Rosalie Hurr, Author at Things&Ink

October 16, 2015

Film Review: A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night

Our guest blogger is hobbyist film and TV series reviewer and writer Harry Casey-Woodward:

A Girl walks home alone at night, 2015, 18, dir Ana Lily Amirpour, 3/5

I’m not a big fan of vampires movies, unless they’re done well. I dislike the way certain films and TV shows (cough cough Twilight cough) have portrayed vampires as surly, sparkling love interests. I’m more a fan of the old fashioned kill-them-first-shag-them-later variety. I also dislike the fact that vampires have been done to death. But I guess vampire films are like any other genre. Out of the majority of over-clichéd, over-sexed muck rises a few gems that dare to do things differently and show everybody else how it’s supposed to be done.

There was Swedish vampire film Let the Right One In in 2008. I liked its original premise of a young girl vampire making friends with a human boy. However I don’t know if it was the film’s sparse, sombre tone or there was something wrong with me when I tried to watch it but I just found it a bit dull. This was certainly not the case with the subject of this review.

This year’s vampire flick (now on DVD and blu-ray) is the most striking and unusual of its kind I’ve ever seen. For one thing, it’s set in Iran with dialogue faithfully in Farsi while remaining an American production. Elijah Wood is one of the executive producers and he features in the special feature interviews.

Watch these interviews and you will understand exactly how an Iranian vampire film came together. The director Ana Lily Amirpour has an Iranian background and comes across as a female version of Quentin Tarantino. She swears a lot and chatters enthusiastically about her favourite things, which include spaghetti westerns, pop music and vampires. She set out to write a screenplay that brought all these elements together. She had already shot a couple of shorts set in Iran and when she tried on a chador veil one of the extras was wearing, she knew her vampire had to be Iranian. Of course.

But she’s not just planted a vampire in Iran. She’s planted a vampire in a fictional desert town named Bad City , home to various social misfits including a prostitute, a pimp, a transvestite, an urchin, some spoilt kids, a junky and his son Arash (Arash Marandi) who dresses like James Dean and drives a hot vintage car. Even when his beloved ride gets taken as payment for his father’s drugs and he breaks his hand punching a wall in anger, he still looks cool with a cast and a bicycle.

While he’s trying to look after his father and cat, make money and keep on looking cool, the vampire simply named the Girl is prowling the streets at night, looking suitably menacing yet somehow cute in a black flowing chador as she preys on scummy men, terrorises children and steals their skateboards.

The actress Sheila Vand gives an astonishing performance. She never smiles and her lines are rare too, but she communicates so much menace and loneliness through her expressions you don’t know whether to be scared or feel sorry for her.

The sparse dialogue in this film is a merit. It’s clear that Amirpour has learnt a lot from her favourite Sergio Leone. Her movie runs on the less-is-more principle, relying on the actor’s expressions and actions to tell the story rather than dialogue. She also makes heavy use of atmosphere and suspense rather than gore in the horror scenes, which is refreshing regarding most blood-spattered horrors today. In fact for a vampire movie there is very little blood, except for one nasty scene and even then the film is in black and white.

It’s clear from the start that this is not a straightforward horror. Amirpour is more concerned with giving her audience a visual feast. She is also a big fan of David Lynch. With the film being black and white and featuring various long shots of industrial scenery, as well as being an urban nightmare populated by sad freaks, I couldn’t help being reminded of such Lynch films as Eraserhead and Blue Velvet.

However, while the film is a banquet for the eyes and ears (the soundtrack consists of Iranian and Western pop mixed with spaghetti western-style music), perhaps the film is too concentrated on style and trying to be hip. For example, amidst all the culture references the plot boils down to a love story between Arash and the vampire. It’s the film’s presentation of romance which gets on my nerves. These two very good looking people meet, are instantly attracted to each other and their lovelorn talk consists mostly of comparing life to music: ‘don’t you wish you could live in a song?’ etc. I’m sorry but this fantasy does not match my past awkward, bumbling attempts at dating and thus I believe it encourages unrealistic romantic expectations. Then again the film is just that, a fantasy.

Nevertheless as cool and fun and imaginative the film is, I couldn’t help feeling a little underwhelmed at the end. The film bends over backwards to satisfy you superficially with stunning visuals. When it comes to the plot however, I feel the film could have gone for more emotional impact with the dramatic events it depicted. It’s cool that the film opted for a less-is-more approach concerning the dialogue and emotion depicted, but there’s never any real conflict between the characters. So as dark as the film gets, it doesn’t really pack a punch. Still, it’s worth seeing for the cat Masuka’s performance alone.

This is still the coolest and most genre-busting vampire movie you will ever see and I applaud Amirpour’s unique vision and cinematic enthusiasm. I’m looking forward to her next movie The Bad Batch, a love story set in a cannibal colony in a Texas wasteland. I hope she does a western.

Images from IMDB

October 16, 2015October 16, 2015

Tattooed Pig Heads

For his latest collection titled Pigs, New York photographer Peter Garritano asked tattoo artists to decorate real pig heads with designs of their choice as part of a project to show the relationship between tattooists and skin. Peter got the pig heads from a butcher in Brooklyn who sources animals that lead happy lives on local family farms. He wanted to show off the talent of tattooists in New York, the creativeness, strangeness and difference of the tattooing scene.

