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hello and welcome to the official cultures the podcast that explores arts and culture production I'm polo player and I'm delighted to be joined this time by artist Shane yet mighty now pay very kindly shares her experiences and marking across various art forms including documentary and short Film and Northern Ireland very warm thanks to our members on Petri on dot com forward slash AP cultures for your continued support for other ways to help fund the podcast and to keep up with our goings on listen to the end for details and to enjoy this really fascinating chapter wishing them yeah the T. L. S. C. R. my name is Shannon it's just it really well I think I've heard all kinds of variations of my name and I just smiled my feeling is Genya Masti now says Jenny is that Russian name my mom was born in Mexico and Shinya which incidentally means genius yes although you know they knew the things he left is my parents in my maiden name and now it's a German name because I was married to somebody was from Luxembourg so I kept it on because my son and so this Russian passion I was born in Iran and abroad happening and just go there and my first notice studies and so we've got that set here as well just in case we get your doggy noises yes test says my god my border collie my sweet friend me go and solution yet good trying to scare your kids year filmmaker and artist and educator mmhm all sorts of things a lot of yeah and things I mean I suppose if I'm looking back at the stuff that I've done is very difficult to just pinpoint one pass the thread in them has been creative in some way yes I have been quite involved in training and teaching and developing some educational resources that were created and have doubled into filmmaking and that's how we met but drawing and painting it has always been a part of it as well then some singing because %HESITATION get on to that yeah yeah and dances while it's very important he is dancing with some U. S. towns is important not because you know it in my head %HESITATION it on to my body not quite yes when I close my eyes I'm capable of doing all kinds of a %HESITATION it said %HESITATION so it's yeah I've had a fascination with dons and movement and how the body I just find the bodies almost like a metaphor for something higher consciousness of something very peaceful and innate in us rather than just a physical thing so I love the metaphors that happened between movement and emotional states and from a very long time ago I tried to draw it and captures in some way and the idea of movement and something very ethereal the happened situational and again more recently I'm trying to see whether I can stocked protective some sort as we can thank and then with talking about tapestry of color issue document chase that is highly Mets fills like a life ago my other ex and probably one of your other lights is one of the things so yeah it was two thousand and twelve that summer of two thousand twelve that I I was editing tapestry and its screen the fast time in September of two thousand twelve and I think it wasn't long after that that we met I mean that was a mammoth project me because before that I made a short film and I've worked with editing and training people in editing I used to work with in the nav centre in Belfast and that's where I began to learn more about editing and filmmaking tapestry was the first time that actually really I managed to get some funding which would never cover many like that you want to do but it really was a labor of love and something that was of real interest to me but a subject that was just exploring how coaches %HESITATION arriving in Northern Ireland and how there is a sense of integration I wasn't I wasn't looking for the conflict areas I was looking at integration areas and see whether could be human stories or other facts and figures it was great I think when we met at mystery that you script button key F. T. so it felt really appropriate actually that it was say that younger generations who were born after the official end of complex here and it was feeling at the time I'm not sure but now if it is feeding at the time I can you Northern Ireland I feel like I straddled in UAE and then I don't live here anymore so I think so much of the film is so much to do with identity and all the intricacies of identity so it was really important especially growing up in such a very white yes yeah and it's great to see so much diversity here knowledge but I just didn't experience up when I was younger even the film educated me on how much diversity there was because I didn't know there were only two communities everywhere else so that was really important that yes just important for the community scare quotes and Northern Ireland to realize they're not the only community health not least but those Terry and there are more to what's going on here than sectarian divisions and there's more to overcome them just sectarian division one of the things that I found was there is I think an underlying belief that people if you come from a certain area then you're likely to share the same thoughts and beliefs and ideas and a pretty much you know you with that bunch and here's this bunch just like you know here in Northern Ireland here are the Catholics and hear the Protestants and hear the loyalists and hear the nationally as well as reality is that these are just names and labels that we give to human beings I've never felt comfortable with the idea of groups being given an identity that bypasses the individuality of the people that are within that group and I think that is something that I've found over and over again I found I've come across it again and it came with all kinds of backgrounds and cultures it is and you need to know the nine it's something that happens everywhere and I think partly because people feel comfortable with them and not everybody wants to particularly feel an individual within a group and I do so I'm particularly conscious of that and sensitive to that but also partly because it's an easier way to address a whole group of people instead of thinking about their individuality is a lazy way to address humanity of someone and I came across that over and over again where people would buy that I mean tapestry of colors there are some uncomfortable conversations it was very difficult to get those uncomfortable conversations because people don't always want to say what they feel and it was an interesting thing to find somebody who was able to do that was and she saw nothing wrong with that which was great for me get it on record it and she was very happy for that and I think for her it was having a police %HESITATION which was good but in a sense I thought it was quite naive as well too and she assumed that this is okay you know that this will be for thieves generally okay all kinds of dynamics were going on but what I found was most fascinating is always to find prejudice Waveney suspected and find open heartedness where you least expected that's the P. two things I think that's well and I did find that over and over again where you live so really it's like from the background that this person comes from educationally socially culturally they probably are going to have a lot of views that would be probably negative about having all kinds of cultures and then I was so nicely surprised that wasn't the case and then the person who did find you know said things that you know they come here and take our jobs and that kind of stuff was from somebody who had lived quite a number of proteins this process today yes yes and but the reality was that it so if you need to explore that was somebody who was in the questioning close area it was fascinating is really fascinating but because my eyes lit up and I so unusual things happen come Roger using paper you wouldn't expect that somebody was Irish and I travel the abuse of for the they just complimented each other and and that's where you you really see that humanity has none of this them and us there is justice yeah which is really peaceful to see yeah essentially as well because there's a guy from a loyalist marching bands the orange marches and that sort of thing so this better coverage of that as well and what he says is quite fascinating and not as this is our cultural display and if you believe those same things we don't care what you look like you're one of us but anybody is welcome to come and see us and that sort of thing so that was quite interesting the here and I don't know hi people favor but that was then and and I weigh stops but I have to say when when I was filming that part it was very pops where it was it didn't particularly feel welcoming yeah %HESITATION I stood out like a sore thumb and I didn't mind you always been outside is it doesn't really matter and that particular conversation will gain very clearly was there was two sides to that story and that was at the edges were very shop on both sides on the one hand you say you know I mean anyone is welcome but why did you do and say as I say and do yeah everything when the weather isn't filled with people who all believe the same thing the whole point is that we attack us we have different experiences and they're full welcome cannot be just to those who are exactly like me because then it's not welcome welcome means an open door that allows people to be who they all provided they don't actually home use it's an interesting thing to watch people's perceptions of what he would issue an old granny who believed to be the same thing in a welcome Indians come in welcome but actually no it doesn't only if a B. and C. you meet these criteria then you're welcome so then you know that calm so that was interesting yeah yeah I have other friends who are artists who found that orange marches and here also when men and there may be actually from Protestant unionist communities but they're still outsiders because they're maybe from a different place in North India and then there filming them in Belfast or whatever it happens to be it can be so tight now than anybody's website cider can take a long long time to earn trust there were areas I wanted to film and not just about people who are native to the nine yeah like that it took me a long time to find anybody from the travelling community and I was very lucky that I was able to find somebody and he just musically exemplified what it means to you know integrate with people and that's always the case but %HESITATION so from the Roma community digested managed to let her try hello I couldn't get that it's a very close knit close community there was a loss of knocking on doors the students you know obviously a huge part of any filmmaking in sixteen minutes of kementari is to research that you're doing in trying to to find the possibility to fell possibly because I'm neither here nor there I'm not the concert no Protestant I'm not from me %HESITATION simply that made it more comfortable for people just just because I was not a threat but I did in one instance I found that really bizarre because one of the people who always saying you know they come here and take a job the person who lived there for many years abroad she spoke to me in such confidence that I should have you obviously part of my job is you know because I am welcoming you know I want to hear and I don't want to say no and this and you content there will obviously will be things that I feel no this is not part of what I want to do but you know that was that I wanted to have a story I found it so intriguing to tend to me somebody who clearly doesn't sound okay perhaps I don't sound like the typical immigrant who has recently come here but I don't look at northern Irish I definitely don't look like you know even though it may sound boring which I didn't you can see it you know my background must be from an immigrant you know and as it happens is from a refugee kind of background and yet to speak to me so we speak the same language you know they come here and take her to the so so often my thoughts as to speaking I am one of the people you do not see that I'm in that in itself is a bit of a dichotomy because you kind of thing this individual office he has humanity you know who feels that can connect with you did we %HESITATION you know from whatever background to whatever stories we have we come to the perceptions of me come to arrive at the printing plate that social conditioning can only really be that sort of thing that I reckon that produces the sorts of attitudes or I would say S. lack of logic and a way to do that for me was a logical to say on this issue with me but then in another part of the film someone speaks about his children being color blind and not seeing difference between paper but the reality is there are differences and you need to address those differences so that people are not under privileged because of that difference for that reason alone but that the children growing up at the time that was two thousand and twelve when I was filming he was saying that his children are lucky to be in that sense they say that color blind they don't see a difference and I suppose what I'm thinking of the lady that was talking to me and saying you know they come here and take a job do you see what I mean you know that intimate conversation with me in a way she was being colorblind yeah because maybe she saw U. S. British because of your accent and maybe that maybe an inverted form of oxytocin or maybe it's paperless from a foreign accent yeah Hey or that you know a culture that we cultures all different people's practices and lives a very different and they don't sit comfortably always with each other you know so and that's a reality it's not comfortable so I can understand what so what if it was really really uncomfortable and you have families that settled into a community whose ways and practices you so unfamiliar with and you just don't understand and it's hard on both sides I think it really is you know to find a way is that and it takes time but I think more than anything what helps is actually to be open to kind of meet each other somewhere along the way it works both sides you can only really chat with somebody about this issue said very able to safely talk about them and that the country a light that space for somebody