Sunday Arts Magazine

3 Apr 2016

MQFF reviews, Trude Ellingsen (NGV), Melb Fringe Regos, Pygmalion

Arts, Comedy, Music, Performing Arts, TV & Film, Visual Arts

A big event that commenced on 31 March, of course, is the Melbourne Queer Film Festival (MQFF) and Brendan and David waste no time in getting straight into it–firstly mentioning that next week film critic Stephen A Russell will be helping them do a wrap up. They start with films that will get a general release Remembering The Man the doco about Tim Conigrave and John Caleo showing on 7 April and is sold out (see interview with doco makers Sunday Arts 13 March)  Brendan saw a preview of it and talks about the different take from the film.  He also advises to bring the tissues. David talks about the doco makers. Brendan also saw Chemsex an important doco about a sub group of London’s gay men who are high on drugs when having sex and the effect it has on their lives–showing 9 April. It’s a real conversation starter.  Last night Brendan saw a doco he loved– Tab Hunter Confidential about the 1950s Hollywood hunk who was pigeonholed and in the end left the studio system. Tab himself narrates. 3.5 stars

Special arts interviewees today are:

14:58 to 28:37 mins– Trude Ellingsen is here representing NGV.  She’s a Conservator of sculpture and 3D objects. On the road to this point she’d done a traineeship in decoroplastering in Norway and then got into building restoration. Then she met an Aussie while on holidays in Greece and ended up in Australia. She found a course in Canberra that taught ‘conservation’ because she didn’t like the ‘ethics’ of restoring as there is compromise.  Conservators don’t change the original. Trude started at the NGV 13 years ago and works closely with curators consulting them &researching how the figurines would have looked originally.  Clues come from photos, other similar figurines or what the figurines were doing e.g. dancing. She’s working on a large collection of 18^th century porcelain sculptures which the NGV acquired fairly early. Her curator wants people to appreciate how exquisite and intricate they are. She talks about the history of these figurines and why they were made. Also how tiny many are, and the delicate work she has to do under great magnification for example on ‘fingers’ that are just a few millimetres long. The figures are being displayed behind class in the Decorative Arts Corridor of NGV overlooking the Great Hall.  There is a table setting on one of the balconies, showing how they were displayed at the time. The Eighteenth–Century Porcelain Sculpture Exhibition goes until December.

29:21 to 47:28 mins–Simon Abrahams is the new Creative Director of The Melbourne Fringe Festival 15 September to 2 October.  Prior to that he’s always worked in theatre and programming at The Wheeler Centre, the Arts Centre and the Polyglot Theatre. The Fringe is open access i.e. not curated, and what Simon and his team do is provide platforms and support for artists and communities to participate. Fringe is important for ‘discovery’–of new artists, ideas, way out projects–and providing them with audiences, many who are up for anything. It’s also very broad e.g. furniture design is included and has been a part of the festival for over 30 years. The Fringe covers visual arts, music, live art, dance, theatre, spoken word, cabaret, comedy and also projects that go across, between or at the edges of art forms. The Fringe also gets experienced artists who know it’s a safe space to try things out. Registrations are open from 4 April. Grants, micro-grants and development programs are available through Melb Fringe made possible by important partnerships and sponsorships (including Joy). Community members can also help by donating or volunteering. Simon then talks about the Festival Hub where artists can also apply to be a part of.  He also outlines programing of shows and Awards including People’s Choice.

Brendan and David talk about Paloma Faith, her look and her music, and then more on MQFF.  Brendan saw Closet Monster–a Canadian coming out and bit of a smart horror film which includes Isabella Rossellini voicing the hamster! 4.5 stars. Also In The Gray Scale–meaning the Kinsey scale between gay and straight.  It’s a beautiful film but the ending is not great. It’s showing again on 4 April simultaneously with another film called Hidden Away which Brendan saw at MIFF last year-a wonderful low key film re immigration and love.  He intends to see Departure which is getting a lot of buzz.  Brendan also went to the Comedy Festival to see Kirsty Webeck –at a venue called Caz Reitops Dirty Secrets– and highly recommends her.

56:25 to 1:12:17 mins— Josh Tomlinson and Sophie Jackson are from Pygmalion, which is part of Lyric Opera, on at Chapel Off Chapel 5 to 9 April. Sophie always wanted to do musical theatre and came to study it in Ballarat, from NZ, 3 years ago. It was a fulltime, intense course that she did with a small group of 30 people who are now her network. Josh is from a small town in Gippsland and has been singing since childhood.  He came to study at the Melbourne Conservatorium in 2013. He was a boy soprano but sang baritone when his voice broke and then changed to a higher register as a counter tenor.  Both he and Sophie talk enthusiastically about their experience of Lyric Opera and their own different styles of singing. Pygmalion has a lot of dancing and singing in it. The famous story is of a narcissistic sculptor, Pygmalion, whose partner leaves him. He sculpts a statue which comes to life and he falls in love with it. But the statue’s role is to help him become a better person. Josh talks about its relevance to the modern age as the play is set in this era.  Both guests then  discuss the experience of performing on a stage which has the audience on both sides. This opera is also different due to its short length of <50 mins.

Brendan talks MQFF again– starting with more detail about Hidden Away– 4.0 stars and also Boulevard one of Robin Williams’ last films which hadn’t got a commercial release.  He plays a closeted married man whose comfortable life is unravelled when he meets a rent boy by chance- 3.5 stars and Closing Night film Fourth Man Out–a feel good film about friendship where a gay mechanic decides to come out to his macho mates 3.5 stars.  Overall, Brendan was most impressed with the quality of the films. David talks about a couple of productions coming up in musical theatre.  Firstly–Little Shop of Horrors 4 May to 24 July at The Comedy Theatre and then Singin’ In The Rain from 7 May at Her Majesty’s starring Adam Garcia and which has rain on the stage.

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