I always like to go ‘frow’ (catwalk shorthand for ‘front row’) at the cinema, but on a recent visit to the Towner Gallery’s screening room I arrived to find that – unusually – a little group was already sat in the central seats right in front of the screen. It wouldn’t have been Covid-polite to sit right next to them, so I plonked myself behind them.

 

I soon realised that this irksome group included the director of the movie, the renowned YBA Georgina Starr, who was to do a Q&A afterwards, so I watched the film – the Jarman Award-shortlisted ‘Quarantaine’ – with her blond-locked head almost directly in front of me.

 

The Jarman Award, inspired by the late Derek Jarman, ‘recognises and supports artists working with moving image and celebrates the spirit of experimentation, imagination and innovation in the work of artist filmmakers in the UK’. We’re not talking mainstream, then: I doubt there has ever been a car chase in a Jarman Award-shortlisted film.

 

With a jolt of smugness, I soon recognised the main cinematic influence behind the narrative of Quarantaine. It was, I think it’s fair to say, a liberal reworking of the 1974 Jacques Rivette ‘metamovie’ (WIKI) Celine and Julie Go Boating, one of the craziest films I’ve seen in the last couple of years (I think I found it on the Arthouse-movie streaming service, MUBI).

 

And so there we had it: an out-there video artist rapping on an already out-there arthouse film, watched over the head of – and thus, to a certain extent though the eyes of – its maker: floating heads, mad operatic nonsense-speak, naked women crawling through giant ears, symbol after symbol after symbol, all in a gloriously vivid palette, for 45 minutes. The experience was meta-meta: I couldn’t help wondering what my 89-year-old mother, for whom meaningful art stopped around the time Picasso went Cubist, would have thought about the whole affair.

 

The thing is fifteen, or even ten years ago, I would, I reckon, have considered it to be an exercise in pretentious claptrap. But since then, I have educated myself a good deal in experimental art and cinema. I’ve sat through Hiroshima Mon Amour; I’ve watched documentaries about Hilma af Klint; I’ve visited the latest Matthew Barney show at the Haymarket. And much, much more, besides. I have, I believe, laid down the stepping-stones necessary to appreciate – even to enjoy – a film of this type.

 

Afterwards Starr gave a very interesting interview about the making and meaning of the film, and was very gracious in her response to my question – I have vowed ALWAYS to ask a question in such circumstances, almost as a matter of journalistic pride – about how come there were no men in the movie. It was a question, I guess, whose formation didn’t utilise the knowledge gleaned from those aforementioned stepping-stones.

 

I immediately felt embarrassed about the question, wishing that I’d asked something that had sounded more intelligent. But I really had wondered why she’d created such a manless little world. And I quantified my embarrassment by telling myself that most people who ask questions in such events do so to show off their own knowledge rather than to make a genuine enquiry. Anyway, she laughed, and gave a charming little response, and I was left feeling very positive towards her, and her madcap film, which I’ve thought about a lot in the subsequent days, always the sign of a good movie. I even forgave her for sitting in my seat.

 

 


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