in a very safe for the voices concerns because I think part of the problem arrange for stellar nearly three years and no over three years and trying to do this brexit style yeah and so much anxiety right now has been people not feeling like they're a law eat to talk about how to fail so maybe it's something like that and I wonder if it's for me not for me to try and psychology ISIS person but I wonder if there is an anxiety about having being away and then coming back possibly and maybe that was something this person was working straight but I don't really have a tough day for him you know everyone has a story yeah Hey those screenings that I went to people I didn't know would come and say you know they're very nice but the felt when they were saying because you know I was in your country and and they would tell me the stuff that they've done in the food to the taste and all this stuff as though I'm still there and I'm here to visit to say listen you know as a child when I was living in Iran my parents didn't come from you know what our families they worked really hard my father came from poverty so by the time I'd come along and I was an afterthought thanks with five children I was the fifth and %HESITATION my oldest brother was almost seventeen years older than me so I really wasn't meant to be there but by that stage life had become a lot more comfortable for them because my family %HESITATION hi and I'm at the high as well and the highs have been persecuted hugely in Iranian culture right from the start of the the high fifties and incidently Bahai teachings are about one this of humanity and you don't get involved in party politics and it's really humanitarian kind of religion that really is about uniting the saying there was this one in human beings as one but these teachings are very threatening for governments and institutions in places where you really people %HESITATION have to blindly follow and be told what to do so it's a whole history of persecution and executions when I was growing up none of that was that that I could see but I was quite protected I think but there were undercurrents of it always when the Iranian revolution happened things turned upside down by that stage we'd already been living in England I had no history no concept of that I just had it from my parents my father has gone into it every time and then he went back to Iran two the only means of %HESITATION you know financial support was his pension and he'd managed to finish paying the mortgage for the house and hands of the tendency was providing our living costs and the tenants stop paying so my father went back to see what was happening it was at the stage when life was becoming very difficult for bodies they introduce columns that if you want to leave the country you have to say what religion you %HESITATION and of course my father couldn't put anything other than getting behind and he knew that that could be very very dangerous so ended up instead of a couple of months which was the intention to be that to be there for four years any escape through the mountains of Turkey meanwhile through the years the house was confiscated so does all the belongings I sold his pension was stopped and there was nothing so we will have to become refugees as a result so this is kind of the stories of very real although I have to say I never experienced the hardships on refugees I was too young so I was protected from all sorts and I've had things I know my father and my mother and I had only recently from cousins who had known my dad and had said that the reason he left was his name would come up on the list and he was going to be executed and his crime was that he was helping the highs who everything everything belonging had been taken so he was assisting with taking contributions from others to help them survive that was his crime there's all sorts of stories about the refugees I developed a very British kind of identity my friend's role in missions I went to school in England and and and at the time I was the whole idea of being Iranian wasn't it felt very uncomfortable for me because I wanted to integrate into this new than a teenager and it's ME later really that it began to dawn on me that the difficulties of refugees go through I suppose I felt when I was speaking to people who are coming from a different background like the okay the difficulties that they experience arriving not speaking the language and not knowing anything something the shops and arriving in years and how difficult it must be for them it's having by that stage had so many of the stories that was familiar from family yeah the film had all kinds of meaning for me as well as opening it up for compensation yeah I was thinking as well by and I do have that sense of home a talking it by your own background as well yeah initially the moving part in the film where I think it's a lot fan woman talks about aids just hearing other people speak about fan and she wants to go over soon because she suddenly felt ready home sick yeah and just one at that topspin's said something she felt she had to leave hi end but they didn't want to know because they just ashamed she would want their help yeah I just find that really so how does he have and the the reality is that existing laws and you can kind of understand both sides but ruled the sight of the person who's just arrived and it's so difficult so so unfamiliar and now I mean I have quite a few friends are from different backgrounds and left fans as well it's lovely to see how integrated they are and but it's the long journey for many people and I think a conference at home enough the fact that people arrive not necessarily as their first choice but that because they have to and what would you do if you have family or child and you want to give them hope home K. as a set of high and I and the fellow with the S. S. but one country and mankind is its citizens it's a quote from the homeless writings because really these quotas a man made board really there is only one hello the building is anyone S. we live in and how peaceful if we could actually see each other is going to be able to travel and be what we need to be instead of thinking on this but it is mine because ultimately that's a game from the high rises ultimately or what you're fighting for is the basic ground that you can be buried in you don't take it with you it's not you know so why it seems really bizarre to think of it as this is mine the whole nationalistic kind of approach that is exist very much these days you know current inclusion in U. K. you can see that it's a very worrying thing that's happening globally it's a place but we have to hope I think that's what but the title of the film the tapestry idea that so beautiful because well what's the topic street soul it's a different threads woven together and they have to work together to be a long thing even the %HESITATION the image for the marketing image in the DVD admits the cover of it S. all the different flags via recreate melded together anyway and the shape of Northern Ireland but there's almost a cage and to the Republic as well because this is another arbitrary ordered which is night contestants again a gay yeah yeah yeah the idea of the tapestry thing was because I was trying to make it into and using my visual imagery into digital imagery skills to kind of make that looked like a tapestry and woven thing and then the reality is that we are all threats of the Saint there is no no real difference and really it's just it seems hope is all but interestingly when you talk about the flags because obviously I was really castle to make sure everyone knows there all morning and to all the people who contributed in the film the flag of that country is in and it was so conscious that particularly aware of the situation in the Irish and the British flag and the hand of Ulster and all this kind of business school featuring but there was one of the screen is because what I had to preview it set everything into those old kinds of invited audience VIP's and things it was wonderful and then from that stemmed quite a lot of screenings I was really working with councils and that good relations offices to see that if they could invite paper that had something to say in their communities so that they'll be a panel discussion after the film city people don't come and sit and see it and then go and those are really interesting and I'm obviously I was on the panel but I want to make sure local people and but that really interesting most places amazing conversations happened but in one particular place which was to remain nameless somebody at she will travel to right the stock because the Irish flag looked a bit smaller than the British just so wow that's so interesting to it's just yeah that was very interesting conversations on the phone then what sprung from the film was there's lots of people wanted to use it as an educational kind of tool but it's too long first there was a lot of what shops that I was doing councils with Janet and I edited the film into so small extracts somatic stress that we could have so what ships in conversations about each of those what they mean and how that the following year was able to get some funding to an educational resources but that really I worked with within the sofa Sierra which is the curriculum yeah exam board one of the people there and I simply wanted to make sure to %HESITATION ticked all the boxes for teachers so that they could teach and we had a plan that went to a number of schools and youth groups and it was really really interesting very positive about comes out of those and just it was impossible to continue it as an online business because costs involved and because we couldn't get the funding that schools couldn't raise the funding to be able to have the truth I mean as a project is a holistic project I think the film then led to other conversations I felt what's really well there was a lot of conversations I had with politicians %HESITATION results of it which were also very interesting took me a whole new area an Avenue of professional web that really as an artist is not my thing although I'm quite confident and I'm quite happy to present and talk about things but then I just felt it's taking me further and further away from the office in the Clinton yeah I mean I thought I don't know if that's something that just naturally came to a conclusion or if the climate of things for the past few years has actually acted as well because not only a set of cracks initiated by the fact that there's been no local government here for three years so let us come to a standstill ready with arts funding in general was funding has been cut huge anyway but I think with the work that I was doing I think it came to a point when %HESITATION I found I just was hitting my head against a brick wall speaking and really the number of fantastic conversations presentations to various VIP's and heads of this and that and the other one they're all wonderful but really what I found what I'm trying to do is having more funding to do further for the walk and it seems like as you say it came to a point where they need to to stop because I ate the amount of time and energy that I was putting into that which was not in any way rewarding not just financially but creatively it wasn't recording anyway related to it so do some work that was I suppose that experience helped in the rest of the work that I was doing as well I did some creative consultations for the arts council when the for some of the cities and towns over doing building peace through the arts time out they want to have and those things and some of the other projects that it is on the phone network that I did was I'm sure at the back of tapestry helped along with those but I think yeah I think it's come to a point where I feel now my passion these go back to what we touches my home matches all persons like interpretive color she's quite a bit of your own vocals and there is that something you'd like to like basis you're singing in your vocalisation where yeah I mean the singing I I was in a bind some years ago cool trespass and we reckon melodies and stuff I was doing and but at the time fast I was using a lot of the Bahai writings because they so views from poetic and then I was writing the lyrics and stuff but the film and documentary kind of sound tracks that I have done some work on this a few things like caramel is pump go George image to some music for the soundtrack of the style of kind of work that I've done a gain on tapestry can seat as well the tapestry actually the focus for that initially was for a a more for channel documentary called monkey left by double bond and it was about Harry hello who's a psychologist who did some GPS workers %HESITATION baby monkeys in the fifty cents at the head of a document checks I was approached by a friend of mine who is doing the soundtrack for it and it has my kind of rule never cool stuff so it began kind of vocal recordings that were very much non verbal but it was much more about and %HESITATION see failing and the undertones of eastern sound and a lot of that I suppose comes from when I was a child I remember my father used to he had a beautiful voice he's the same he's a chance behind cries he had a voice like a medically backed just beautiful so I guess that means the committee here is a one of the recordings that ended up again on tapestry and the more recent years I did some work for graduate failed from his film engines caught his so I went to ten men to watch with Toby marks A. K. A. I'm good to go yeah so we recorded some record claims that he actually had Lisa Gerrard and she then had pulled out and he was looking for somebody who did that kind of thing and again my friend who had done the stuff for the double bind home and told him about me so I'd sentence and stuff and like to talk to about I think that was a very beautiful creative hope felt experience because I just awesome to put on some records leave the room let me improvise that Saturday's game about and there were a couple of those tracks featured on the Apollo which is under the guise comeback album I felt very happy I'm very happy with those creative efforts that sounds like a great way of collaborating he's just awesome to trusting yeah yeah that