honest and previously unseen interview, shot in 1991 with Jarman in the shadow of his impending death, is the core of the film. Both letter and interview are intricately interwoven with rarely seen home-movie footage of Derek and his family, archive material, excerpts from Jarman’s feature films, pop promos, super-8 work, and new footage of Tilda Swinton in Dungeness and London and the director Isaac Julien exploring the Jarman archive.’— Flamin’ Film
IJ introduces ‘Derek’
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_____________ The Leopard (2007) ‘“The Leopard” is the single-screen version of Julien’s “Western Union: Small Boats” series. The film combines clandestine African immigrants and myths from the past and tells a tale of failed hopes and dreams of modernity. “The Leopard” is a reflection on migration and a better life. The film takes its title and visual starting point from famous Italian producer Visconti’s masterpiece, “The Leopard.” Julien uses the decors Visconti previously used and the environments he shot in his movie to tell his story. The Visconti Leopard was about Italian unification between north and south, between Sicilian society and Italian society, which are two distinct societies. Julien’s film features the notion of migration and the tragic stories it contains by using the environments used in the Visconti Leopard to articulate a subject that is also on the agenda in the 21st century, such as dead bodies washing up on the coast, interrupting the usual holiday activities on the beach.’— Hürriyet Daily News
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Isaac Julien on ‘The Leopard’
_____________ Better life (2012) ‘Julien’s Better Life is the haunting single-screen version of the nine-channel installation Ten Thousand Waves, which premiered at the 17th Biennale of Sydney in 2010. The film and photographs poetically weave together rich imagery of the cold northwest coast of England, the bustling rush hour of Shanghai, and the lush landscape of rural China. The original inspiration for Ten Thousand Waves was the Morecambe Bay tragedy of 2004, in which 23 Chinese cockle-pickers died in Northern England. In response to this event, Julien commissioned the poet Wang Ping to write Small Boats a poem that is recited in the film. In successive years, Julien spent time in China slowly coming to understand the country and developing relationships that have enabled him to undertake the rich and multifaceted work. Through conversations with academics, curators, and artists, Julien uncovered a symbolic body of material to create a work that explores modern and traditional Chinese values and superstitions. These are encapsulated in a fable from Fujian Province (where the Morecambe Bay cockle-pickers originated) which relates the story of sixteenth-century fishermen lost and in danger at sea. At the heart of the legend is the goddess figure who leads the fishermen to safety. The audio and visuals of the rescue operation at Morecambe Bay ground the film in a haunting documentary reality.’— Roslyn Oxley Gallery
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_____________ Playtime (2014) ‘The city rears up around us, lit windows against the night, the corporate buildings blocking the sky. In an all-white empty office, a hedge-fund manager plays a lonesome trumpet. A skittering drum kicks in, adding an urgent pulse. The pulse is money: capital at work. Ranks of computers and servers churn the numbers in a sub-basement world where the capital flows. In an auction room, prices are spiralling. Actor James Franco, playing an art adviser, explains how art has become a hedge against money’s instability. The price of art has nothing to do with the art itself. In another scene, auctioneer Simon de Pury explains the exponential rise of the art market since the 2008 financial crash. Superstitious, he always eats an apple for good luck before working the auction room with his gavel and his wit. And after an auction, he’s always depressed. In Dubai, an isolated Filipina woman, who came here to work as a maid, dusts a desk and stands in an empty desert, a world away from where she sends her money home. Trading-room floors, offices and galleries and auction rooms; the desert, Iceland’s lava fields and steaming vents and an artist’s abandoned fantasy home are the settings in Playtime, Isaac Julien’s new seven-screen film installation. Playtime’s title is borrowed from Jacques Tati’s 1967 movie, and like Tati’s film moves through a series of interconnected stories. While the original Playtime had Monsieur Hulot as its hapless protagonist, here capital is the star, the thread that runs through everything. You can’t see it but you know it’s there. Capital is the ultimate MacGuffin.’— Adrian Searle
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_____________ Stones Against Diamonds (Ice Cave) (2016) ‘Stones Against Diamonds was shot in Breidamerkurjokull, which is part of Vatnajokull Glacier, the biggest glacier in Europe, and in Jökulsárlón beach. The ice cave can be read as a metaphor of the unconscious, a place of rich beauty but difficult to access, except through the processes of psychoanalysis and artistic reflection. By inserting some of Lina Bo Bardi’s emblematic architectural elements into the cave, such as the iconic staircase and glass easels, I intended to make a connection between the simplicity of forms that was one of Bo Bardi’s signatures and the organic forms of rocks and carved glacial ice. Besides, the character played by Vanessa Myrie wanders around the ice cave inviting us on a journey through a symbolic landscape of glaciers, rocks and black volcanic sand, all glistening like diamonds. This reminds us not only of the earth’s fragility – the melting of the glacier that carves out these caves – but also that some of the most beautiful objects are the least precious in a conventional sense. Lina Bo Bardi made these aspects of fragility and preciousness visible both through her architecture as well as her deep interest in Brazilian indigenous and popular cultures.’— Isaac Julien
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IJ on ‘Stones Against Diamonds’
________________ Lina Bo Bardi – A Marvellous Entanglement (2019) ‘The multiple screen installation and photographic series A Marvellous Entanglement (2019) traverses a collection of Lina Bo Bardi’s most iconic buildings, offering a meditation on the work and legacy of the visionary modernist architect and designer (1914–1992).’— ARTISHOCK REVISTA
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______________ Lessons of the Hour (2019) ‘This major new ten-screen film installation by celebrated British artist Isaac Julien, CBE, RA, offered a poetic meditation on the life and times of Frederick Douglass, the visionary African American orator, philosopher, intellectual, and self-liberated freedom-fighter, who was born into slavery in Maryland, USA. From 1845-7, Douglass made repeated visits to Edinburgh, while campaigning across the UK and Ireland against US slavery.