Bieke Depoorter: Night journeys in Sète

Bieke Depoorter is a photographer and associate member of Magnum Photos. She works mainly on autonomous projects, including travelling through Russia and photographing subjects whose houses she had stayed in for a single night.

Christian Caujolle (associate professor at the National Superior School Louis Lumière, specialising in film, sound engineering and photography) explains that in Night journeys in Sète Bieke does not follow routes planned out for her, but instead makes her own path. He comments on her subject matter, her form and the ways we can interpret her art:

Faced with images that are free, enigmatic or descriptive, but which can never be limited to one single interpretation, we stop, just as the woman visitor had to stop.

No stereotype, not even an informative one. No acceptance of technical constraints: it is the night that best reveals the light, and not the sun-drenched town.

The mystery deepens when we see that these elements grabbed from reality are naturally structured to found a story of which we do not know the scenario, of which we can only follow the inexplicably harmonious thread as it seems to feed on digressions or chance.

Free photographers, like free travellers, get to know themselves in what they experience of elsewhere and of others. Happy is he who, like Ulysses or Bieke Depoorter, has been on a beautiful voyage..

October 14, 2015

The Horror Issue: Meg Langdale

The Horror Issue of Things&Ink features a music playlist by apprentice tattooer 28-year-old Meg Langdale. We visited Meg at The Burton Tattoo Collective in Leiceter for an evening filled with creepy yet cute kewpies. As our editorial assistant Rosie was being tattooed, we chatted to Meg about her developing style, how she started out and her tattoo collection…

What first attracted you to the tattoo world?
I’ve always known I wanted to do something creative but I just wasn’t too sure what. I did a fashion and design degree at university, and at the time all the design and illustration jobs I looked at just seemed like glorified office jobs, which wasn’t for me. Tattooing has given me the freedom I wanted creatively and in an environment I feel comfortable. I think my illustration work was the stepping stone into the tattoo world. Meeting my boyfriend, who is a tattoo artist, of course had a huge influence. I feel like it’s what I was meant to do, it maybe just took me a little longer than others to realise.

How did you get your apprenticeship?
I was fortunate enough to be given the opportunity by my boyfriend, which I will be forever grateful for. I started my apprenticeship in September last year and I’ve only been tattooing around four months. So far I have really enjoyed tattooing lots of floral pieces, but a lot of my illustrations are quite dark and creepy, I want to bring this into my tattooing. None of it would have been possible if it hadn’t been for the support from my whole family. I feel very lucky how things have worked out.

How would you describe your style?
My style is still evolving but its super illustrative, and it includes flaws and imperfections. I really want my tattoos to look like illustrations. When I draw, I like that my designs aren’t perfect, don’t get me wrong I spend hours drawing and redrawing designs. But I sometimes like the little wobbles in lines and lack of symmetry. I also weirdly like tiny little flaws in my own tattoos. I’m lucky enough to have some beautiful pieces down by amazing artists but I quite like that in most tattoos you can find tiny little imperfections. It’s not a question of liking or having bad tattoos, mine are perfect to me and I love them. But I think flaws make them real. I’m not perfect and neither are my tattoos.

What inspires you?
I’m really critical of myself and my work, so that in itself inspires me to want to keep improving and keep pushing myself. I really hope to be respected as an artist by other artists too, and not just for drawing pretty stuff. I want to be able to put in solid lines, and produce really nice quality tattoos.
I also collect old reference books; I adore medical illustrations in old anatomy books, and simple line drawings in books of wild flowers. I like combining quite delicate floral stuff with elements of darker stuff. I’d much rather draw from real life or old books than have to rely on the internet.

How did it feel doing your first tattoo?
Terrifying. I tattooed pig skin a lot to build my confidence initially. Then myself which was just dreadful. It’s so hard to overcome inflicting pain on yourself to focus on putting in decent lines. My first tattoo on someone other than myself was on Dane’s brother in law, it was so nerve wracking. He’s always been really supportive of my work and was quick to offer up some skin for me to practice on. At the same time I just remember thinking this is it, this is what I’m going to be doing forever now. I get nervous before I tattoo, but I’m always fine once I start and I just get into my little zone. My confidence has definitely been one of my biggest hurdles.

Can you tell us about the tattoos on your body?
My own tattoos are a combination of styles, mostly black and grey. Weirdly enough I don’t have any that are that similar to my own style, but I’m saving my right arm for lots of illustrative floral bits and bones, I’m just undecided on who I want to do it yet. I’ve been lucky enough to get tattooed by some amazing artists in the last couple of years, and of course Dane, he’s done a lot of my favourite pieces. I do have a few colour tattoos too, currently no plans for any more, although I had considered having some really muted colours on my legs in-between lots of black of course.