kind of singing is very much a singing your hall yes %HESITATION this thing so it's not a you know press a button here comes it has to be an he knew that I guess that's why he asked me to do it because it's the other stuff that I've done we had to just try it and it seemed to work and he was happy with it but each of those are very much associated with a particularly poignant emotional experience I was having at the time so I know I have to tap into that and really sing for that seem to work they're really haunting and they're very beautiful to listen to their C. eastern offense but there is something and there is it just made me think of an Irish connection as well because there's the caning that's done by women %HESITATION speaking robotics in Ireland and that sis cry from within when you come to cry and to expand access sign that comes from within and that's something between crying and singing and wailing it's quite an incredible thing to behold and it reminded me of that as well actually this thing too because it does feel like it's from the heart there is something distinctive because it does actually signed the life force so much music in this process voices and processes and I'm gonna put some links up on our oceans because there it was ready I see somebody told me that originally there are links between the Celts the patient's rights whether that's true or not but maybe intrinsically interesting thing that I have done quite a bit of research in the past few years on the engine borrowed since trying to see what's Mexico and what's not and I think historians for a couple of hundred years at least there were making everything very separate and actually there's a lot of revisionist research going on saying no there is a lot of evidence that everybody was more doing talks in yellow and purple to believe so that they can surprise me isn't it a symbolic thing the fact that we have she will hello by colonial civilizing missions making people author when actually people are coming together in trading and there are areas that weren't so much colonial about say a Greek tried bridge go to one place and he checked the Alexandria error nearby and they would have a joint community they would actually have a %HESITATION hello Jepsen community that was shared in their chair daisy something that would be amazing yes okay and I it wouldn't surprise me as opposed to an Irish poet tone please I don't know I hope it's true it sounds nice yeah things like there would be an affinity I think you have to see it yeah because it it's it's a bit of a lemon to submit business unless them often sing into my son the yes because he's into twice yeah with my hot would you like to talk about it from a few years ago some of the projects you were commissioned to do the arts kind so some of the short films so if years ago there was a project that I did that consisted of five phones and it was full I think she's still exists and there's a few communities in north Belfast and it's cool to draw down the walls of for that particular year in two thousand fifteen the commission five short films working with five groups of people it was about invisible barriers and exploring that I love actually working with people and finding very kind of unusual creative ways to bring out draw out stories from people and it was really nice because there was a couple of groups that way in that location code there was one group in the auto and area and there is one group that while unemployed people and there was another group that was just young people who wanted to make films this is a variety of kind of experiences and to explore the sense of otherness and belonging and not belonging in I had some really fascinating stories particularly I think what moved me was the location code downs and it's somewhat with the younger people but it was a low Chanchal adults that I found really fascinating a lot of them laughed telling me the stories of people being imprisoned and really hard lives lots of suicides and the difficulties of the young people and the people who've been in previous times involved in paramilitary groups and and how that communities affected by it and yet I have to say it was one of the loveliest kindest group of people I met there was so genuinely very welcoming that was a real eye opener for me difficult difficult areas to live and so those five phones within shown as part of a mini festival that happened the first Film Festival was hosting them so that happened in a number of areas and then for months that we showed it to the city hall and then the publication was based on it was pretty stunned than it did during the kind of thing around so it was an interesting very difficult project I have to say %HESITATION difficult project of really interesting but I did meet some really peaceful people an offensive game breaks all your preconceptions which is really nice pretty nice yeah we can actually be something that site yeah the room of the muse convicting me pages was he could see those really interesting exploring what really all that means and just breaking those barriers which we all have I found the ones that were really responsive to my very wacky Pacelle everyday I've come up with some strange way of exploring things with the young people that you met at the golden thread gallery because it was just a friend it was great it was or you can't so yeah it was so many parts of that and I really felt was a very worthwhile really positive protect which took away their residency with room three yeah so this is what really is My Baby no so for quite awhile I had this idea that I wanted to explore it came Johnson movement through the lens and finding ways to really there is a distance between the performer and the audience this online and I think I have experienced it when I'm being at a performance that when I'm so mesmerized him so invest in what I'm seeing experiencing that I'm becoming opponent if you know what I mean because it's so beautifully done there are a few things that I've been to always contemporary it's the most beautiful will be WrestleMania fans of tonight all so I just my heart just isn't wrenched it just being not even an observer and Paul if that becomes that as I'm watching it and become the performance even though I'm not a forma so I really want to explore that place where you go beyond this world it's an otherwise it's an otherworldly experience it's a higher consciousness it's spiritual it's a different round of fascinated to resign moments in that and I wanted to explore that through movement and dance and I was lucky enough to meet and photograph the peaceful Tomlinson was partially sighted cone head on whole beautiful movement beautiful polity and so I wanted to work around that so I had applied for residency sometime before and so I was able to do it at that time so I went to Tyrone Guthrie now imagine this you know this is in June of two thousand eighteen when the summer was amazing %HESITATION for anybody who hasn't been there it's really peaceful grounds or green and there's a lake and the sun beaming every day and I had to cut its to with them and I had a studio to myself I took everything and I want to animate so I was able to animate the movements and %HESITATION and the idea really is it's a bit of a dream for me to have an installation performance kind thing based on this this is right but the start of a project so I was able to really get started into that and produce a kind of work and sounds and things that I felt great he would work with it it was just a dream of a time that for me I just was amassed into that really was so peaceful and the paper was so lovely and met some really wonderful artists as well I'm so fascinated also by the academic side of things well academia matches with creativity lots of useful said I really like to see if I can take this off into its own proper research a PhD yeah but a practice based PhD where I can put you sweat but really look at the kind of the intellectual side I did as well but pretty touch around that is for me is so fascinating we'll see I've written a proposal what let's see if I would go anyway yes yeah yeah if it's meant to be well hopefully it's finding the right place two days yeah yeah yeah the tricky part yeah I mean if I die I live in Northern Ireland now and one of the things they did to us last year was to build up the studio space so I don't plan to be moving anytime soon so if I can do it through here university okay great or if I was able to do it somewhere else but I can actually continue to stay here and yes so we'll see unexplored possibilities and see what happens so as well as the PhD idea but you were saying that you go really into your painting yeah I've started to get because the whole idea here is her ago three was that I begin to bring in all elements of the things that are tied up into my creative practice soak painting was I mean I exhibited in a few different places before and I hadn't been painting for awhile and the figure always feature is not portraits but again movement and %HESITATION limbs and bodies and sick and starting to see if I can reconnect with painting and games it's a slow process but I saw to it that someone you know %HESITATION after painting the game on the go so we'll see yeah I just think it's you know with creativity it's for me it hasn't been a career it's a vocation in life although thankfully it's and to me it's tough to be able to live off off and on and off but generally it's not something that you then stop it needs to be something that I see is at the core of what to do and again the idea of creative practice %HESITATION and the creative impulse being a border this thing as well here a long time ago I remember speaking to somebody about being an artist and at the time I haven't painted anything and he was about you you know painting I remember thinking I felt very annoyed H. and thinking but your analysis is a part of who you are is woven into it it's not when you paint that threw it off this is not what you write it's just do you own and I think it's an even in everyday conversation it's just being looking at things in a different way in a creative way for hearing things in a different way so he went to the direct anybody to find out a bit more about what you do or say some of your work you can see some of my work on my website said M. and creative studio dot co dot UK and so my fellow work are on them like a music channel but also my email is there you can contact me I'm always open full interesting ideas and particularly when different all forms much that's what I find most fascinating weather is music and sound in towns and painted animation he knew just where it goes yeah and it's a like minded souls that kind of connection I love the idea of that so yeah I'm always open to that but it's it's and yet thank you so much to come thank you enough %HESITATION thank you and I am in love with your dog yes and creatively training a dog that's another thing to do she knew sought some tricks you know %HESITATION yeah okay did you couldn't see the trees in %HESITATION do you think but I will show you she's a sweet but it's thank you very much remembering up thanks to OD official cultures with very special guests Genya muddy now and tests at the dog this episode was presented recorded edited and produced by polar bear the music is common grind by our tone licensed under a creative Commons noncommercial license and is available for download from CC mixer dot org episodes are released every other Wednesday please wait share and subscribe on your chosen nesting platform to help others find the show to help cover costs of making and distributing the podcast please consider making a regular donation via libera pay dot com forward slash PP a planner or one of two nations to pay pal dot me forward slash P. A. Blair just a pint or whatever you can spare is a really massive help follow AP cultures part on Instagram and AV cultures on Twitter and Facebook to keep up with what we're doing thanks so much for that catch you next time
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<Paula Blair> Hello and welcome to Audiovisual Cultures, the podcast exploring sound and image cultures. For our tenth episode were delighted to be joined by linguist Geoff Poole discussing with Andrew and me his favourite film, Orson Welles's F for Fake. Many thanks to everyone who's been retweeting, sharing, pledging and supporting the podcast and all the ways; all the things that you're doing are really helping to get it off the ground. I'll be back after the chat with more information but it's a fairly long one so we're going to get stuck straight in. Hope you enjoy it and I hope it's useful.
Geoff, if you'd like to just tell us who you are.
<Geoff Poole> I'm Geoff Poole. I guess my Twitter bio says that I'm a soi-disant lecturer in the philosophy of linguistics at Newcastle University in the School of English and I guess that's about as accurate as anything really. I'm kind of not here in any professional capacity with respect to film or the teaching of film just as an unbelievably huge fan of this film.
<PB> Right, well that's all highly relevant to the nature of the podcast and the nature of which is it's very broad and borderless and messy so I'm really keen to talk to people are fans of something in particular and anything broadly or vaguely to do with audio and/or visual cultures and of course linguistics is very much part of that. Probably when we're talking about F for Fake we might want to get into linguistics but also film language, how these might marry up, and if you're from a philosophical background, well is there a way to marry that with film philosophy and the ontology of truth and lies, fakeness and all those sorts of things? So there's quite a number of areas we can get into.
<GP> Yeah I should say this where I guess the soi-disant comes in insofar as a my actual background is in formal linguistic theory and syntactic theory but I've always been really interested in that intersection of the philosophy of language, philosophy of the mind, philosophy of science, and that's actually what I've been teaching pretty much for the last five or six years in particular, plus syntax for a long time, so I should say that I'm not a professional philosopher in that sense.