‘Filmed at sites in Edinburgh, London and Washington DC, Julien’s work is informed by some of Douglass’ most important speeches, including Lessons of the Hour, What to the Slave is the 4th of July? and Lecture on Pictures. In this 1861 lecture, Douglass, who as the most photographed American in the 19th century was keenly alert to the power of images, expressed his vision of how picture-making and photography could offer powerful tools in the fight for social justice and equal human rights for all.’— National Galleries
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p.s. Hey. ** _Black_Acrylic, No, the ‘Godzilla’ is quite fun. Thank you for your list. I still need to get the Actress. Noted. ** Zak Ferguson, Hey there. Thanks, man. Well, of course your and Mr. S’s book made the list. I ain’t no fool. I’ll look for Fran Lock, thank you. Tom Robbins! I haven’t thought about him in ages. I like Harold Jaffe. I need to catch up on his recent stuff. You’re doing a thing on me? Whoa, thanks, humbled. Ha ha, I won’t sue you. I don’t think of myself as owning myself. Thank you again, and all respect to you. ** Jack Skelley, ‘Mine’ = mine, that’s interesting. Man, words, what great friends they make. Yes, the Karina Bush, I saw your message and I’m gonna get on that. Everyone, A couple of years ago Mr. Jack Skelley made a post for this blog about Karina Bush’s ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution Slut’, here, and now I begin to quote Mr. Skelley … ‘It was a preview of Karina’s sickass poli-sexual novel. Well, she has now completed her opus and is streaming it free. Rendered in AI. Here. Oops, I just discovered while making that link that her opus is not viewable in France, so I guess I’ll have to wait for my next US visit to peep at it. Dang. Love, me. ** Tosh Berman, Thank you, sir. ** Dave Ehrlich, Wait, are you the Dave Ehrlich who’s my old friend who I sadly haven’t seen in ages? If so, whoa, hi, man, so amazing to see you! If not, apologies for mistaking who you are. But I think you’re you. No, I don’t know EXEK, but I will go download it today, given your ever impeccable tastes. Wow, so good and wild to have you here. How are you? ** Sypha, Hey. I still haven’t started ‘The Shards’. Otherwise I’m pretty sure it would have been there. I leant my copy to Zac, and I need to get it back. Golnoosh had a new book this year? How did I miss that. Shit, I have to grab that ultra fast. I guess I need to try that Olivia Rodrigo since everyone seems so high on it. Thanks, pal. ** Steven Purtill, Hi, Steven! Thank you again for your wake up call/message. I think I missed out on the Sotos/AS stuff, drat. Right, ‘Teenage Satanists’, duh. Hm, I wonder what category that would go in. Awesome, thank you for your faves. Have an amazing Xmas if such a thing is possible. xo, me. ** fervorxo, Hey! No, thank you. I’m so happy you’re watching Hollis Frampton’s films. Your comments here are always invaluable and stick squarely in my craw. It’s true, I haven’t even thought to hear the new 100 gecs, and that’s dumbass. I will, thanks. Or Ellen Arkbro. Again, I will rush over to that. Really great list. Very rich. I have a Harry Mathews post coming up in a couple of days. Lovely to see you. I hope you’re doing incredibly great. ** Darby 🐘🐘, How did the outing go? My neighbor who likes to blast such miserable things such as the Eagles has yet to fixate on Taylor Swift. But I watched her film. That was enough. Yeah, the 24 hour time delay in conversations here encourages spew, and I don’t see that as a downside at all actually. A book too? Well, I mean, yeah, of course! I just bowed, wait, *bow”. ** Kyler, Well, no, thank you, obviously. I’ll get to ‘The Shards’, of course, just extremely late. Vociferous cheers right back at you. ** Cori D, Hi, Cori! It’s really nice to meet you. Thank you a lot for entering. For some reason, I hardly saw any theater this year. I usually do see a fair amount. Honestly, the full time work on the film has really drastically messed up my viewing habits. You especially like plays/theater? Did you see anything(s) that especially knocked you out? Very nice lists. I don’t know Andrew Lawlor, I’ll find that. I saw ‘LA Plays Itself’ in an actual porn movie theater in the early 80s back when there were porn movie theaters, but I haven’t seen it since. I’ll rewatch it. I’ve been curious about ‘Saltburn’. Well, thank you again. Obviously, hang out if and whenever you want. I’d be into hearing about you and what you do and stuff if you feel like it. ** politekid, Hi, O! I think it’s safe to say your list’s seismic aspect made mine seem like a milk-fed puppy as they used to say. The Killian only wasn’t on my list because I spaced and also because it was reprint, and I think that status distracted me. But, yes, Pilot Press is amazing. A lot of stuff on yours that I don’t know (yet). I just copied and pasted the whole shebang in a TextEdit file. Right, the McKenzie Wark, that should