Jan 23-29

Eurochannel Short Films Tour: Laugh in Europe

Jan 24, 2013
6:00pm
Foreign Language Building

http://illinois.edu/calendar/detail/596?eventId=26484374&calMin=201301&cal=20130114&skinId=1

This week I went to the Foreign Language Building to watch six short films provided by Eurochannel.  Each film was specific to a certain area of Europe and each told their own story. These films were:

Bye Bye Now - Ireland, 2009
The Shoemaker - Greece, 2011
Stolen Rhythm - Hungary, 2008
The Slovenia Way - Slovenia, 2011
20 Years Old - Albania, 2011
Do You Really Love Me - France/United Kingdom, 2010

In "Bye Bye Now," the subject was the creation and destruction of the telephone booth.  The people interviewed each had stories and personal connections to the telephone booths. One in particular was pretty humorous to listen to because the guy was talking about how heavier set people would go into the booth to participate in sexual activities and then would end up getting stuck inside because the door opened inward and they were too big to get around it.  Another story was a bit more serious though, and the person talked about how him and a friend stayed inside a telephone booth in protest of it being torn down.  He was talking about how it was a historic piece of Ireland and it showed unique architecture. That kind of shed some light in my mind, because I've never really thought of telephone booths as architecture or art.

In "The Shoemaker," a shoemaker told his story of making shoes.  It was kind of hard to understand everything he was saying, because the subtitles didn't translate very well.  But from what I understood, he was talking about how he makes shoes for people to help them tell their own stories. Everywhere a person walks adds to his life story and having a well-made boot aids in furthering their story.  I found myself thinking of every day products, like shoes, in a different way.  Everything a person owns tells their story and the wear and tear on certain items can tell an even better story. 

In "Stolen Rhythm," the origin of hip hop music and dance was explored.  This film was probably one of the funnier films, especially because they were talking about something directly related to music in the United States.  The guy that was narrating this film interviewed Methodman and was asking him if he knew the origin of hip hop, but Methodman didn't understand his accent and answered something along the lines of "hell yeah I'd like to add some Hungarian beats in my music" (or something like that... probably way more explicit... plus he's kind of hard to understand too because he mumbles). I thought this was funny though because Methodman didn't even know the origin of hip hop dance or music, and that's the type of music he makes. After that, the film went on to let us know the beginning of hip hop.  It was actually started in Hungary, and the dance "hipi hopi" was a forbidden dance but there is footage of people performing the dance after they worked in the hemp fields harvesting, and were... well... they were high while doing this dance. Which also added an element of humor.  The makers of this film compared the dance moves of the hipi hopi to hip hop dance moves that are currently being done, and they were basically identical.  They also presented the popular song by Sugar Hill Gang "Rapper's Delight" as the first hip hop song for the US. 

  

 

In "The Slovenian Way" the way of life of Slovenians was presented.  I actually found it to be very similar to that of the American culture.  They would get up early, go to church, start school at 8am, go on coffee dates, have salad with dinner, and they're still obsessed with 80s pop music. :O  There's not much else to say about this one, but throughout the film people from other countries would say something they practiced in their culture and compared it to the Slovenian culture.  It was kind of cool to see that not everyone is so different from the United States, we're actually mostly the same as other countries.

In "20 Years Old" we learned about the city Korca.  Korca is trying to be more touristy but the natives don't like it, and in this process a lot of their architecture is becoming diminished.  Architecture isn't the only thing being diminished though, because in their culture they are holding back the talent of painters.  Typically, painters only paint landscapes and buyers and viewers only want landscapes.  This is very unfortunate for the other painters who want to be more modern and contemporary in their styles.  A lot of the film talked about this issue, and how the art scene is very narrow, and the society doesn't help the issue.  The writers of the film made their own stencil to spray paint around the town, to try and get their message across.  That being that "the world is fine, the people are fucked."  Their tag got me thinking about the United States, and also just issues that go on in the rest of the world.  And I think their message is pretty accurate... our world wouldn't seem so messed up if the people in it weren't messed up. I'm currently taking another course that focuses on being environmentally friendly, and I could really relate "the world is fine, the people are fucked" to environmental issues as well.

In "Do You Really Love Me" several couples recited excerpts from a poem, and that lead to their own dialogue. Most of the couples were interracial, one or two were gay, some married, some with kids.  It was intriguing to see how these couples made their relationship work, and even though it was probably hard for them to tell their families, or had to overcome other issues (like one couple, the husband was in prison for sometime), you could really tell they did love each other and wanted to do whatever they could to live a happy life together. It was also cool to see how couples from another country interacted together.  One couple didn't ever use the phrase "I love you", but they would do other things to let each other know they loved one another.  That was kind of odd at first, because I feel like a lot of Americans are too concerned about whether or not their partner is going to say "I love you."

All in all, I'm glad I went to this event because I learned quite a bit actually, even if I didn't type it all out here, and I feel like the films helped me to open my eyes more and see things from new perspectives.


Here are some pictures from the event.


"live art, love life" while waiting for the room to be unlocked...

while waiting for the room to be unlocked...

met some new friends in the hallway...

purple and orange elevator doors... why isn't the art building elevator painted??

ugly face time...

films are about to start...

lights vs eyes...

bri and i had just got done laughing until we cried... but what's new...

my skin is basically a zone 10...

HERE WE GO!

Jan 16-22

The event I attended this week was Middle East Story Time on January 19.  Angela Williams presented a book (The Illustrator's Notebook by Egyptian author Mohieddin Ellabbad) that described the life of an illustrator to a group of young children, their guardians and a few of us "miners."  While this story time event was geared more towards engaging children in learning about the middle east, I still found it beneficial for myself.  I was able to observe someone teaching a class, and watch how Angela interacted with the children.  Although I am not studying art education, I feel it's still good to know how to engage learners and how to teach them something specific.  My sister always wants me to teach her how to effectively use her dslr and I found that myself, along with Angela both break down our teaching methods to be specific for a certain audience.  Something else I took away from this event was that not every language is read from left to right and the formation of letters and words are not always the same method the English language uses.  The Arabic way of making/writing letters looks more artistic, beautiful and organic than the letters of the English language that are more block like.  And specifically, some of their designs are formed by drawing random letters - like the dress Angela had on (I forget the proper name of the dress), there were very intricate designs on the fabric that she mentioned were simply just letters (that didn't actually mean anything, their only purpose was to form a design).  I thought that was very interesting, and relatable to myself as an artist and designer.  It reminded me of typography designs where people use letters and words to form an image.  So in that sense, people all over the world use similar methods in making design, even though their languages and cultures might be completely different.  I wouldn't mind attending more of these events to learn more about other areas of the world that I don't typically learn about as an art student.   

Here are some pictures from the event, that was held at the Urbana Free Library.  

These first two are of a sculpture outside the library.

          

 This photo is from inside the library, right before you entered the area this event was held.  The walls leading to the Children's department were covered in a mural. 

A picture of me inside Megan's Reading room... "Reading is a Picnic" 

And finally, a picture Brianne took of Anne and I inside Megan's Reading room... obviously I'm a little more excited about it than she is :)