<PB> Is anyone? What does that even mean? <laughing>
<GP> That's a fair point. At least I don't have a piece of paper that says that I know something necessarily that philosophy think of PFA haven't well I. DS but road office that is just like the scarecrow you know I don't have a brain but I do have a diploma we're watching after fake because we had a bit of a Twitter chat yeah an image of course of miles from the phone as your Twitter profile picture what is set up by the phone that really grabs your interested I think it's the kind of I suppose maybe not surprisingly it's the subject matter and the approach in that it actually reminds me not to start off on too highbrow plain it actually reminds me very much of the dialogues of Plato in that it wants to raise philosophical issues but it does that not by having a treatise a okay here I am Plato I want to tell you about what justice is here now let me explain it to you it's actually using the idea of a dialogue to do that and I think what's really interesting about this film is the way in which Orson Welles is taking his particular medium which is film and some of his particular interest actually around editing in particular and using that to create a thing which addresses even if it doesn't come to any firm conclusions which again with most the dollars to put it down it gives you a view on this particular philosophical issue and I love the fact that it does that I love the way it does it too the whole film you have Orson Welles with that kind of twinkle in his online very much the whole time again that's another possibly under appreciated feature of the platonic dialogues as well the way in which a lot of time Socrates is both joking and being serious at exactly the same way one of the same sort of moment and I feel like this captures that a lot so that's it and that's really the reason that I find it interesting I guess also I've also been really interested you know one of the only times in my life when I was doing anything that you might call a kind of art project %HESITATION says like naturally when I was not writing my PhD stalling and avoid doing anything separate my PC I was really interested in doing audio collage very influenced by people in the states and in Canada like John Oswald and like Negativland nailing a particular very much do not just tell stories but they have projects that have a narrative is entirely made up of collage audio samples of it and so I think to there's that element as well that I recognize in terms of my own interests he's doing the same thing but just visually though in a largely audio way that is to say you know he's cutting and pasting the particular images to create some of these counterpoints and whatnot it's not really the visuals that he's interested in it's the particular audio so much of its carried by his voice is heard was wonderful to listen listen to most read the phone book she just lovely to sit there and let him kind of wash over you that's fantastic I was wondering about his voice in check here and here expertise of the language what you may ask of his voice in general it's kind of hard to know I mean in certain respects to the extent I have any professional reaction to that it's a reaction of I'm not actually really quite sure and I'm happy to leave it to in some sense well ironic in this context the experts it's a point that Chomsky always makes about the kind of role of linguistic theory and what its role perhaps at this point in time is with respect to other wider issues about communication or not so it makes the analogy to theoretical physics and says okay well it's true that for example the reason why a bridge stands up and doesn't fall down sure on some level that is ultimately rooted in the elements of subatomic physics and quarks but it might actually not be the most helpful way to talk about bridges talking about it at that level and indeed if you want to get a bridge that is not going to fall down probably a theoretical physicist is not we want to talk to you want to find a bridge builder because they're the people that have the expertise with the thing at that particular level maybe it's just intellectual cowardice some of syntactic theory is just hard enough it's like I don't even want to think about the heart of the questions about that %HESITATION beyond that look even more difficult but I think from a professional point of view if he as he did was super super famous for his voice over work and just so many people react to him in that way there's clearly something going on and I think clearly that ultimately is rooted in something to do with language and his use and again I'd specially not the anthologist for phone addiction I'm not sure what that is I suppose I shouldn't say we don't know because I don't know that we don't know I don't want to consult colleagues there is just something incredibly placing it by the combination of words that he seems to effortlessly creates and then the way he says them you're hanging on every word no matter what he's talking about right I think that's true I mean indefinitely the story that he tells about being a teenager in Ireland which is part of it was true and that is part of his biographies you can very easily see he was anything even remotely like he is in the film how the state would be natural place for him to be he has that gift you know as you say of making everything sound stage G. and fall through even that isn't necessarily the case and everything's a performance even when heat maybe or selling interest you get ten fifty I might not play in all performs resort ADR does well yeah for some of the concerns and some points he's done it very well there is in the in the case that that some of the production forty hours that means just to clear and crisp and seems to be spoken so studio is our government's it just doesn't match it but I like that obviousness of the editing it's very reflexive so it looks like it's badly done by celebrity badly done because we know from a very young age he knows exactly how to put together and has already installed on the server lauded as the best films of all time cayenne and some might have some competition for his first two films are masterpieces he knows what he's saying he knows that he's coughing at the table the tiled baths my work is that my fingerprints on network and that's what I think part of the fun aspect of it as well that in the context of magic tricks illusion and misdirection which is obviously again from the kind of initial introduction of the end a major element to this what I like very much is precisely the fact that you do appear to see the things like the adults that are quite right and that this is a very clearly shop and studio when you supposedly across the street from you know the desert in Nevada but the way in which that's actually just more misdirection makes me think of stuff like Derren brown where he talks about the various elements of his work being in or have whatever it is I see guys patter I forget what it is a psychology sleight of hand showmanship psychology whatever and then he will occasionally give what appear to be explanations but in fact those aren't explanations those are just more misdirection so he will make reference to the psychological theories or suggest that something akin to neuro linguistic programming which is get complete B. S. is behind it also suggests that that again was a say it's it's more misdirection and that's what I think is interesting about these a way in which you see the editing room you see these things that look sloppy but you see nothing that he doesn't want you to see attention I'm not David Thompson's biography of while he talks about it well you can do all this research you can get all the facts about somebody's life but you still need to tell a story and then actually thinking back to when I dread it's Charlie Chaplin's autobiography and you compare that with the many many many biographies written by hand hi my cheese and that list because he's trying to tell a good story he's a storyteller he's telling you something that's a little bit trace and it's a little bit from to say it's made up because he's trying to grip you with this story and pick beautiful works together there's quite a lot of thoughts going on and have her fate as well we are doing very part comes to ninety remember people can't see it I want to point out that there's quite a different range of our wellness in the room going into watching this film because I hadn't seen it before hello you've seen it I think on that for a few years ago and just forces everything ten was one of the first DVDs that I bought when I finally got a DVD player and it was the American criteria F. for fake release the undergraduate degree but I did it was created by people who was sticking films like this forever it wasn't from the grave is a consistent he's agreeing musculature but the people were into showing and stuff that was really post modern metal scrap eighteen nineteen so I'm surprised this didn't at some point crop up if you could just not alienating well actually it is it's actually you know that's interesting really it is it it's post modern in that way but precisely I think doesn't it can not be a literature person I know very little about the big and it doesn't have that slightly distancing very kind of theoretical dimension to it that sometimes people I think bounce off of a little bit especially students I did have some degree and never came across it and no study sites there I think party looking back because I did documentary modules and I did have a guard much as new salata crossovers between the sea and I ended up teaching these at the same time and the teaching modernism and documentary the same time there's a huge amount of crossovers but this some high even falls between expose things at the same time but it's not documentary enough and it's not up on guard and no it's not pushing you away and now it's engaging need two months to be high art ironically I think that's where the twinkle in his eye comes in again because he knows what he's saying you feel like he made his masterpieces so young and very quickly it was pissing off the studio so we're hiring him he wouldn't play ball he was already breaking up all the rows and he never ever played the game and you get the sense that he cared if he'd wanted to you could have random stuff and if you wanna take it back I just wonder if you get the sense that he loves the chaos he thrived off its own K. all signed his films have so much order to them I mean this family's tight to tight eighty five minutes there's no baggage Anatoly no six accurate stating he's economical in the editing he could have spun a yarn that was three arsenal but he doesn't do show a lot going on in the next couple of decades the sixties and seventies for he's promised all this money to people and he's run off and he's got all these partially me approach Jackson come getting finished Nicholas Massey private life that's not ready half price today he's sort of a walking disaster area and yet he's so together and organize the creation of his art he's still a conundrum I think he doesn't fit even the categories already defy categorization he refuses to go into any boxes it's an overlooked film in many ways some basics on what reports this is the last finished project I'm just looking up the details of some of the people involved so as a parent how may I assist the horror the horror I think it is yeah he killed himself two years after his phone camera because the Spanish authorities had decided to hand it over to the front of our face the playful I lied to everyone are you doing over these paintings and there's no negative consequences that has a kind of underbelly which is that it did have negative consequences including but the place where often and you know perhaps in killing himself to try and avoid them he was it's completely overreacting maybe that you become the author of the south he becomes self defining I think the film sales service no I he's got this like I say but it's all these other names that he's a top shame he's been all these other people and maybe that's the one self defining thing has lost her eyes himself so he can take I don't know and you do get a little bit of a window into that part of it because there are the bits towards the end of the hoary section where it actually isn't kind of all sweetness and light and the dinner parties and where he's talking about having spent a month in prison in Evita and he's clearly trying to put a good face on the all these people came to see me and the judge the judge he said he said I was a good person but there's clearly there I think under current of some of the implications for himself personally in terms of what he's done Canada's performance is sold what's on the surface and what's going on underneath it's very different also and David Thompson's biography of files didn't go into any details but he was saying that not long after this %HESITATION Franco's dictatorship and hands and forcing myself to spend quite a bit of time in Spain has a has a yeah I think there he lived in France but he lived in Europe but he always had a very strong affinity for Spain that comes through that Hemingway references it was a fan of bull fighting which is a little bit disappointing and he did as well if I remember rightly one of his TV projects was a travel log type series that did regions of Spain and may be in the fifties I was get it time wise confused with another thing which maybe is one of the only places to look for antecedents for this release obvious antecedents is the Orson Welles sketchbook series of things that he did for the BBC %HESITATION yes where he would be drawing and telling various kinds of stories that would relate to the drawing he was doing and illustrating various characters and stuff like that you felt a great affinity for Spain did spend a lot of times they live in the traffic yes I've been driven well I don't I mean what should look these things up in France with him in this film I think not long after that if that doesn't go into any detail certainly not in the factory rep today and I can't remember several years ago but he ends up moving back to the yes in the mid seventies or so yeah I think that's right because Europe is shifting grind anyway so the conditions aren't ready for him anymore so he goes back and he never complete the phone again yeah that's right we need some of it wasn't his fault in the sense that at least one major project which was the deep actually his leading actor died in nineteen seventy three that was one of the projects that he was working on in the late sixties and effectively that lead actor appears in F. for fake he's the person in the airport train station whatever it is exactly when they put a code are gonna make her disappear and put her in the suitcase %HESITATION he's the person at the beginning I think well that process yeah so this is Lawrence and somebody rather %HESITATION live been working with another project some of it certainly was palling lock in that sense but I think some of it is because he doesn't get slightly caught up in the paying the bills in a slightly different way so instead of acting in these various European each way co productions he starts doing you know very famously his wine commercials and stuff like that which is the way that life growing up in the seventies in America that's my first memory Orson Welles are of the wine commercials that he was doing and then also the Muppet movie of course because he has now he's a canyon about the movie and I think he did voice overs on quite a lot of cartoons yeah that's right so I grew up hearing his voice quite a bit and then when a couple there and I realized he was I thought well right that must have been somebody who sounded like him to be playing I can force the most part it no it was actually him I was just looking on the extensive wikipedia page or somewhere else just to see if I where I was when he died he was back in the states yeah it's like someone's just transcribed over the data come from somebody H. despises entirely possible but the phone about more on the subject contrivance she was it seems his partner at the time although he was still married to his third wife circus seemingly an on going fast the name or your car there was a name that wells gave to her yeah it's %HESITATION yesterday evening