Art Smitten - The Podcast

Francofonia is the latest film by Russian director Alexander Sokurov, who is perhaps best known for his 2002 documentary Russian Ark, an ambitious and awe-inspiring one-take trip through St Peterburg’s Hermitage museum during the Russian Revolution. In Francofonia, Sokurov once more returns to the themes of art and war and museums, this time focussing on the Louvre during the Nazi occupation of France. As someone who doesn’t get on terribly well with documentaries, I found Francofonia rather intriguing as it played with the documentary form and fused narrative with truth and reconstruction, past with present. We see Napoleon wandering the halls of the museum, we see the German officer in charge of dealing with the Louvre meeting with the then head of the museum. Sokurov himself narrates the documentary and appears on screen as one of the film’s central figures, talking to the characters while also being depicted as trying to piece the film together and not knowing how because the nature of c

Hi, it's Adalya with my second review from this years Man Booker Prize shortlist. This week I'm looking at Deborah Levy's Hot Milk. Hot Milk follows Sofia and her mother Rose as they travel from England to clinic of questionable merit in Spain, seeking answers to Rose's litany of mysterious ailments. Set in the searing heat of Southern Spain, Sofia undergoes a twisted iteration of the classic beach sexual awakening narrative while Rose undergoes Dr Gomez's treatment. As the reliability of the mother who so shapes Sofia's life and identity becomes shaky, the importance of her relationship to her father and his Greek heritage becomes a new fixation. Levy's writing is lucid and evocative. Images recur, morph and intermingle in unexpected ways. Her exploration of what it means to form an identity around illness and what it means to form an identity in inverse to somebody else is arresting and important. We are drawn immediately into Sofia's inner world, a stilted filter on reality. Even the dialogue felt unnatura

Hosts Beth and Thierry interview Patrick Durnan Silva on his production, Cull in the 2016 Melbourne Fringe Festival. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Thursday, 1st September marked the seventh year for the Korean Film Festival In Australian (KOFFIA). ACMI hosted Melbourne’s festival and invited guests to share canapés of kimchi, cocktails and listen to traditional music on the Gayageum. This festival boasts twenty newly released and critically acclaimed Korean films, however it was the film titled 4th Place, written and directed by Jung Ji-woo, which opened the festival. Commissioned by the National Human Rights Commission of Korea, 4th Place delves into the brutal world of competitive sports and questions whether, in the pursuit of success, does the end ever justify the means. Opening with a black-and-white prologue, we are introduced to fresh-faced competitive swimmer, Kim Gwang-su (Jung Ga-ram), who has been tipped as Korea’s future for Olympic success. After returning from practise and looking for dinner, he meets one of the swimming reporters Young-hoon (Choi Moo-sung) and they both partake in a night of heavy drinking. Despite this

On Tuesday, the Man Booker Prize Shortlist was announced. For those of you not in the know, the Man Booker is a prize given for what the judging panel deems to be the best novel written in English and published in the UK each year. For many including myself, the Booker is the Prize to watch, the AFL Grand Final for nerds. This year's shortlist consists of:Paul Beatty's The SelloutDeborah Levy's Hot MilkGraeme Macrae Burnet's His Bloody ProjectOtessa Moshfegh's EileenDavid Szalay's All That Man IsMadeline Thien's Do Not Say We Have Nothing The Booker somewhat controversially opened the prize up to all english speaking countries in 2015 (previously only awarding the prize to those in the Commonwealth), and this years longlist contained notably more american authors than the one that preceded it. For the next six weeks I'm going to be looking at each of the Man Booker Shortlist picks, with occasional help from some of your other favourite Smitteners, talking about why these might have made the shortlist and who

Rupert Burns is Kelvin Campervan. Or is Kelvin Campervan Rupert Burns? They seem to get along pretty well in the one body, but can never quite decide who is the artist and who the creation. The one man show explores the nature of a person's relationship with themselves and their history. It is set from the vantage point of mid life, but even at my age of 21 I was inspired to be existential about my own history of years and to ponder their value, as well as the missed opportunities I have already tasted.    I would have to compare the performance, to any Harry Potter fans out there, to the 'ridikkulus' spell. This magic is designed to defend against the mysterious being called the 'boggart', that tends to hide under beds and in cupboards, and transforms into people's greatest fears when discovered. The spell 'ridikkulus' works by altering this fear, forcing the boggart to take on a ridiculous aspect. For example, if you are terrified of giant spiders, then the giant spider will now be wearing roller

Ebony interviews Georgia Symons, creator of Fringe 2016 show You Must Come Alone to Read the Last Book on Earth. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hosts Beth and Thierry interview Assistant Director of the UHT production of Macbeth + Macdeath: a coda, Rachel Shrives. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hosts Christian and Adalya interview Matthew Lutton about the Malthouse Theatre's 2017 Program.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Christian speaks to writer/broadcaster Made Stuchbery, chatting about her ten part radio series Born to Die. It's available on soundcloud.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hosts Christian and Jim sit down with artists Alexia Brehas and Chanelle Nillson to discuss their upcoming joint exhibition 'Rave in Paradise', Off the Kerb Gallery and Studio. Showing from September 9 at 6pm.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Phil Rouse decides to introduce his production of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui with a very peculiar sight: some slides of Elizabethan text hover above our very skilled ensemble as they are all club dancing to ‘Turn Down for What.’ It’s one of those audacious mixes of the highbrow classical and the lowbrow modern that the theatre world can never get enough of. Arturo Ui (played here by George Banders), the fictional Chicagoan crime lord, is of course Bertolt Brecht’s parodic and blatantly allegorical version of Adolf Hitler, rendered comprehensible for an American audience in 1941. Since the play took 22 years to make it to Broadway, it has only ever been performed in front of already well-versed audiences, and never as an introductory education on the history of Nazi Germany. Before they’ve even sat down, this 2016 Australian audience will already hate the infamous dictator just as much as the play’s 1963 American audience would have, but their prior knowledge of Brecht