Photographs by William Kirk

October 14, 2015October 14, 2015

Tattoo Portraits

Alessandro Negrini a.k.a Pepe, an Italian tattoo artist resident at Electric Tattooing Viareggio and his wife Romina have created a book titled Tattoo Portraits, in which his love and respect for the history of tattooing is displayed in beautiful watercolour. Our Italian contributor Ilaria chatted to Pepe to find out more about the book, his love of tattoo history and why he chose the medium of watercolour…

When and how did you discover the art of tattoo?
It all began in Viareggio, in the early 90s. At that time it was none other than the holiday location where I spent my summer holidays with the family. This city, where I now work and live, represented anything an adolescent could ever imagine: there were sailors with tattoos, punks, metal music, skateboarding and surfing activities. Coming from a small town, all of this was very exciting to my eyes!

What do you think of modern society and its relationship with this art?
I think that this media overexposure has removed a sense of it all. You know, it’s my job and I earn some money, but in these twenty years I have seen a complete twist from what was originally the world of tattoo.
When I started professionally in 1996 (at Skin Fantasies, Bergamo) tattoo was frowned upon, it was just an act of rebellion and nonconformity. Nowadays tattoos are on football players, on television and in glossy magazines. Today people get tattooed to join the mass, to be cool or to be accepted by the group. 15 or 20 years ago you couldn’t even get into a local bar if you had tattoos in sight.
I mean, I do not want to be a rebel at any cost, but now getting a tattoo is like buying a nice shirt. What will happen when these people will want/will have to change their aesthetic tastes, as our mothers asked: “what will you do with those tattoos when you become old”?

People you have portrayed are definitely a continuous inspiration for you, both in life and in work. Tell us more about your project!
My project came mainly from an urgency, a need that resided in my guts. My life has changed dramatically in the recent years thanks to the arrival of my son. I am sober for a year and a half and painting had a great therapeutic impact during this transformation. I portrayed the great masters of the past, who have founded the basics of our profession, those who were called “poor Rembrandts” in a world diametrically opposed to ours. After preparing a first set of watercolours, the project grew thanks to the meeting with my partner Romina, professional editor, who wrote our book Tattoo Portraits, she did amazing research regarding the biographies of these tattoo artists . The book is now published and distributed by Surith, Rome.

How did the mere fact of changing ‘means of expression’ and then to paint with watercolours make you feel?
The world of watercolour has always been present in my life. Even before tattoos, it came with my love for comics and with them for adventure: Hugo Pratt was my favourite cartoonist and one of his peculiarities was that he decorated the first introductory pages of his books with beautiful watercolours.
Occasionally this passion came, went away and then came back again, like the water and the waves… I began to experiment with it during the years of art school and then used it only for entertainment in the evening or to rest after a day of hard work. The tattoo, as well as its exemplary drawings, what are called “tattoo flash”, are characterized by an extremely rigid and schematic technique. You trace the outline, then the shadows and finally the color. There is no room for the unexpected. Everything is precise, programmed. Watercolour is the exact opposite, the water flows unpredictable on the sheet, the brush flies fast and the result is never predictable. After twenty years as a tattoo artist I felt the need to find all of this, to dissolve the hand to the emotions, letting myself go: into the unknown, the unexpected and the adventure from which I started.

The history of the tattoo is, at least in my opinion, a part of each tattoo, be it big or small, done with great care.. The simple fact that the man is the mean by which this art continues to live and to be handed down from generation to generation is really beautiful. How important is for you the past and how it helped you to embark on your path?
The tattoo is first of all a sign, a gesture, a symbol. It marks the difference between what you were before and what you are after, like the difference between a donkey and a zebra. It may be little as the dot marked between the index finger and thumb, symbol of love for Japanese geishas, or huge like the entire Polynesian bodies of people from Tahitian islands. The gesture is always the same, inserting a pigment (usually derived from coal) under the skin, through the use of different enforcement tools, from the shark tooth to the most modern rotary machines. The artist who now tattoos on television makes the same gesture that the primitive man performed in the caves during the Neolithic.
Ötzi, the man of Similaun, the oldest mummy found on the Earth, (dated from between 3300 and 3200 BC) is in fact also tattooed, and it is considered the first tattooed human being: on Ötzi body there are 61 tattoos!
I mean, you can not tattoo without knowing the history of tattooing. Tattoo and mankind continue to intersect chronologically along the latitudes and longitudes of the whole world. The history of the electric tattoo begins in the late ‘800 with Samuel O’Reilly and reaches us, ‘Tattoo Portraits’, both in a book and with an exhibition, (currently on display at the gallery Parione9 in Rome). This project of mine aims to provide a tool to the new generations, to know and deepen the roots of the history of tattoo, as we know it today in the West. The 60 portraits that form the book, “tattooed faces” and “blue ladies”, are just the beginning of a natural evolution through my new pictorial work of watercolors. It aims to tell and preserve some kind of a family album, a collection of images from a far away world, preserving through its pages the history and memory of us men and women, tattooed and tattoo artists of the 2000s.

His artworks are now on display in Rome, at Parione9, a solo show curated by Elettra Bottazzi and Marta Bandini.
You can email Pepe at pepetattooing@hotmail.com to purchase the book, and follow him on Facebook to here more news about his project.

Photos taken by Diana Bandini, Nicola Gnesi and Vasco Maria Livio.