To the Renoir to see Iain Sinclair and Robert Klinkert’s 1967 film ‘Ah Sunflower!’. The film is semi-legendary, an important part of the Sinclair narrative. He’s written of how the cash he received from the German TV company WDR paid for his Hackney house. The story of the filming became Sinclair’s first (self) publication ‘The Kodak Mantra Diaries’.
The Renoir is sold-out, midday Sunday. I see Iain in the foyer, and we briefly talk about my film of Nick Papadimitriou, ‘Beyond Stonebridge Park’, that he has kindly screened excerpts of at ‘City of Disappearances’ events. I foist a copy of my Wycombe book, DVD and DHPS newsletters upon him. When I point out the Nodules of Energy reference that I took from his ‘conversation’ with Will Self at St Luke’s in 2004, he seems amused by the application of this formula to High Wycombe rather than Bunhill Fields.
He’s enthusiastic about the gathering, the numbers, the energy enlivening the corporate monocultural concrete of the newly de-generated Brunswick Centre. We should stage another Congress of the Dialectics of Liberation, at the Roundhouse, 40 years after the original, open up the secret London, an all-nighter, Iain says. It seems plausible, it seems like the right moment, the backdrop being Iraq rather than Vietnam, Blair for Wilson.
Sinclair introduces the short film selection as "what some people might call ‘Deep Topography" – a term outlined by Nick in our film. He adds the definition that it’s a "going back into the City and looking at it in a kind of structuralist way."
Ah, Sunflower!, exceeds expectations, the casual camerawork, the capturing of Allen Ginsberg in full flow delivering mantras and propositions of a kind of psycho-politics that seems ripe for realisation.
Iain’s 1972 film ‘Maggid Street’ gets a rare outing, a surreal Brakhage-inspired gothic tale, a minor masterpiece. Sinclair has hours more of unscreened 8mm footage waiting to be unleashed, Bolex diaries of Hackney’s transformation in the 70’s.
There’s talk of re-staging the event somewhere, in one of the Curzons. If you don’t make it, the DVD is available from The Picture Press (mailto:info@thepicturepress.co.uk. Beat Scene has also republished ‘The Kodak Mantra Diaries’ (I think Dolly Head Books has one of the ultra-rare originals).
Iain Sinclair will also be at the NFT on Feburary 27th interviewing Andrew Kotting after a screening of Kotting’s new film ‘Offshore (Gallivant)’ – book early if today’s anything to go by.
Iain Sinclair has written about the experience of making the film on the Guardian's arts blog
3 comments:
Dollyhead Books (www.dollyheadbooks.com) don't have a copy of Kodak Mantra Diaries for sale. In fact there is something distressing about the selling of Iain Sinclair's books - all purchasers have so far been non-payers. Now I'm going to keep all the copies for myself in a great big box in the cellar and not let anyone else have them.
Sorry for that Red Herring Chris. I told Sinclair about your copy, and heard several others describing the original publication to friends. You don't think these non-payers are old rivals in the book world.
John, I am sure I have no old rivals - since to rival me would to exist in a nether world of parlous revenue-stream and hand-to-mouth survival... leaving neither time for rancour and probably not enough money for an eBay account.
I got my copy signed by Sinclair ages ago when he came into the NFT to do some research fo the Crash book. Another slipped through my fingers for a ridiculously low sum recently when I was in the process of burning my bridges and therefore being fiscally prudent. A mistake - always spend money you don't have, then at least it's someone else's problem.
As Sinclair wrote: "Allen Ginsberg in London observed filmed recorded remembered talks reads chants mediates between psychedelic inspiration and hume ecology & integrates acid classic Unittive Vision with democratic eyeball" particulars"
Post a Comment