PUTNEY DEBATER
A personal blog
The Music of Politics
It was an unexpectedly amusing moment when Cameron was caught ‘humming’ to himself as he went back into No.10 after announcing his handover to Theresa May, unaware that his microphone was still open.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ap1qKhCSeKc[/youtube]
Even more entertaining was the rapid reaction of a bunch of savvy composers, some of them in response to a challenge by ClassicFM. Read more
Brexit, Labour & the Media
What the anti-Corbynistas are doing is unconscionable. In pursuing their cackhanded coup, they are abdicating from intervention in the process of negotiating Brexit. They wouldn’t admit it, likely not even to themselves, but this might even be one reason why they’re doing it, because of course they too have no plan for how to proceed, any more than the Tories (while Owen Smith even seems to think he can successfully challenge Corbyn by proposing a second referendum). They’re like animals caught in headlights, not knowing which way to turn, while now installed behind the wheel is Theresa May and her equally clueless crew, driving in the dark with no road map and their GPS out of range, sniffing their way to the unshackled neoliberal dreamland of neo-Thatcherism.
A chance encounter with Kiarostami
In May 2005 I bought a new pocket-sized video camera. The next day I took it with me to try out when I went to visit Kiarostami’s installation, ‘Forest Without Leaves’, at the Victoria & Albert Museum, and as I was filming, Kiarostami himself appeared. (After I shut off the camera, another figure appeared – Ken Loach. We chatted and then went all together to look at Kiarostami’s photos in another room.) I didn’t do anything with the footage, since after all, it was only a test, and I hadn’t yet mastered the camera, but I offer it here in modest homage to this most remarkable of filmmakers. The rare kind who keeps you believing in the power of cinema to refashion our perception of the world that the other kind of cinema blocks out.
[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/173587645[/vimeo]