which is funny because right at the very end even as he's saying Hey you know right at the end when the sort of I guess it's spoilers but people will know that you know is the %HESITATION Hey by the way remember that promised I was going to tell the truth for an hour well that hour and seventeen minutes ago in this fall a lot even then he actually makes his point of saying %HESITATION your coat or that's her real name when it's snowing yeah okay when it isn't well I guess then that gets to do a separate conversation which we can %HESITATION about what is reality right if that's effectively her stage name has that become her real name but the way that the when I was thinking about that earlier I was that it made me think of the problems that %HESITATION Michael Keane's preacher was Michael Cain was it not to the venue like literally a year ago had to legally change his name because he never changed from his original name and was just getting such a hassle at airport security in this day and that you know but I know you're not this guy you're Michael king movies no no no stage name people never really this is my number two Michael Caine in his thanks I think it's like the last year maybe did that but sorry process actually I think we're doing a session which my husband Paul Costa Jeff but someone is now about my accent it was born Gabrielle Maximilian level as and I talked to named Max and then went on to make his name in the park stage of our lives are full his daughter was raised as Moreland server is not affected we became my dentist before his demise had kids if it's a name you use in all dealings even if it's not one of the best to forget it is practically speaking your name I cement on postmodernism from think about this one is a lot recently because people keep talking about how the different paths to society and I think the fact that people are now claiming this is actually evidence that we live in a post post truth society because people are able to go we're going on to all of the shop and that's a bad thing first post modernism that was post truth in the sense of having the line it is very massive evidence recently we've come out the other side of postmodernism start to realize that there is such a thing is verifiable truth and that they may have been some abuses that were facilitated by the idea that everything's just convention that we come up with a second by second look at this one seventy three I was struck on the special personal I think was one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven about fourteen different regards in which this is repose one on the first right was the host and talking generalize website if the website disagrees of what it is some call it a docu drama some call it the country SA I can see one because it has elements of that style did voiceover off and also to the community to explaining circumstances to you but I'm not voice ever hands over to the characters involved in interviews and then they answering a question by interviewer they then voice over footage of themselves as a policy or themselves interacting with that happened we'll have to find out exactly how to start I think is a mechanic and I actually do interference or they do interact a little bit worse points which I also love where Orson Welles will actually when there's a pause in the person is like trying to think of what to say there's a couple places where wells as a voice over says the word and then the person on film producers we know the time and you know this is very kind of I don't know the importance of predictable I love that you get that playing with it so I suspect number one this film for me was to have a constant avalanche of people talking and that characterize the Allen which was genuine it was only during the seventeen minutes off hours which result invented thing about the cancer whether it see any significant people not talking with the vast majority of the house was Constance token and it's exhausting because we used to watching films way even if it is documentary this poses for the option to just walk something as opposed to taking what we've just been told but that was never you're just gonna be in molesting language language is going to be I came with its own rules that doesn't affect anything else well it's going to be a computer measurement technology rather than reference I suppose it's because the fact that it's entirely up around questioning the idea of authenticity and all is a big personal thing as well well the one that I found myself thinking does this question %HESITATION they're both interested enough to visit just specifically question one view of Los R. should be even more specifics of the early twentieth century it's just that it's a great man thing but if something's every good piece of work and it's by Joe nobody thanks for nothing into something six activists say but it's fine yeah it was despite Modigliani than it's worth fifteen twenty feet I think the point is me is quite late on in the film but it's time to the art market it's not a fight the folly as cultural objects that's actually trying to achieve a unique that's pain felt by the art market it's a name that has currency while spying on that very much because his name has currency isn't as a criticism of the farm markets having turned the names of specific people into brands I just supposedly guarantors of quality when I know yeah it's one of those things I suppose where the criticism and it's a celebration of it at the same time because again he's cashed in on not it's a chink the whole years been able to live off for the film industry shares many similarities said not playing up the park markets names are sellable films are marketed by the starter actor or the star producer for the stock options so it's all about marketability want to touch tuning in so the fact that a forger ticket actually creates totally brand new age paintings even not even copies but just something and the side of this question because he knows how to do it costly knows how to tell mommy or mommy or the everyday fans be able to sell it Terrick our three with them thinking that it's radio got tied up by the market as the talent for creating arch if the simulacrum that's not both J. R. dot com is the simulation which is that to persuade you that the rest of the world Israel so I have no words right now yeah and then X. specially with that story of those twenty two the paintings of lawyer Kodar the end of the story is that will you contact the originals because we burned them so if they take the house in order to know that these done that was put into the mouth of what occurred is completely invented grandfather was quite revealing when he said to please tell me I'll be able to give something new to the world and in time you cast a period my I was able to invent something authentic about that because our brands that people didn't know about please let me have to act as a Texan here about four years as actually creating something new well they're wonderful just don't just paint their own paintings are stars and the fact it's because if the Russian involved in doing something which is adding yeah and the families they mention he tried to but he didn't have imagination is there's coffee this person has no particular unique world view and therefore has nothing to say yeah is their own but clearly is able to through the vehicle of other people's styles or whatever create things that are similar enough to be taken to be almost not even just sellable us obviously a large component of it but that even the larger kind of this is that a question if your door you can produce a Matisse which is as aesthetically valuable and beautiful as an original Matisse and for the same reasons then what actually is the difference between the two I was not saying that part where he was performing panting limitation and he's explaining them to taste didn't have the confidence to follow the line stay so I have had to pause I've had to stop and have to jerk you know that kind of thing and he actually performs in the air hi E. J. MIT sign that performance site and building of these other artists is really fascinating and then sourcing while star he is someone who he is I'm not sure has always been an actor even as a con man or whatever he's always acting as though he's performing he is someone who has made a living of pretending to be other people so what's the difference between the makeups and someone on the phone the firm also wanted to I didn't cry if you count agrees all of because IT buttons there's something because there was found forgery and then there was also the canvassing hoax about Howard Hughes the word hoax was used quite a few times and it was on his private headlines and it was the name of that book that Irving himself wrote I think that was then adapted into a film later on about the older we get the Richard Gere film I think two thousand six I remember rightly I called the host which is the story of different Irving's hoax with respect to the Howard Hughes biography so this hoaxes and those forgeries and then there's fakes and then as well as his own I'm just gonna lie to you for seventeen minutes at this from an instant coffee and the call lash reply I mean in the sense that some of our shops for replays of others yeah is that's what's that again and it's very quiet and very often you've got the shot playing or repaying part of TV screen that's within the frame system many levels mediation efforts because because this is it's awesome while still in his narration no as voice of of but I was on the screen download him sitting behind an existing desk surrounded by cans of film rather cartoonish looking kinds of cell phone in my pocket he typed up as if he's editing the film that you were saying about point and there's a whole history of manta films where some of the footage is somebody editing the film yeah yeah that was actually one of the things I was hoping to learn from people who actually know what sorts of things is to what extent what are the antecedents if anything for F. for fake and even what sorts of things in a more modern sense might be comparable in even just trying for me what to think about what are the sorts of things that could possibly fall into this category there are certainly documentaries that are very centered on the documentarian things like Michael Moore Roger and me or Morgan Spurlock super size me that sort of thing and even going back I was also thinking about things like Michael Kaelin's around the world in eighty days here is and I guess the workers world which preceded that which I've never seen so I'd know it only because he refers to it in around the world in eighty days but that seems clearly different from what's going on here you know this is not in any way about wells and some kind of journey that he's on and such so it didn't seem like that and the only thing I could almost think of really were somethings like maybe some of Michael Moore's later documentaries the ones that are more documentary essay types classically something like bowling for Columbine but again knowing very little about either documentary films or oven guard films in the state trying to think of what would have come before aside from generic fourth wall breaking because of course that's the thing I mean in a way this is like a very radical fourth wall breaking that's going on in this actually are their films that you could even say somehow that might plausibly be connected to the city's building honor would have known about or I would say so well who's always very well create optimum is going on in the nineteen twenties nineteen thirties and from large say in Europe more generally but certainly in France a lot of the cinematography and syncing can is a tribute to him as the first ever T. stay focused but actually Sharmarke was doing that ten years before in France in terms of fake documentary there's a solid history about in France the surrealists were already doing it respond while Spanish director who was living mostly in France his collaborations with Salvador Dali as I how about one mile me it's a phone call from the thick grass and that's one of the earliest fake documentary so it was a documentary that was in the style of the child log but it's completely fabricated so you've got things like this authoritative voice over and over several versions you Spanish version in that an English language version and so once you've got that customers should avoid difficulty we call it saying this little girl had this wrong with her three days later she was dead it's difficult going on making a mockery of those types of films that were colonial foreigners type things because this is coming off the back of her apart from her days to Monica north a few years after that and that sort of thing so there's a history that shows eagle who is a young filmmaker entrance and he died very young so he only made four films the hazardous couple of films where highly experimental documentaries his first ever film was a proposed a niece there's no narration inside and found with music but it's the editing is the narrator and it's making commentary on all of the rich Porsche what people and the size of France and see what they have been put on the boxes long traditions of African perforation and slavery and that sort of thing and also high they're continuing to keep dying that pairs topping and some long history of revolutionary politics and from most immediately those are springing into me as early examples I would say he's probably well aware of those kinds of phones because he knows what's going on in France and Spain I think and the twenties and thirties and forties Iran I was thinking about the FAA from it's hard to know how to describe it because there's many descriptions and I cannot see very messy harm minutes documentary but it's now on its own garden it's not often that depends how you look at it so thanks to I finish Bardez more recent documentaries the cleaners and I am going to size and put you here because mine's Sam Smith out if the light the power button they would be described as half a film so personal but the bakers I'm not you've maybe got that one person carrying with them that's coming from a personal perspective but it's a part of a much bigger issue here way and with them and the topic is their journey through it the principal is some rises so does the phone it is what it feels like to investigate an actual real world issues not the real issue so I was very skinny direct investigating the role of issue and make it sound right to character telling you about this obsession that he or she has spoken it's like after fake it's the actual active making the film as the investigation and days having meaning to aviation fund as possibly being used for activism and some way it's probably worth checking into Chris marker's body of work this was another seven to citizens would be surveyed montage is from one of the things that predates the supposed discovery and if it comes off the principal of what the service usually meant by motorists within school cultures affect where two chefs by being juxtaposing time great impression which is not evident in each show on its own as a person to do the conflict to the tee shot sometime before that was even discovered after some previous discovery discovery again focus because he went off Envestnet the times or will use this principle that is known as rather creative geography %HESITATION but to talk with me and it's where a script what we have done a lot for two people I suppose one of the two people who really want because she's our looks at that point it does have a lines outside a building in central Newcastle and Jeff does his lines outside a building in the centre Sunderland as if you were talking to each other face to face and then just to cross cut between two thanks for the directions were matched up and fly right above the fearlessness that doesn't exist in my world and that happens in at least two points from probably will probably marry at but definitely obviously and a couple paces and you've already mentioned the hotel in Las Vegas yeah that's that's very clear yeah the one is the opening sequence with walking through the streets well I was claiming that he got how to walk around and then we signed with tonight's network team for free but none of the sharks included a person turning that had within the