Rodrigo Passos De Guimaraens

With just a little over a month for the launch of Fashion Weeks Fox& Squirrel thought it would be ideal to start getting you in the mood. We leave you with a film made by a dear Brazilian friend Rodrigo capturing all the the preps before a fashion show in Brazil, undeniably an emerging fashion destination.

Fox&Squirrel Interview Sentinel Productions

Sentinel Productions is a fast rising film production company. In less than two years their short films have made it to the the Cannes short film festival, Swansea Bay International Film Festival, just to name a few. Over a beer in Soho George Hamilton, director and founder of Sentinel Productions, let me shoot some questions at him. Read the following interview to find out more about his recent short film 'The Reward' and his latest collaboration with music sensation 'The Correspondents'.

Fox&Squirrel: First thing first, what do you do?
George Hamilton: I produce, direct and do a bit of writing...

F&S: What is Sentinel Productions?
G.H.: Sentinel Productions is a small production company that I set up and run with Lucy Patrick Ward (no hyphen in the name or she will kill me!) We have made a number of short films, and narrative fiction is our driving passion. We have also now moved into music videos, live gigs,we are shooting a bit of fashion and we are dabbling in the corporate pool also...

And to comply to the social media frenzy you can find us on facebook and follow us on twitter under SentinelPro.

F&S: You sound busy?

G.H.: Yes we are. Lucy and I both moved back from New York after three years and have re-launched Sentinel over in the UK. It has been a very exciting year so far and we have a lot of cool things happening.

F&S: So what shall we be watching out for?

G.H.: Well our latest short film 'The Reward' is just finishing up after a final sound mix... Have a a look at the trailer.

'THE REWARD' Trailer HD from Sentinel Productions on Vimeo.

F&S: You produced this?

G.H.:That is right. I produced it and Lucy directed it. It was a great short and Lucy did such a wonderful job, it is a lovely film. It was written by the playwright Joel Horwood when he was out in New York and so although in every way a New York film, the two leads, writer, director and producer were all English, which gives it a very interesting perspective.

F&S: Who were your cast?

G.H. Anatol Yusef plays Felix and Phoebe Waller- Bridge plays Charlotte. Both of whom are astounding actors.

F&S: Where are they and what are they up to at the moment?

G.H.: Anatol lives out in New York and is just in the process of finishing up shooting Scorcese’s new HBO drama ‘Boardwalk Empire’ playing Meyer Lansky (not to mention running his own theater company Fixitsolife).Phoebe lives in London and seems to be going from one great theater production to the next, as well running the innovative DryWrite [The Reward was produced in association with DryWrite]

Ida Hajdari Introduces Adrian Paçi

The title of the first episode of the 2009 edition of the Tirana Biennale was The Symbolic Efficiency of the Frame. Helpfully, the curators of this first episode provided a definition:

A “frame” is something we use in order to define, discern or cut off in order to highlight…

Adrian Paçi’s film installation Per Speculum is so well-suited to the theme of this first episode of the biennale that one could be forgiven for thinking that it was created especially for it. As a matter of fact, Per Speculum was commissioned and created in 2006 and has since been exhibited widely. The video accompanying this text is from the 2009 Lyon Biennale.

Per Speculum investigates the significance of the frame/framing in film. To be more precise, this work problematizes the relationship between film and reality by demonstrating that what we see through the lens of a camera depends on the camera’s position in relation to that which it is filming. This is achieved in two ways.

During the first part of the film, there is the revelation that what initially appears to be an objective, solid reality, when the image of the children fills up the entire screen, is in fact nothing more than a reflection, something ephemeral and fragile that a little boy with a slingshot can shatter at any moment, as he indeed does.

In the second part of the film, this is achieved by exploiting the dynamic that exists between presence, absence and light in film in a way that is both very subtle and very powerful. During this second part, Paçi juxtaposes a number of close-ups of children seated on the branches of a tree holding what are presumably pieces of the mirror that was shattered in the first part of the film, with a long-shot of the tree. During the close-ups, when the camera should be able to reveal us the children, the reflected light actually swallows them up, rendering them invisible. As we move from close-up to long-shot, however, the effect of the reflected light is to make the children’s presence known, a presence that we would otherwise not know about since the camera is simply too far away from the children for us to be able to see them.

What has all this got to do with the frame? Simply put, Paçi’s work demonstrates that film, which for a long time was believed to be the medium best suited to documenting reality, operates primarily by what it withdraws from the visible, or, put in other words, by what it does not show. Paçi is hardly the first artist who has tackled this issue in his work. Harun Farocki’s Videograms of a Revolution comes to mind. What makes Paçi’s work so refreshing, however, is that he tackles this issue on a formal level. The mirror in Paçi’s work, which represents both a faithful image (the children are indeed there, in front of the mirror) and an illusory one (what we see on the screen is an image of an image), is a great metaphor for the screen itself and the (refelcted) light emanating from the sun, which hides the children when it should reveal them and reveals them when it should not be able to, is a metaphor for the light of the projector.

