Short Films, Art And Writing By Women: The Fifth Sense, In Partnership With Chanel And ID

Bonjour my little balls of bellybutton fluff that are quite cute really so you leave them where they are. I’m madly getting everything ready for my reading in Brighton this weekend (for the Fringe Festival) so expect more on that next week.

In the meantime here are some short films, some on writing, some on art, some just creative, from a video, article and exhibition project called The Fifth Sense between Chanel (yes, the perfume/designers) and iD. Vice has more info.

I like Jellywolf because it gives you a really good insight into my life around age 19-24: lots of luminous clothes and clubs and a world not quite set in reality.

Here’s the director, Alma Har’el, talking about making films.

Photographer Harley Weir discusses her photography and film work.

Her final project became portraits of five different artistic women. The first is poet Zariya Allen.

Next is dancer Manthe Ribane.

Then artist Christine Sun Kim.

Then photographer Momo Okabe

Lastly actress Oulaya Amamra.

Finally, here is a video of the mirror sculpture exhibition by Es Devlin. See you next week!

 

Dorothy Parker Reads Her Poems And Short Stories

Dorothy Parker, acidic wit of the Algonquin Round Table in 1920s New York, has recently become one of my favourite writers since reading her Collected Short Stories. They’re wonderful snapshots of urban twenties (and beyond) city life, often monologues or dialogues that are painfully honest and fiercely well-observed. People don’t change too much and the characters are still recognisable today.

Here are some clips of her poetry and prose courtesy of the world web.

Dorothy herself reads one of her more disturbing poems, a comedic take on suicide (she was known for her attempts on her own life) Resume:

Here is a reading of probably her most famous story A Telephone Call. It’s something most people at one time or another can relate to.

Anne Hathaway reads from her short story The Garter:

Dorothy wishing for more in One Perfect Rose:

A man with a crazily husky voice reads her funny and painfully true insight of a man afraid of what he did the night before in You Were Perfectly Fine:

Stephenage’s artistics

I must share with you my friend Steve’s (or Stephenage or Weeven) art blog.

He sells his proper art along with t-shirts etc from his website, but his blog is purely for entertainment.

Have a look and witness such delights as a picture and poem about Wayne Rooney (apparently his favourite dinner is something with mash). Also there is this picture of Charlize Theron:

Rather Useful Writer Links

Recently I sent a short story to a magazine, and it was rejected. So? I hear you cry, this happens all the time. Do not sully our eyes with such pointless jibber jabber. Get thee forthwith into a nunnery, or at least next door.

What made this rejection interesting, my little slices of pepperoni, was the list of links they sent me. Websites with a range of publications that take short stories! They were: New Pages, Poets and Writers website, a list of Poetry Publishers who accept Electronic Submissions, a list of Online Literary Journals and a list of Literary magazines.

As well as that I discovered a benefit from following Neil Gaiman on Twitter other than being able to ask him directly if I can lick his face (I don’t really do that. Or do I?). The other day he posted this link, which appears to be a site called LitReactor, ‘a compendium of top advice from Contemporary Authors.’ Apparently it’s from the team that brought you ChuckPalahniuk.net, the site full of advice and workshops for cult writers, Chuck being the author of such cult classics as Fight Club.

Go on, you know you want to…

Stewart Lee

I have my writing heroes including Neil Gaiman, Helen Dunmore and Sarah Waters. However the side of me that writes and performs for Braintree Ways is fascinated by comedy and those who enact it including Andy Kaufman, Eddie Izzard, the South Park pair, Peter Cook and Monty Python.

One person I saw at Edinburgh who intrigues me at the moment is Stewart Lee. I used to watch Lee and Herring as a child but his current stand up on programmes such as The Comedy Vehicle is fascinating (and funny).

In the first clip he breaks the fourth wall by mentioning a grandad and then declaring him not to be real, along with explaining the nuts and bolts of stand up to the audience and in a fake interview. This made me feel firstly as if I was watching something almost Brechtian and, secondly, intellectually pretentious enough to use Brechtian as a description.

The second clip is one of his repetative tangents which reminds me of my student poetry era. I’d go to various venues around Bath where the smoke would turn your eyes red and various people took turns in reading out their scribblings to live music. Stewart Lee’s rantings make me think of 50s/60s era beat and performance poets. See for yourself.