Filed under: NADIA BETTEGA
This exhibition is for one night only and features the work of The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund and their partners.
Photography by Nadia Bettega, the exhibition features individuals and projects dedicated to securing sustainable improvements in the lives of the most disadvantaged people in the UK and around the world
Kindly RSVP to have your name added to the guest list
Filed under: NADIA BETTEGA
Nadia Bettega is in America.
before…
Grand Old Opry (Nashville, TN)
The Grand Old Opry is a country music radio show, broadcast live every Friday and Saturday night in Nashville, Tennessee, which has been running since 1925: only 3 years younger than the grand old BBC herself. Yet for such a venerable institution, it is both one of the warmest and most joyful musical experiences that one can have. Celebrations of older musical forms tend to consist of youthful players watched by an audience increasing in age and diminishing in number. The Opry reverses this trend: many of its performers have been around almost as long as it has – Little Jimmy Dickens is almost 90 years old – and yet its audience has as many young people as old. In fact, one of the most touching aspects of the whole show was not the number of whole families attending, but the number performing. Few other musical genres contain as many blood-tied groups as country does: we saw both grandparents and grandchildren and brothers and sisters playing together. This familial theme is amplified by the fact that many of these musicians have obviously known each other and worked together over many years. The end result is that although you watch the show in 1000-plus seater auditorium, you feel as if you are round a camp fire or in someone’s home.
Graceland (Memphis, TN)
At $32 for an adult ticket – plus more for the photo-ops, cars, jet, wardrobe, lunch, etc – Graceland is perhaps the least value-for-money experience available in the Southern US. At least in Disneyworld one gets to meet Mickey Mouse. Here, Elvis is conspicuous by his absence. To make up for this, the memorabilia-machine goes into overdrive. We see countless gold discs and, amusingly, several platinum cassettes. We see rhinestone-encrusted suits expanding in size as the years go by. We see the great man’s house, with its wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling carpeting, TV’s in triplicate, jungle-themed living room complete with waterfall and a games room which any Arab prince would be proud to call his own. If you can summon the energy (we couldn’t), you and the rest of the crowds can slowly shuffle around his private jet.
Yet hardly anywhere in this American Mecca does one get a sense of the man himself, rather than the contents of his credit card bill. His many charitable contributions are displayed, it is true, but even these are just cheques. It is touching that he had his parents live in the same house: one struggles to imagine any contemporary musical superstars doing likewise. Given the access to his family this museum has, however, it is a great shame that they cannot obtain any more personal insights into Lisa-Marie’s father than her memories of how his jewellery jangled as he came down the stairs. Touring Graceland was like listening to an interminable wedding speech in which the father of the bride lists his daughter’s achievements without giving any sense that he knows or loves his own daughter. In a wedding, unlike Graceland, however, one has not paid handsomely for the privilege of listening.
Memphis Rock and Soul Museum (Memphis, TN)
Nashville, Clarksdale and Memphis have some of the richest musical heritages of any cities in the US (or indeed the world), which are rightfully reflected in these cities’ numerous museums dedicated to country, blues and their fusion, rock ‘n’ roll (respectively). One can have too much heritage, however, and too often these museums become incoherent as their islands of narrative are swamped by a sea of memorabilia.
The Memphis Rock and Soul museum is truly the exception to this rule. Its most wonderful feature is the amount of original blues music that one can listen to. Headphone tours are ubiquitous in museums around here, but their potential is rarely realised: with access to the Smithsonian’s extensive musical library, the Rock and Soul Museum reminds us that these museums should be about the music first and foremost, and not the guitars, suits, gold records and countless other accessories. And what wonderful music it is: a personal highlight (apologies for errors in recollection) was a song about a particularly cantankerous mule:
“He kicked a gate from off the fence and massacred a hog
He mortified ten Chinamen and swallowed a yellow dog
He kicked the feathers from a goose and broke an elephant’s back
He saw a Texas railroad train and kicked it off the track.”
A great advantage of this audio archive is that you can actually hear how rock ‘n’ roll came about. When listening to Elvis perform a song recorded earlier by Hank Williams, one begins to understand what an exciting and original development this was in music, and one almost feels what it must have been like to hear this music for the first time: the raison d’être of any good museum.
Frist Collection (Nashville, TN)
The photography work you see as you walk through the Frist Collection in Nashville belongs to Tokhiro Sato. Located in the Gordon Contemporary Artists Project Gallery Presence or Absence deatures 13 landscape photographs by one of Japan’s most acclaimed and best-known contemporary artists, June 18–September 12, 2010.
