Film Course

I studied film for one year when I was at architecture school.

These some sketches from my old note book showing what ideas I had floating around in my head at the time. I needed to make a movie by using still images and to do that I researched some famous old films, like Wings of Desire, Les Enfants du Paradis, October and some Hitchcock ones like Rope. (all images are clickable)

Adventures abroad

Two photos taken on a trip to Russia back in 2001. (Not sure where the 3rd is from. I think Spain)

This was a trip that I was looking forward to for many years having grown up hearing and reading about Russia, it’s history, it’s contribution to art, film and of course music! Rimsky Korsakov and Tchaikovsky were my particular favourites. I also remember watching Russian cartoons when I was a child and they were really completely different to anything you see in the West.

So this was brilliant, how can it go wrong? Well, I don’t know, it just was not what I was expecting I guess. Funnily enough take any Bond film and that will give you an idea of what Moscow was like. I found it cold and a little bit unwelcoming. It’s a pity because apparently I have something in my background from that region (Cossack hertiage maybe), or so I’m told. On the plus side I did go to St. Petersburg to see the Kirov Ballet perform Swan Lake which was ace.

Trip to Paris back in 95 or 6! I loved it for so many reasons. It’s just a beautiful city. I spent some time in a workshop run by an American architect who was trying to document the old areas in Menilmontant and that’s were the photo is from.

That statue below was taken in Père Lachaise cemetery.

The rest were taken in the Netherlands in Groningen again, and I think one in Rotterdam. The top left one is by Rem Koolhaas, I believe!

Holland and France

Found these old photos today that I took way back in 96 or 97. Not entirely sure exactly when. The first group are of the Groninger Museum in Groningen designed by Coop Himmelblau. And the second group where taken in Menilmontant in Paris during a time when some of these old buidlings were being demolished. They were at one point occupied by the city’s artisan community.

I also visited an old violin maker who had lived there for all his life. He was the kind of person you don’t really see very often these days. The many violins of all sizes on his wall were a sight to behold. I wish I had taken a photo!!

Incidently this the area where they filmed the movies “The Red Balloon”, one of my favourite films when I was a child, and “Les Enfants du Paradis”.

I wonder if “Amelie” was filmed here too.

2 photos and an Installation

 
First photo taken in Paris. It think that’s where Edith Piaf lived if I remember correctly. And the other taken in London of the Southbank.

 
A proposed installation in central London. School project.

Trips abroad

 
These are some photographs taken during some of trips abroad. The first two were taken in Japan. That castle was used in the Kurasawa film ‘Kagemusha’, and the other was in Nagoya.

The last image was taken in Paris, Menilmontant area. The time I was there the French Government was demolishing a lot of old buildings, many of which were full of history as this was the area normally occupied by artists.

The last one taken in Moscow in 2001.