On Thursday night I showed up at La Mama ready to see The Ribcage Collective’s new work of experimental theatre. The Ribcage collective are a collaborative group of young theatre makers from varied theatrical backgrounds. For a second year running they have written, devised and performed works of immersive, sight-specific theatre at La Mama in Carlton. Their previous show was described by ArtsHub as “an intimate theatrical experience enough to reawaken a childhood sense of play”. That sounded pretty good to me. At the beginning of the evening we found out the recent arts funding cuts had just forced the closure of Platform Youth Theatre, the organisation that had brought these performers together. The kind of theatre we were about to see – youth-driven, experimental – is becoming harder and harder to make, even though it seems essential that young people have opportunities ambition, funded work. The show was based around a new Australian myth written by the group. It followed a f

Kevin Smith's Yoga Hosers is one of the most bafflingly entertaining films of the year. A part-time cheesy teen movie, part-time goofy horror flick and full-time American satire of Canada, Nazis, Canadian Nazis, ‘kids today,’ and of course yoga, it never really asks to be taken seriously, just to be enjoyed. It's a follow-up to Smith's previous film, Tusk, with Johnny Depp reprising his role as the eccentric Guy Lapointe. However, it still works as a standalone film. Those who haven't seen the first movie will be a bit confused by the odd reference to a man being turned into a walrus, but with a script this off-the-wall those moments will hardly stick out. Yoga Hosers follows the misadventures of Colleen McKenzie (Harley Quinn Smith) and Colleen Collette (Lily-Rose Depp), two best friends who are almost never apart. Together, they are taking yoga classes run by Comic Side Character Yogi Bayer (Justin Long) who teaches a very unusual type of yoga. They also sing in a band together, where they mock

Heavily stylised and endearingly quirky, Girl Asleep could be very easily described as “Wes Anderson does Napoleon Dynamite”, but in reality it’s much, much more than that. Sure it’s full of dorky humour and a kitsch yet meticulous 70s aesthetic, but it’s got a unique and very sweet take on the coming-of-age story. The girl of the film’s title is 14-year-old Greta, who’s just moved to suburban Adelaide and is having trouble fitting in at school. She meets another outcast kid named Elliott and the two strike up a nice friendship. Soon after, her parents decide to throw her a 15th birthday party, and reluctantly she agrees. There’s bullies, there’s sibling rivalry, there’s anxiety over appearance and romance, all the standard teenage things. It all sounds like such a simple premise. But that’s basically the point. It all sounds like such a simple premise because it is, and deliberately so: that which is generic is of course universally resonant.

Cattle, contemporaries and canapés, Eddie Perfect’s play; The Beast, promises to touch you inappropriately in all the right places. By challenging a lifestyle that conceals itself behind a facade of authenticity, the show wastes no time in establishing a humorous destabilisation of friendships; stripping characters down to their inauthentic cores. With sensitive subjects used as punchlines to boot, it’s no lie to say that The Beast works to attack and offend, although this may not be a bad thing. The larger than life caricatures seek to hold a mirror up to those who consider themselves elite in society. They grow organic vegetables and purchase “ethical” cattle in an attempt to reduce their eco footprint, although this lifestyle definitely comes at a cost when the six friends find that they’ll have to kill their own dinner. The play embodies almost each and every one of us that invests in a false perception of class. Whether it’s the food we eat, or merely the ways i

A film that opens with a lens-flared shot of a forest is only ever going to be a particular kind of film, I thought. A twee, wilderness-worshipping kind of film with smug self-contentedness. But Captain Fantastic, written and directed by Matt Ross, is not really that kind of film. Or rather, not entirely that kind of film. Yes, it’s full of obsession over nature and that brand of anti-consumerism that we all learn during our teens that pretty much starts and ends with “stick it to the man” – but it’s a film that’s occasionally and increasingly quite charming and that allows its characters to exist as more than a mere stereotype, delving into their lives and minds. Disappointingly, though, that is only a minor achievement that doesn’t really make up for the overall lack of depth in the storytelling. Captain Fantastic centres on Ben Cash, a father who brings his kids up in the woods, training them up to peak physical and mental ability away from all the aspects of moder

Hosts Christian and Jim are joined by Chris Hosking, The Ribcage Collective's Co-Artistic Director for their upcoming immersive theatre production. It will be running at La Mama Theatre until September 11th. Tickets and more information available: http://lamama.com.au/2016-winter-program/the-ribcage-collectiveSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hosts, Jim and Christian, interview actor Francis Greenslade, best known for his televisions roles opposite Shaun Micallef in Mad as Hell and Denise Scott in Winners and Losers. Greenslade is also a seasoned stage actor and speaks about his upcoming role in Red Stitch Theatre's production of You Got Older. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hosts, Thierry and Adalya, are joined by Alex De La Rambelje, one of the magicians in Gentlemen of Deceit. They talk about his performance on Australia's Got Talent and their upcoming shows at the Sydney Opera House on October 15th and 16th. Tickets available here.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.