same shop to avoid walking on the street that stuff was old clearly into complex SO maybe those men would hang on to look at while walking down the street the civics are Hussein math and the other one was what seems like a conversation between Irving and the hoary about whether delivery signs the work his fake so not yet because they were saying they were assigned and who's going to sign anything this is one of those instances we go all right one of the two of us is mistaken and none of us are going to miss it so this is this constant repetition of both of these characters they were assigned I never signed any of them there was a I never signed anything and it goes back and forth several times as if they're the same morning having that conversation but I actually punched two different entities wells is feeding into the creative powers of editing that's K. if even in Citizen Kane or school so she would not have to take classes right how does creativity conversation I think getting much in camera editing and camera montage this is the work of somebody who is hauntingly similar to this letter saying the sensor just having read a lot of it comes and gives you the sense of being aware of the finer points okay heard theoretical and applied field making it together yeah I don't know whether it was just that I had by that point fallen so far down the rabbit hole actually watching it even wondering in some of those sequences where it's apparently Clifford Irving being edited by the original filmmaker France all right when they went back with a look at that wall that wall looks to for the film stock looks different but I don't think they're actually in the same room and I don't know how much of that is appropriation because of course I don't think we've mentioned the origin of this in that there was originally the frontal reckon back was in the middle of they have an incomplete documentary about Aamir nori and then meets wells and wells takes it over and re purpose is that in large measure so it may even have been that those shots were shot at different times of like that maybe even with him repeating the questions that he had asked because he had only one camera on the shoot when he was doing it and so has to do the Irving interviews and his response to separate he did get the sense that there are times and you think this person knows that they're being filmed for a straight documentary this isn't intended for what was going to become sound says while it's fresh in my mind after the montage of all the man making there's quite a lot of him they every next stop for years and for some person it's ready the party is now and while this is so well known feminist unreconstructed dimension to some of this in terms of sexual politics of it although if I remember rightly or a code are claims that date which is part of some other project as well says was actually that she imagine there being a feminist dimension to what she was doing I've heard this expression again you know I'm a kind of white American and middle age man's I'm possibly the least oppressed person on the face of the earth right so I have no insight into this issue in any way I don't know whether at least one person I guess believes that %HESITATION takes that view seemingly is somehow is long as you're complicit in your exploitation that that's somehow okay yeah I don't it's difficult because it's for the raises the question of who say exposure because she seems there have been a very wealthy person and from what I've been reading she always kept her independence when she was involved with while she was had a room how ice sheet of rather on many things I think she didn't fall into the trap that many of the other people and if I fell into a into given that the thing that was fun and we've recently seen in the case of three ten hours of walking in New York City as a woman yeah I'm just gonna have me in public and I would be a record things like that you know the one where it was done was a twenty fourteen and it was the actual switch on over this he did it she was heckled and move while much street harassment all the usual stuff stalking new style K. Fodor free ages the stock was bought back segment was full it wasn't framed in such ways to indicate harassment I know everybody Sterrett pretty woman what this thing was supposed to go look at how lacking in control they spend on this model which is that this is what you do if you wanna have some stretches of somebody and has some ability to persuade his fears that it's okay for the phone to also allege that its female participants have a scene in which you fool some of the characters which is ridiculously characters for doing the latching that means that I'm actually really really need to go now immune to accusations of yourself latching signal lectures much as you want I'm not picturing the seventy minutes a made up story with way of walking around the little village in whatever works is because the song I think that place doesn't exist that's an entirely made up name I'm sure there's a real religion the photographs that they show you but I don't think that place even actually exists I'm supposed to be in from yes in the south of France and Germany not she's become more and more naked and I think that the when she's gambling benefits from the streets later in the day wearing a blue dress yeah yeah morning huge pieces believed transmission line must be said that was as close as you can get at this point is to just showing somebody frontally completely naked others also objects where she was completely naked back from the bank for just kind of hunched over so she was covering everything and if I remember the DVD commentary right I think she does say she's on the the criterion commentary that she is naked under that blue mass of whatever it was kind of weird because I'm trying to remember the story of course I will remember it properly but it was shot in one of the towns in France that sounds a little village has a lot of pilgrims because there's a spa or there is some reason I was %HESITATION visitation virgin Mary or something %HESITATION hundred they were like trying to do that shot while she's running that and there's like pilgrims going on the way to the train station as a whole is complete it's interesting that they choose to castle to do this right because of course what is the date of the female stark said he believes in the parts not a likeness of her so it's like their idea of the salacious painter with his naked woman the story about cancer the reason it seems to me at least one wells came up with this particular story with these particular details is that one of the things that seems to trouble him I thought the dories phenomenon is that if you have this painting was found someone's acted and it's verified by the expenses being a character and then another one time's up and it's also verified as being a case number the first one Israel and second one is the oldies that is no way of time there's this uncertainty which is really frustrating it seems to be the same striving was some section and I think the reason from sizes because start with the car service because there is a way in which you can actually result if the office does happen to still be alive you can hold them into a room and go did you paint packs please resolve this for stars like a fantasy eventually being able to resolve questions about welcome to stay although I suppose you could also tell us anything about how even Picasso himself it said that some of his own paintings didn't count as ten years yeah yeah capable of painting of a fat because they're fake because so as well yeah that's interesting and then that gets back I think to one of the things that I think at the heart of it well talk about at the very end with the levitation magic trick again where he then finally does talk a little bit about himself as a charlatan and what that means and getting back to the point you're making and %HESITATION about what distinguishes these various types of forgeries and lines that are going on clearly his claim from the end is that forgeries that are pointing at some kind of truth telling a lie to reveal something true that that's hard and like that okay and that somehow aiming at truth in some way %HESITATION revealing truth in some way is supposed to be part of what's distinguishing these various classes of people doing various kinds of hoaxes and forgeries and stuff like that the ones that are charlatans which he takes to be a good thing you know the ones who are tuning lies in the service of some further treatments are okay but perhaps not others it's coming up because there's some stuff we've wells during some I'm a little more stations because the classic thing with big stage comes right is that the kinds right is not claiming to have magical powers becomes or is just not telling you how they do that deceptions so it's an open line and the lines to you but isn't actually trying to see if the line is intended to deceive and that's a phrase I borrowed from an alley cinema starring put Joe camp is great and that seems to be a model that respects to hold on to for the rest of from and thank our case and forgery on forgery when this massive amounts of money involved still it's a large enough intended to deceive his line tends to do something else being very interval to this phone we could simply say that it was an attempt to trying to take several figures who had done something which falls within the casket deception I have done some harm by that and to try and redeem them in some way and you can see why wells himself would feel impelled to do that because he had to do with the war of the worlds radio times isolation accidentally accidentally on purpose police and address and be persuaded a bunch of people that that country was being invaded by Martians and actually caused real harm to come to real people sometimes he was trying to do something that the claims he's unconscious from a lawyer that he had told which wasn't the way I was going to be believed maybe this is the cynical reading this so maybe it's a cleansing of wells and conscience for taking things are forgeries notices and sang on these things great rather than on the activities of people who are borderline criminals I got a supposed he was trying to do that he wouldn't eventually mentioned actual criminal acts for these people I was quite vague for the mention of bank fraud basically what that's about and they don't really they obliquely referred to it they don't really explain what the deal is %HESITATION my understanding is that what they're referring to is that when Clifford Irving got an advance from the publisher for the fake biography of Hughes some of that money was supposed to go to Howard Hughes but of course his plan was to take all of it and that what he did was he managed to get the publisher to cut checks to H. R. Hughes right and that what happened was his wife at the time who's in the film and I cannot now remember her name actually then got fake identity documents under the name of Helga R. Hughes and went and deposited the money in Swiss bank accounts and then withdrew it immediately that's they were somebody who is this woman on the wing and ever we are we ever going to hear about that that's actually one of the things in a way weirdly enough that he sort of sets up the never really explains but that that was the idea that there's something like three quarters of a million pounds advance on the fake autobiography at least some of which was due to go to Howard Hughes which he then managed to get his wife to go to Switzerland and extract under false pretenses which is obviously a very serious criminal act I'm just reading about it and then as he did either yeah I was thinking I'm not a lot of the film has centered on narratives of failure in some way so there's quite a lot of success to a point and being a faker so even Orson Welles and he goes on to speak about himself and his own past he's a field artists to the field intercity hands becoming an action and then the movie maker the reports on hold please failed weights yeah how may I access the compound we could have gone and got a job working in a restaurant yeah because he succeeds in telling nice believe the lies that starts in the next artistic career that's not what he wanted %HESITATION envisaged way story he started out as a painter in its own right and feels the thought so he copies there's all these narratives of failure %HESITATION depending everybody's motivations everybody's actions the big question is after faith but it's not half for what else that too is an interesting question I always wondered about those two things about it one is that again if you watch the actual film it looks as if the title of the film is about fakes because that's what appears on the can these you know about things film by Orson Welles or something like that and you get the various other credits but it is certainly not an English known under that title what is F. for fake supposed to signify it's hard to know there's all kinds of things I suppose the one that I was just landed on is the sort of children's alphabet book thing and that partly tying into the very very very beginning of the film trying to capture the child like wonder of everything that he's trying to do you see what I mean and then you know connected up with the twinkle in his eye and everything's like you he you know here we're going to do sleight of hand but it's gonna be fun you should approach it in that sort of spirit the only mention that in mind while doing a conjuring of already down it was a whole baby dance magic theatre in Paris the young George Miller has got his training no just in simple and comfortable but also in the radio operator devices you have to make a note to do stage illusions for simple things like capitalism errors and it was on the basis of the fact that he became the first and most prolific trick so might there was quite a controversy in the press on both sides of the English Channel what's going on from it about whether these such films where I know for example you did the structure I can have someone jump off the table and turn into account when they hit the ground simple stuff missions such nice is there some reason some sushi yeah whether that simple turning something into something else makes me disappear mostly exposure well that's simple use of trick for making %HESITATION typical faking or whether it ought to have the time to trick which is more steaming practice behind it's more respectful to small %HESITATION that's a bit like countries that notes are very down it wasn't because of the inotes to your specific source of very early for me one in which I guess it's a matter of deception using this tool kit that you'll come on but not in order to deceive I think that's the contracts that wells is termed as numbers quietly in the sort of news that there's going to be a deception so as far as that back where at the end you guys hands I did tell you because I'm gonna tell you the truth right now I've never come across throughout the four seasons for this phone but that's one aspect that I've never come across a simple statement is going to be a generation for which this film is going to happen I didn't see a and then that's going to stop and then I'll remind you again instead there was two strains and that you've probably forgotten there was a transition period there's actually as well a kind of magic connection as well between the down and wells indirectly because of course I'm saying Harry Houdini took his stage name from who that and in fact one of the sort of again Wells in stories that I think appears in his biographies and things like that is the story that he told of being about the age that that child is in the at the very beginning and meeting and being taught sleight of hand and stuff like that from Harry Houdini which is what kicked off his personal life long enjoyment of an interest in sleight of hand magic tricks and stuff like that we know the genie for ask apology it was a bit craft eschatology he managed to pull off about half the time but most the time complete fight if we put it off after twenty minutes having family doing one yeah so how does a lot better it's like having was impossible at the beginning sequence is really really interesting and then without obsessing too much about details one of things that always strikes