have been in my list. I really need to try that ANOHNI album. I’m kind of tired of their voice, but I should get over that. Dude, really, your list is insane. I’m going to be plucking things from it for, like, ages. (I think I’ll start with MyHouse.wad). I miss gaming so much. Thank you, I so appreciate it. Big love, me. ** Steve Erickson, I look forward to your final film list. Yes, I have The Wire’s list. It’s curiously a little less experimental-only this year, which interests me. Its #1 is the Yo La Tengo album, for instance. Y Pants: I’ll find them. Gotcha on the Danny Brown, but there was something about it that seduced me. ** Joe, Hey, Joe! So sweet to see you here! ‘Heat Death 1’ is mind-bogglingly great! I was saying the other day that I’ve given up on Paypal. They won’t let me use it due some glitch on their end that they apparently have no interest in fixing. So sorry about the accident. I hope you’re not too laid up. Your brain and fingers seem fine, thank godfully. Super happiest Xmas whatever the fuck that means ‘cos I don’t know even although I do inexplicably think Xmas should be especially happy. xo, Dennis. ** A, Hey! I wish I could have seen you scream. And maybe even heard you scream, but seeing it would have been the best part. Well, of course your book was on there dude. Come on. Is the ‘King Kong’ issue out? Zac and I were just wondering about that. I’ll try to find a venue here that sells it. Actually, I think I know just the place. How are you? What are you doing? Are you writing or what? Hugs from moi. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Thanks, my pal. SCAB at the top! I remember some movie about someone who became immortal and went wild, so wild that he ended up doing things that resulted in him being arrested and condemned to life in prison, oops. Thank you for your wonderful lists! Oh, gosh, love is very kind. Although I have it on high authority that he actually has you and me in a tie in his #1 spot. Love convincing the sky that it doesn’t have to rain all the time, G. ** Jason McBride, Hi Jason! Wow! Oh, man, such a great book. You did such masterful and mind-blowing work on a subject of such enormous complexity and need. Huge kudos. I hope you’re doing really great. It’s so, so nice to see you! Love, me. ** Blake Butler, Blake! You are a sight for the sorest eyes. I love you too, my friend. Man, Molly’ is so incredible. So astoundingly composed, so devastatingly powerful. Words fail, truly. It’s completely different from ‘I Wished’ and yet it’s so completely not different. It really got to me, and it instructed me emotionally and artistically. I haven’t read the Lacey, but I’ll get it post-haste. I’d so love to see you and catch up. No Paris visiting plans in your immediate future, I fear? Do you ever Zoom? I’d be way down for that method if you can and feel like it. Biggest love you, maestro and friend! ** tomk, You didn’t even sneak, man. Thank you for the greatness. Any Xmas plans of relative or non-relative sort? ** Mark, Hi, Mark. Thanks bunches for the list. And Milpa Grill is calling to me. xo. ** Audrey, Hi, Audrey. Thanks. Yeah, ‘Do Not Expect…’ was wonderful. Okay, then I’ll just wait for Weard’s film to appear in my peripherals. Thanks so much about ‘Guide’. Great lists! You saw the Korine and the Bonello? I’m dying to. We’re very lined up. Thanks so much, Audrey! Love, Dennis. ** Meg Gluth, Hey, Meg! I don’t know most of your listed music, and I’ll get on that. Heavily noted. I’m okay. Lots of film-related mess to sort out, but I’m fine. Whoa, new novel! That’s crazy amazing to hear! Wow! Yeah, I saw Oscar the other day, and they were telling me about the screenplay and how you guys are doing it. Sounds really exciting. Lots of love you! ** Bill, Thank you, B. Oh, I’ll try to stream ‘Red Night’ today before it vamooses. Thanks for the alert. I think ‘TMH” is still doing the festivals right now. I think it’s at a festival in Spain this week. So, I guess it’ll go public after the festival circuit is worked as much as it can be. Lovely lists full of things I don’t know. Copied, pasted, and soon to be robbed blind. Thank you again, pal. ** Marcus Whale, Wow, Marcus, howdy! How are you? There are a few things on your list that are totally new to me, and I’ll find them out. What are you working on? Do you have anything coming out? All the ultra-best! ** Thomas Moronic, Hey, thanks for thanking me and thank you for making my list something to be thankful for. Cool, I would love to hear about the new projects. The Mike Kelley show is quite good, better than I had expected. Lots of early work as well as the later stuff. Not to dissuade you from coming here because you should, but I think that show is traveling to the Tate next year. Love, Dennis. ** Right. I made a post about the hard to classify multi-media filmmaker and artist Isaac Julien for your hopeful enjoyment. See you tomorrow.
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