Posts Tagged ‘Photography’

I Am Martin Parr (2024)

Dir: Lee Shulman | UK Doc

This new documentary raises the profile of the maverick Magnum photographer Martin Parr through the prism of a personal road trip across England with the artist, director Lee Shulman

From the 1970s onwards British documentary photographer Martin Parr turned his tragicomic anti-establishment gaze on everything he considered wrong with the UK: from consumerist to politics to kitsch to produce some of the most ironic and telling images of the past century.

Shulman mines the archives for exclusive footage along with insightful commentary from individuals involved in Martin’s life and career – such as Grayson Perry and musician Mark Bedford – along with members of his family and personal friends.  I Am Martin Parr shows how he championed his own style to revolutionise contemporary photography by making his subject matter more relatable for the average punter.

Martin Parr and Shulman start their intimate odyssey in Bristol – which is also home to Martin’s acclaimed photography Foundation – to and end up in New Brighton where Parr reshoots his acclaimed work ‘The Last Resort’ 40 years later. Parr famously said “a good photo is one that tells a story with an energy that attracts the viewer” and that pithy statement seems to incapsulate his iconic work. @MeredithTaylor

ON RELEASE from 21 FEBRUARY 2025 in UK Cinemas

Never Look Away (2024)

Dir: Lucy Lawless | With Christiane Amanpour, Margaret Moth | US Doc 85′

A swashbuckling CNN combat camerawoman and trailblazing female icon; the unbelievable, yet entirely true, story of award-winning journalist, Margaret Moth, is brought to vivid light by acclaimed actress and activist, Lucy Lawless, in her directorial debut.

An inspirational and unflinching biography, which includes both testimonials from the people who knew and worked with Moth, and dramatic footage from the war zones she covered, Never Look Away delves into the life and work of an incredible woman, a true pioneer known for her tireless work to capture catastrophic events and atrocities on film, no matter the risk.

After her first assignment to cover the riots that followed Gandhi’s assassination in India, she would go on to travel to the heart of the most dangerous conflicts in the world including the Persian Gulf War, the Bosnian War and the 2006 Lebanon War. However, underneath her fearless persona, candid interviews with colleagues and family reveal a self-destructive and emotionally fraught woman who would struggle when anything got in the way of her appetite for adrenaline and efforts to document the worst of humanity.

Never Look Away is in UK cinemas from 22 November 2024

UK Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8s0rPcU_OiA

Tracking Edith ****

Dir/Writer: Peter Stephan Jungk | Doc | Austria 2016 | 91 min.

Based on his non-fiction book Die Dunkelkammern der Edith Tudor-Hart (The Dark Rooms of Edith Tudor-Hart), Peter Stephan Jungk explores the exciting secret life of his great aunt Edith Tudor-Hart (1908-1973).

This enigmatic woman was best known in the art world as an iconic photographer (her photos can be admired in the Scottish National Gallery), but the clue to her secret life lies in the double meaning ‘dark rooms’: she was also a spy instrumental in the recruiting of Kim Philby and the other members of the ‘Cambridge Five’. 

Born into a progressive Jewish family in Vienna 1908 – her father renounced Judaism then founded a bookshop and a publishing company. Edith Suschitzky was only sixteen when she went to London in 1925 to study with Maria Montessori, the famous Kindergarten pioneer. On her return she worked in Vienna’s branch of the Montessori School – but her life changed when she met the academic Arnold Deutsch in 1926, who also worked as a recruiter for the KGB. Their relationship was significant for two reasons: he not only recruited her for the organisation but also gave her a Rolleiflex camera, and she set out to picture the poorer districts in Vienna before studying Photography at the Bauhaus in Dessau under Kandinsky and Klee among others. 

Edith also developed radical tendencies – visiting London she was expelled after filming a demonstration and talking to a Soviet delegate. But by then she had already met Dr. Alex Tudor-Hart who would later divorce his wife and move to Vienna, where they were married. Her photos were published by TASS and after the Austrian Nazi Party became more and more powerful in the mid 1930s the couple fled to the England where they renewed their acquaintance with the recently married Litzi Friedmann and Kim Philby, who had also had to leave Vienna for the UK after the Nazi Party had killed the Austrian chancellor Dollfuss. In 1934 Edith introduced Philby to Arnold Deutsch in Regents Park – the rest is history.              

Jungk enlivens his debut documentary with interviews with family, amongst them Edith’s brother Wolf, and other witnesses of her turbulent life. What becomes clear is that Edith was an idealist who never saw the Soviet system but was faced, like all central Europeans, with the alternative of Hitler and Stalin. Above all she was a humanist who never received any money for her clandestine activities – but unlike Philby, MacLean, Burgess and Blunt – she always lived modestly. Her first loves were the impoverished children of Vienna and Brixton, whose lives she hope to transform through her creative endeavours. AS

AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS NATIONWIDE FROM 27 July 2018 | Arthouse Crouch End, Bertha DocHouse, Barbican Cinema and JW3 | Main photo credit: Family Suschitzky

Samsara (2011)

Director: Ron Fricke                  

Writer: Mark Magidson

Documentary

Samsara is a visual tour de force that will appeal to anyone interested in the natural world or the origins of humanity.  Taking its name from the Sanskrit word for the circle of existence, Ron Fricke spent five years to putting this documentary together: the result is a crystal clear pastiche of images shot on 70mm film in the highest definition footage in available in cinema today, accompanied by a dynamic score from Lisa Gerrard who sang on the soundtrack “Gladiator”.

Samsara is certainly the most relaxing film you’ll see so far this year.  The global odyssey unfolds sensuously with eye-popping clarity and total calm, as the camera pans through five continents and twenty five countries in the form of a guided non-narrative meditation showing how the rhythms and symmetry of the natural World are mirrored in our own life cycles and creativity.  Gradually it becomes more sinister and takes a non-judgemental look at the legacy of our existence focusing on the imprint of  industry, pollution and natural disasters and leaves us to form our own conclusions. Just lie back and think of England, Burma, India, Canada, Nepal, France, Germany, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Peru, Russia, Argentina and many more.

Meredith Taylor

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