me about that sequence is literally the first five seconds of film when he's setting up the kind of standard magic patters of it's gonna be a magic trick this Michelle you know ladies and gentlemen if you have a small object but what he says in the beginning that he was really interesting ladies and gentlemen I say I think I actually had it written down yes it's for my next experiment I need a small object or whatever so he's using that kind of frame of that pattern but where you would normally expect to miss a trick me up for my next trick I'm going to blow up he says experiment there's like literally the first words of the film you know for my next experiment I need all of that always strikes me as such is a strange thing to say but presumably there for significant in terms of okay so if this is an experiment and even over black that is before you even when he gets to the boy I'd take clearly talking about the project as a whole kind of what he's trying to do in the way in again a very lovely sort of played away you have an introduction where almost all of the themes of the actual dialogue are present in the little kind of introductory sequence which is why you never ever ever skip introductions in Plato even when it just %HESITATION ha yeah low down in the gym yeah that was interesting and we saw this guy you know those are always like super important I've always been struck by that like the so it's an experiment it's not a trick this experiment it's only when %HESITATION yes says %HESITATION you're up to your old tricks again the word trick even gets mentioned maybe it's just something as simple as he doesn't want to tip his hand so early it does make me think okay right so what's the nature of this experiment who is being experimented on is it the fewer is it something like the film going public given all the trouble he had about films getting accepted and what not is that the subject of the experiment is it going to be a commercial success our people can understand what I'm trying to do something more intended I would say it's sad he Chris being coded as Mother Earth Day this is the master film maker still experimenting like a little boy and making films whether or not that Phyllis is success commercially or critically this is his opus this is his final swan song my thinking was that he was saying I've spent years making films according to a rule book and sometimes tearing a few pages out I will but for now at the point where I'm I'm known experimental from experimental to find there is someone who doesn't work according to any aspect of the system will work %HESITATION it's interesting enough no one also oxygen as well as this was also an experiment is a means to establish something that is true and so that could imply that what he's off to here it is some different colors I hate that seventy countries but the initial if everything's on casters entering these offer some deeper truth in order for this discussion about fake reading there will be something that works for this mass of people lying to each other that will come to some sort of research findings with anyone else just knowing it's fine don't worry after about two thirds the way through just how persistently he was lying this is an enemy of contrivance about everything that he said something about when you go out with him though he spent in the one moment thanks Jerry yeah I think I think it is it's like a month he's been and then he throws a party and he's always self very quickly of the polity he's greeting as guests and even about policy but things happen %HESITATION so much I think about probably about him having been a concentration camp when I was younger I was is a myth about him even part of that story for such kind of blur together the concentration camp thing I think it's just the somebody who had met him and that he was from %HESITATION perfectly normal kind of lower middle class background and not from an aristocratic background which I guess was a plane the aid you do wonder if maybe that's more than just about R. eight one has this reaction in all sorts of different kinds of how were they able to get away with it for so long but if they're all the things that seem obvious in quotation marks the confidence of the mediocre mom had some interesting stuff and all three of us being very generous vinyls and wells to somebody who committed walk in academic context would be academic misconduct and in our academic lives we look extremely harshly on people who knowingly commit plagiarism we take into account when people do it without knowing that it's a thing but when it's clear that they know what it is and that they've done anyway that's the way to get yourself kicked out of university but not I suppose the difference there is that there is an attempt to deceive and plagiarism and the implication being F. for Frank is that there was some playfulness so avoiding is an intent to deceive when the response was part of that comes through this claim that while he may sell his paintings to those who knows something quite cheaply and then it's then the people who knows and then sell them on for twice three times the price and make huge sums of he did shots of him burning the plant and the drugs that it does as well as a photo ID does he just works out in a mental gym where he works in this Matisse style for a bit Watson is meticulous them for a bit but then never sells these things even though he clearly has that's a big a servicing of something other than and intends to to see it's one of the fact that it's so clearly it's right to so many points that the holy things constantly deceiving people but just north I think they get around it by I said Irving describes says he'll take this painting that's a copy to one expert and I'll say yes that's up sixty international of fire fire in the five calories how can I think he'd take the exact same company to another person and they'll say well this is Katie FHA mocking the idea of the expert that was one of the things that I was thinking about this film have always does make me think about a noise sort of connects up actually to the point that you're making about who you're fooling and what is the extent to which the critique of art experts either can be generalized or is supposed to be generalized again it got played on the brain of course is that same thing in platonic dialogues right that Socrates is about showing that people who believe they're knowledgeable with respect to a certain thing actually parts knowledgeable and then obviously then you get the famous conclusion of the wisest man is one who realizes he knows nothing but in so far as these art experts are either ignorant about their subject in some way or are deficient in some way to what extent is that critique of artists and their complicity in a kind of scam generalizable to other kinds of experts and we live in an age now whether it's peculiar or more exaggerated in the U. K. I don't really have a sense of them live in states for twenty years but the kind of anti expert environment that we live in to what extent is there are criticism almost dare I say it was your example maybe think that other people like us who claim to have pieces of paper saying that we're experts in Abyan see and that some of it is a kind of self reinforcing thing that doesn't actually mean anything it was at the center in the last election we have this tendency expense as Michael got but anti intellectualism folks in our country in the most of the countries that has some purchase when some of these claims to expertise %HESITATION just the flashing of a piece of ID and wallet by somebody's job is to go to market I suppose the one thing the kids twenty years okay difference between households of expertise and also expenses that we are not going to be in the market we don't have a vested interest in pretending to be an expert when we know we have every reason to admit in situations when we don't know that we don't know if that's the same yeah pretty good expect me I've always thought of the pay its share is like adding the driving license it gives you license metric to do the thing doesn't make an expert driver has been making a good director there's so many people out there who you truly are experts in something you don't have to put the paper in their laps people in their respective paper who know nothing for me at sites take doctor philosophy quite literally this is I am like a pro let love find knowledge love and learning so that's why I take it so I don't claim to be an expert in anything I just love learning stuff and I want other people to love learning stuff my memories to Bob said cutting to be an expert in anything I can't remember half the stuff I thought it might affect you if someone was looking for the expert on performance art never mind I know that some faces that's not enough would you rank in the top ten of subjects but now I think I know exactly who to send you to I don't know if anybody else had any more they were gonna say I've got just a couple of things I don't really know how to link them together we don't take any calls for fines structures are facing the wrath of the camera for a moment well we just discuss stylistic tendencies serving having about Sofia Coppola's recently yeah the girl who really speaks so many contrasts with orange and blue is seen as so many dental cameras hand held for tens of sweaty Congress so defensive back but we've touched on stylistic aspects this from crazy and rose five AM David Thompson biography he mentioned shin montage alone takes on it's the Nissan fan that carry set everything can actually there's a part where wild says talking through his past and he's in this park summer and from yes I think just the changing colors of the same same folksy year passing seasons %HESITATION doesn't apply either because of the heat he went to the same park wearing the same clothes to from the same vantage and got somebody to fill in for about ten seconds in each season and then as it goes together to construct yeah I think there's certainly word again this is not based on a vague memory of the DVD commentary I think there were at least two visits and certainly when he talks about I forget exactly what it is I I think it's U. mentions the word winter whatever actually super glue yeah it really looks like it's been can't this got a filter or something yeah exactly because then obviously in the very next shot it's more like the previous one but still different and you say he's sort of telling his origin story as a faker during all of this is Allah may nicely done so I thought that was an interesting point the montage is in the measles and they're working together very much when the roads get associated with working using specific tolerance okay and not using others it's usually because we are certainly look to their work because those directors who use lots of editing still none the less use the movement within the frame and staging and apps in some places are so very comparable to patients included early on going well she never makes the camera and then after about three films going she's very judicious in her movements of the camera you know okay nine point eighty no the other day or send him up to come home never miss you since it's it's a very popular with never moving the camera and then suddenly I just went out okay that's just way too reductive for one thing that I think I underlined several times was that some of the people being interviewed have trains that only I have never forced anything so that was kind he was a fake fortune as one of the many customers from going back to when she was coming if this fakery going on if it's him pretending to us as a sold a fake and pretending that he's found his own fakes in galleries and catalogs and being sold online back we're just going to add a measure of the level yeah yeah this is a funny remark that Clifford Irving makes where he says actually that I've never known L. mir to be wrong in his identification of a painting that he's forged I don't understand what the clean or could mean you know because precisely into the hall of mirrors effect how would we know how we possibly verify that claim I just you know and he gives it with all the sincerity is is this is the conclusive argument I don't understand how can make any sense for precisely the reason that you're talking about the at least possibility that it is all one level further out than it is all the fake though one of the things that bug me a little bit about that and this comes up I think a bit more clearly we didn't see it but the nine minute trailer that wells put together in nineteen seventy six as the trailer for the film as if anybody was gonna show in nine minutes which of course the distributor didn't to the extent that I feel like I should be worried about this and connecting up with some of the things to do with the modern issues are partly around not so much fake news but more of stuff around almost like teaching the controversy so some things in the trailer are a bit more like where he's putting stuff together what's the connection between this person and Howard Hughes and putting these racing's together essentially asking questions to which the answer is obviously no nothing but by asking the question it's like well I'm not making any claims I'm just asking the question when you know that the answer is no and that it has no relations is not a question that we need to ask to what extent is that worrying stroke disingenuous because I think partly right at that point the hall of mirrors stopped you know I think it is possible to think is the hoary actually making all of this up and playing everyone you can spin that out even further into questions that are just not remotely plausible is acting a little of that comes up in the trailer that kind of worries me a little bit about this the one point where it feels to me almost like there's potentially a slightly sinister undercurrent here this is a maybe that's just modern life and fake news and teach the controversy %HESITATION the I'm just asking the question and things have the something that I thought was gonna be if they come up with the whole current faith communities obsession Rick talking a little bit earlier for dinner if I use a reality TV star being in the right place at the moment what is the experience of watching this %HESITATION and twenty eighteen because it's very different from watching and the mid nineteen seventies my name is strongly and when I was reading the biography Thompson mentions it's a very brief made doesn't go into anything but the timing of it it's kind of right around the time or just before Watergate breaks it will bid being made during and just after because right Nixon resigned in August of nineteen seventy four okay and the story has been going on for two years plus the amount of two two and a half years I think is there something different about it is that a bit of fun then yes you can read it back that kind you go deeper is there something is it tapping it even if it's not thought sinister thing itself is it affecting on not more sinister saying these creator participate having so much control and spreading so many lies are shaking society at its core at the moment it's kind of mind boggling how far and how deep it can go it doesn't bear thinking about really with everything that's for good reason a plate face thank Cambridge analytica %HESITATION this is gonna be a really nasty connection I have a little look at the H. U. L. O. I think she will archive at the university of Texas at Austin marrinson resources and one of the letters that I would like to it just says deal wells W. E. L. L. E. S. comma like war of the worlds full stop Wells W. F. O. S. that's it I'm so someone's got this you know he gave it to someone and ended up in this collection of classes but wells you know stick for their connection H. G. wells often claim that he was a profit currently I'm pretty fast it's it doesn't work that way what he did was he would just have a look at developments and extrapolate them one or two years in the future in a way that you could very easily predict anyway %HESITATION what he would do is he would provide a science fiction description of an existing technology I'm not science fiction description would be sufficiently Fagan loose that people come look back thirty years in the future and %HESITATION yeah he was predicting TV in the