If you want to see a clip from Adrian Paçi's Per Speculum please follow this link.

Adrian Paçi has been shortlisted for the 4th Artes Mundi Prize. The work of Adrian Paçi and the other seven contenders for the prize is now on display at National Museum Cardiff. Do check it out if you can!

For more information about the Artes Mundi Prize please follow.

Want to star in a music video?

To all those out there who have at one point in their lives dreamed about starring in a music video this is your chance! Fox&Squirrel are spreading the call out for extras to come and feature in the 'Popes of Chilitown's' new video. It is being shot this weekend in West London, in Shepherds Bush's number one live music venue, GINGLIK.

The song is called 'I See Dub People' have a listen to it here.

Sentinel Productions are looking for extras who would like to come and be part of the 'gig' crowd during the sequence that is being shot Saturday March 13th 12pm to 6pm at the latest. It will be a fun afternoon and is an important section of the two-day shoot.

Sentinel Productions have requested we inform you that it is important you bring monochrome clothing with you, everything needs to be in shades of blacks, grey and whites. We do not mean everything in the same colour, just no colour!

If you would like to come down and join that would be great!

Drop Fox&Squirrel an email at penelope@foxandsquirrel.com for further information and to confirm your attendance!

Fox&Squirrel will be there- we hope you will be to!

To find out more about Sentinel Productions click here.


To listen to 'Popes of Chilitown's' click here.

Interview with Aura Satz by Ida Hajdari

Aura Satz is talking to our correspondent Ida Hadjari about what inspires her work, her fascination with technology and her upcoming Sound Seam show that premieres this coming Friday at the Great North Museum in Newcastle.

Ida Hajdari. You seem to be very interested in the uncanny aspect of technologies of mechanical reproduction, especially of the mechanical reproduction of sound. In your recent work, this technological uncanny has been addressed and even invoked in a number of ways, such as through the juxtaposition of musical automata and floating musical instruments played by invisible hands in Automamusic. My question is two-fold: firstly, why this fascination? And, secondly, is this an interest that you can trace back to the early days of your artistic production, or even to your days as an art student?

Aura Satz. Yes, I have always been interested in the inanimate appearing animate, and ways in which objects appear imbued with presence. I like the idea of mediated agency, of a porosity between states of animation and de-animation. In my early days as a student I did a lot of research into icons and relics, which led to an interest in articulated puppets, ventriloquism and prosthesis. That led to a fascination with automata, and more recently, mechanical music. One of the things that I was exploring was the displacement of authorship, the way in which movement and agency trickle down into and through the object. In the puppet the connection remains attached, a dilution of energy, whereas in the automata it is wound up, folded into the machine, and then a button is pressed and it unfolds, moving autonomously of its own accord. I love the idea of secondary bodies we can project into, or be inhabited by, almost like some kind of possession. For the same reason I am intrigued by costumes and bodily sculptures that alter anatomy, forming an alienating second skin of sorts (much like certain acting techniques), connected yet separate to its wearer. Spiritualism provided a rich source of inspiration in the way it manifested presence as inanimate objects moving by themselves, in its proliferation of disembodied voices, its diffusion of authorship, and its use of a rhetoric of proof which relied so heavily on material evidence. This is when I started to focus more on sound, not just movement, as an indication of presence. I wanted to explore the way sound looks. I was trying to inhabit the tension of sounds that are pried apart from their source through reproduction, but somehow remain latched onto a material body of sorts. After honing in on mechanical music in Automamusic, I started to think about ways of scoring, notating, writing and reading music. Inevitably I felt drawn to make a piece about the phonograph, which opened up to the idea of sound writing, parallel to automatic writing. That has formed the basis for Sound Seam.

I.H. What I find particularly interesting is your 'preference', so to speak, for 'outdated' technologies of mechanical reproduction, i.e. the gramophone. I understand your predilection for these early technologies of mechanical reproduction in terms of their being representative of a time in history when 'our' senses had yet to adjust to them, thus allowing the uncanny elements in them to come to the forefront, elements to which we are putatively immune today given the abundance of such technologies. However, for your latest project, Sound Seam, you have used both very old technological equipment as well as very modern technological equipment. Obviously, I have yet to see the work, but there does seem to be a tension between these technologies. My question is then, how does this tension play out in terms of the element of the uncanny?

Urban Nomad - A Short Film

As an introduction to Cyprus Fox&Squirrel would like to share with you a short film. 'Urban Nomad' was shot in the capital city of Nicosia by the young Cypriot director Orestis Lambrou. Lambrou says through film he is most interested in "documenting urban spaces from an anthropocentric point of view" .

By filming a day in the life of a Nicosia local, Lambrou is able to guide his audience through the city, taking us on foot to all corners of the capital and undoutedly establishing a bond between his spectator, the main character and the city.