Dot Dot Dash Dot . . -- .

Lloyd Newson's The Cost of Living was screened at Dot Dot Dash Dot, presented by Artsadmin Youth Board, alongside three shorts from new filmmakers.

The Cost of Living (2005) is based on a stage production by Lloyd Newson and DVD8 Physical Theatre. The film combines various choreographic techniques, from slapstick, pantomime, ballet, human puppetry, to natural rhythms of sexual intercourse. Through them, it succeeds at creating a language of gestures that is more expressive than the verbal commentary offered by various characters. On the side of words, we have a crude one-sided interview with Phoebe, the legless dancer, by a man with a video camera whose lens gets intrusively close to the interviewee's body, questioning the lump on the back of his head, his stumps, his view of life. The answer is an [imagined] group dance in which other dancers imitate the legless leader's movements. This vision is inaccessible to the video cameraman who expected a mere freak show.  . . .

Phoebe's friend, a disillusioned street performer, offers a valid social commentary on the place of the artist, self-perception of an individual versus the reception by others. Yet in his behavior, especially towards women, he remains much more immature than the other male characters--Phoebe and the taciturn mime--who succeed at establishing a non-verbal communication with women thanks to their ability to synchronize the rhythms of their bodies with those of their female partners.


The Way Out (2009) from 15mm Films is composed of a series of seven hilarious trailers for a  fictional film about a terrorist organization of disabled people, called The Way Out, fighting for their rights, and increasing their own numbers in the process. The feature film is absent, as is any coherence of the terrorist action. The group is cornered in a bunker; there is no way out; and the non-events of the revolution are being televised on the outside, in a way inaccessible to the participants. The dismembered trailers are an irreverent metaphor for the lack of social acceptance of handicapped people.

The even leaflet states that the shorts were inspired by The Cost of Living. The term 'inspiration' seems rather forced here. One could say, rather, that they all have one of the two things in common with the featured film: they are either choreographed, or raise the question of disabilities, physical or mental.

Linda Franke's Balletbaum (2009) is a short animated film presenting, in the form of a tree, the separate lives of several people. We see them doing their daily chores, brushing their teeth, cooking. Their actions are constantly repeated, but each sequence is synchronized to the sound of a band playing an easy-going tune.


Sketchbook of the City (2008) by Malene Nielsen and Esther Wrobel is a beautifully choreographed exploration of a city. A dancing body moves through its different spaces, disregarding verticality and horizontality and, as a result, creating a new city. This short film speaks of the potential of art to transform and create worlds thanks to its powers of renewed perception.


RELATED LINKS:
Interview with Lloyd Newson in Article19.
Lloyd Newson's DV8 Physical Theatre.

15mm Films on YouTube.