nineteen nineties %HESITATION his idea actually inspired the thing that he lied to counseling yeah zero tax for example he basically invented tax code landowning class of the time if there was a wells wells W. E. L. L. S. thirty eight LBS affinity in the clean well since wells syndrome of twelve twelve acre involve that baked bean F. for Frank where well this refers to the world in which they live being computerized since nineteen seventy five no one's on mobile phones no one's got personal computers when he talks about the world being computerized systems about computers used as emergency totals by governments and by businesses including a computerized traffic systems savings computers doing managing jobs I got to talk about his computer %HESITATION twelve any means it's computerized and sense of it's sanitized it's regimented it's dehumanized so it doesn't necessarily mean that scene phases that is eroding away our privacy but it certainly has negative connotations anyway he's already that point going okayed the ability to don't commands in such detail the very circulations of capital and resources in our countries that some of the computers are bringing about and that's the thing that we are now living with his name so he was just witnessing a very small budget version of what is now fully flowering controlling our lives so you're a little bit prophetic I suppose %HESITATION falls happening now although I suppose what he doesn't seem to proceed is the idea that computerization which enable misinformation I thank both the circulation of stuff that kind of information it wasn't for him computers actually associated with completely revival on falsified information site actually I just completely disagree not known for selling told although actually that does kind of connected to one of the other things in a modern context that I think is interesting about all of this implication wise and thinking about the existence of the time obviously but with computerization and with the ability of effectively perfect reproduction the kind of societal and general emphasis on intellectual property part of the whole collage element I mean obviously wells he had his source material that he not only have right inbox the cruelty use but obviously then collaborated with him thinking about this in connection with the idea of authorship and remuneration for authorship and authorship attribution being the basis of remuneration that you can kind of see in a way what door is doing is almost creating a new work of art through sampling almost I mean it's not quite the same thing because obviously it's very repetitive but where he's not copying an existing piece of work that is producing a new creative thing based on the elements that exist and then therefore profiting by them because he's able to pass them off as being in an alternate way have you been up by this is such a person thinking about whether or not what the implications how modern that felt to me in a way it's not to say I think it's a little too strong to say that it's predicted anything in that sense but a lot of the arguments that have been going on since at least the late eighties about sampling and about the creation of derivative works using various bits and pieces which belong to somebody else at what point the weirdest authorship resign with respect to that and is it sort of like the point the wells is making the Sharjah section %HESITATION which is I think the one that we have really talked about that much you know in that issue of like does it matter whether or not in terms of the value of something the actual kind of the value capital VS does authorship really matter in that context I was thinking as well by the nature of biography and this kids fit in with them as well because by producing new works that could be passed this old works of somebody else's hi decide a fax art history hi this out of facts the telling of that person's self and then what about you photo by okay a self authorship do you change your own story the change even if that person still alive to change how they can help themselves with a pipe wiles as soulful third because he talks quite a bit about himself and then he uses this as an opportunity to re write his own histories and re imagine his own history theory and quite literally actually in there the war of the worlds excerpt broadcasts are they're different they're not actually they are neither reproductions covers as it were of the thing or if they're actually knew this that didn't exist in the original broadcast their stock re imagining of what the original Citizen Kane it's going to fade with Joseph Cotten saying no I was going to be this character based on hard cheese but then it became a body so obviously wild how to do it and how you reveal and how you think it's not so there's this self authoring of photography and there's and there's a lovely kind of not to that in the news on the March fake news which is that was across the news river Citizen Kane and starts exactly the same way so this is a game news real death comes as it must to every man in this one you must come to every man Howard Hughes had a ticker tape parade it was supposed to be at the point when wells said over the last seventeen minutes has been completely made up probably all of us think trying to discover okay arises lost seventeen minutes has a very different stages from mechanical but one of things that that lost seventeen minutes included was a move from having people themselves talk about what they did to dramatizing it finds us read the thing with still photos of the cast iron with blinds in front of them to make it look like it was because I'm looking out of a window operating the blinds itself and that intercut with footage of four you're walking down the street combination of that and then the lights at all yeah speaking the lines of cancer have so yeah and while speaking the lines of voice grandfather so they would re enacting something that it never happened rather than dramatizing it even using still fight has only worsened so factors into account that runs in front again those are the photos her grandfather again this of memory for the DVD contact actually aren't even still photos actually still in shock that they decided actually not to use the moving image and excerpted individual things and present them as if they're photographs well it's not even that's not even true when she said here are some of the last known photographs that is a true wasn't even shot this photograph well there's no logical question that which is given a film strip is made up of many many still photographs and that what you do when you print %HESITATION still perform and published easy just take one of those photographs are printed as a step further off is a film in addition to being a set of moving images is also several tens of thousands of still photographs that you can pick one or two from our service call a few different status is of storytelling in this sometimes is interviewing people and getting them to say what they said what they did sometimes it's not newsreader who seeing on a tiny yeah they said it was actually the cinematographer camera operator that's not a real news reader anything that was all stuff that he and wells just pick ups that they just did we have quite a piping voice think that person's never could yeah and then there was the re enactment of just having to be able to move on to the people involved to speak the lines of the people involved there's quite a few different stages of recreating or providing an account of something I suppose that was just piling on those different sorts of providing an account of something was part of its very personal feel there was some lunches twelve or twelve as a matter of everybody telling the story and then the sting you with the waiter and the fact that originally calling this background for somebody who grew up in Wisconsin and in New York state he has a very English accent thank this sounds like a bit of an affectation quite correct in north western accent that you would normally get back quite correct size six is renewing his office which is in the north face and makes me think of Frasier Kelsey Grammer as I know that quite correct I'm gonna fight almost American accent is to get but this is somebody who travels a lot he travels a lot he said last year the Britain and Ireland and again I can imagine having as it were locked into the have been a stage actor effectively from fifteen fifteen sixteen and constantly needing to do different accents and stuff that you can do I guess I mean I don't not knowing the excessive or while I'm not in a position to judge via for example thinking of like lady Shanghai exactly supposed to be I I assume because it sounds typically irises completely wrong in that axes are completely wrong amazing found by his actions or any labs that uses a huge amount of Shakespeare on stage I think he adopted three pays for from a fellow bath and I guess chimes at midnight depending on how you want to count on that which is in a way actually a sort of collage as well right because it's a film about Falstaff taking various falls that scene from different Shakespeare plays and putting them together to create the life of all staff affected cities the sitting there yeah that that kind of we have a very yeah after you know after re after re delivery you know he was some of them without really chunky cigar in his mouth when he was asking for in this home and that's one of things that government in addition to the it's fine just touch kids when people are out in public and that's something that is that there are at one point was walking down the steps in a bath if any patted them hosting kid on the head and then slapped him on his I see that currently seem just like it's hardly possible hang up I know what I first thought they yeah exactly my highland is you know it's certainly at that time but it might not even entirely been untrue it's not a huge place and obviously much more so than perhaps in the modern Anglo American world you get very much the villages where everybody knows everybody else and you don't know if it's the presence of the camera for it his presence but when he's trying to fight with the people test party stopping everything apart I think you couldn't possibly know all of these people enough to bring them right to your heart for at least people clearly look like they just won after launch there's a lot of people and because his shot ambling through the streets of the city you very much with this in mind can be very for patiently %HESITATION yeah well we hardly wasted I'm going around to this place that's from a different planet in addition to the S. ones just touch kids thing smoking everyone just smoking constantly smoking in restaurants make use of those houses it's not been long since the smoking ban but because of that and because of the decade or two before that of it's gonna kill you we have not got to the point where that feels about real people smoking so constantly and protect social one of them not very brief mention of the already having a bodyguard yeah that guy from Minnesota yeah a guy who just read and I was kind of awesome and just so you have to go toward the third man became his bodyguards is not any code for love he didn't look like the bodyguard type certainly Michael herring yeah right about my vacation yeah maybe just more pounding on of rumor and uncertainty top of the Disney videos have anything more to talk I very much planned to look up accounts of what people did in reaction to the the world's phenomenon he hears stories that people can open files and stuff and I hear other stories about this told Gulf service sergeant to believe there's while saying that one woman came into police station with a plan to rest up and pain that she's been attacked by several motions am I one of the is that something that was just made up for that someone else made up and make it to him yeah it's not impossible I do recall that the traditional the completion a about UFO sightings and abductions and stuff like that that a lot of that actually really started kicking in the fifties when you start having these birth versus the flying saucers precisely the film which wells uses in here in various bits and pieces to illustrate the the war the world's things and it becomes kind of enabling mechanism for people to project their various psychoses onto in or something to kind of latch onto I think certainly some of that panic was genuine because again although he does when he's talking about it later well but you know we told them there was a whole preamble that Hey this is the mercury theater and we're gonna be dramatized for the world today he really doesn't their various places he could make it clear it just chooses not to so there's I think it kind of cheesiness element is okay we'll just try to see how far we can push this line for fun nothing from me you can read in Thompson's biography he mentions that files had read Pauline Kael's very scary thing essay of wild cold revising canyon and then not see two cars and the sopranos according to Thompson while I was really impressed us this free time anyway he actually ticket really positively give him freedom and license six six faction bras and sort of %HESITATION net and be proud of it and he relishes making sounds and watching presents himself as a fraudster as a trickster as speaker this is often the story behind works that seem to be have a kind of standalone branches of them is that they want the second home off of any the other part of a phone call on a mobile phone on the train that you hear the other part is what someone just said to the person you know it's a criticism that was made couple years beforehand it's a work that challenged a group of filmmakers or writers to do a certain thing and then they do that thing and then the idea challenge oriented publication of criticism disappears from the record const but I want that approach rather than going up thank you for holding going to disagree in writing or in some form to discover yeah in that case thirty sep frauds became his genius I were his genius thank you so much we have thank you guys for having me it's great to be able to watch this and be able to really talk about it the card and then you know just are you surprised if I'm if anything survives I'm interesting sensible at all because of me because it's you know kind of watches will occur oh my god this is amazing becomes kind of blathering massive amazing great great just great that's this nice and to be able to set and to use a few things I get a bit more sense of it because it's one of those it just keeps your mailing it five times how many he owns to grieve because almost two hours you can get it down under the house okay I think it's hard work yeah %HESITATION yeah I know I know I have every sympathy especially you know trying to line stuff up and get it to where the rhythm is right you know I mean I'm coming too soon so it doesn't feel a bit choppy others think everything getting it to sound like it's a natural single piece of speech as I say I have every sympathy from doing all the collage stuff that I'm talking about where it's like you know K. right where we want to overly these samples and we want to have this sound like a response to this exactly how much time you have to leave so that it sounds like a conversation tactical I take all the fake silences item on the reputations and things will of course and instinct about how long is a good polls and it's a very precise amount but it has something like a quarter of a second is too short a third of a second is fine an office I can do is to let you live the moments of time comes making the screen itself please I don't know it's a safe thing so much for having me I'm honoured to have been a worthy to come on and that's exactly what I want to try that option smartest many thanks to Jeff for joining us and all of our listeners and supporters I hope you enjoyed the discussion and got some ideas from it you can find Geoff on Twitter as happy plunder and keen to have more guests on and if you're interested in trying to meet %HESITATION recording over Skype tell me about your interests or work and a broad area of audiovisual cultures give me a shout on Twitter out of peablair or audiovisualcultures@gmail.com. Thanks for listening.
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