Tokihiro Sato was born in 1957 in Yamagata Prefecture. He graduated in 1983 with a MFA in sculpture from Tokyo National University of the Arts. He is is one of the best known contemporary artists in Japan and in the rest of the world for his exploration of making photographs of landscapes or common spaces using very long exposures. His work explores concepts of light and space. The result leaves the viewer with a sense of the surreal and of the imagination. Sato documents a poetic, lyrical world. He captures articles of light dispersed throughout landscapes, cityscapes and deserted spaces. Perfectly silent, peaceful and deep, they present scenes that are magical and surrealistically alive
Each image is created through a long exposure time whilst the artist immerses himself into the image with either a mirror (during daylight) or a torch (at night) . In this way he direct the reflected light at the camera lens. Through this monotonous repetition, the particles of light are brought onto the photograph.
This procedure reveals that scenes which at first sight seem to be filled with poetic expression actually possess constructed spaces and structures. The light reflected converge on the camera and the tracks of light link the camera with light particles.
Sato’s photographs give us a strong feeling of space, depth, and, through the artist’s process of applying light, even a sense of time. The curator at the gallery explains that Sato uses traditional technology in untraditional ways. His photographs can take up to three hours to make as he moves across the landscape with mirrors and lights to create ultra-long exposures using a large-format, 8 x 10 camera set on a tripod.
The rest of the gallery has on display a loan exhibition from Londons V&A gallery. The Golden Age of Couture: Paris and London 1947-1957, explores one of the most glamorous and remarkable decades in fashion history. Starting with the impact of Christian Dior’s New Look after the Second World War, it looks at the work of Dior and his contemporaries during the period when haute couture was at its height. The exhibition celebrates an important decade in fashion history which had a huge influence on the way women dressed and the way the fashion industry evolved. The Frist is lucky to have a superb collection of dresses from this period.
This exhibition has been an exceptional opportunity to research the V&A collections and to tell the story of the couture industry after the war For me, both shows are intriguing, exciting and well worth a visit!
after…
Filed under: NADIA BETTEGA
Reparlons scenario. (English version of this post down below)
Nadia Bettega donne la parole à Magali Vander Vorst.
Magali a une licence de Communication Audiovisuelle de l’ Université de Navarre, elle a un Master de scénario de l’ Université Pontifice de Salamanca. Elle vit actuellement à Londres où elle est critique de cinéma pour le site www.cinecritico.es.tl et elle travaille avec Nadia Bettega comme assistante photographe.
Elle a eu un coup de foudre pour Robert McKee et en témoigne. Le concept est d’autant plus intéressant que Luc Dellisse est un des spécialistes français de l’enseignement du scénario (Professeur à la Sorbonne et à l’Université de Bruxelles, auteur de L’invention du Scenario , de L’Atelier du Scénariste et d’un roman Le Professeur de Scenario) )http://www.lesimpressionsnouvelles.com/cvdellisse.htm . Il publie sur e-dito http://christiangatard.wordpress.com/category/le-blog-de-luc-dellisse/
STORY
Le séminaire de Robert McKee
On pense quoi d’un type qui en tue un autre ? Et comme si ce n’était pas suffisant, il tue aussi son roi. Puis, histoire de se rassurer, il en fait autant avec son fils. Tout ça parce qu’on lui a dit de le faire. Pas le genre d’individu que vous aimeriez croiser, non ?
Et si je vous dis qu’il s’appelle Macbeth ? Ca change la donne ? Vraiment ? Macbeth est un assassin. Le genre d’assassin qu’on finit par aimer… au théâtre. Etrange sentiment non ? Pas de quoi s’inquiéter sur sa propre santé mentale. Cela se nomme l’empathie. Macbeth n’est ni plus ni moins qu’un assassin mais un assassin qu’on voit, après l’accomplissement de ses crimes, souffrir. Il est assiégé par ses cauchemars, poursuivi par une inexorable culpabilité… et c’est là qu’intervient la magie d’une histoire… une histoire où fonctionne l’empathie, voire l’identification. On a tous en nous quelque chose de Macbeth. Curieux sentiment qui mène du rire aux larmes. Fascinante diablerie du scénariste qui sait parfaitement à quoi s’en tenir sur nous-mêmes : nous sommes tous coupables de quelque chose. C’est ce sentiment d’empathie que Robert McKee traite dans son séminaire « Story » et qu’il veut graver dans nos mémoires.
Robert Mckee est des maîtres mondialement reconnus du scenario. Il vient de proposer son séminaire à Londres. Comme depuis 26 ans, et avec le même succès, il a une fois de plus convaincu qu’une bonne histoire, c’est d’abord un bon scenario. Un metteur en scène, un réalisateur peut transformer un bon scenario en un film génial mais un mauvais scenario ne peut jamais déboucher sur un bon film.
McKee est une référence mondiale. Même si son séminaire s’inspire de son livre Story, qui en est à sa 32ème édition, il remplit les salles d’un public de scénaristes impatients d’apprendre et réapprendre à construire leurs histoires. Il a souvent été accusé d’être doctrinaire sur la façon d’écrire, voire intolérant à la contradiction mais ce qu’il propose n’est rien d’autre qu’une méthode efficace et précise pour réussir à écrire un bon scenario.
Son séminaire est ce que je pourrais appeler un cours de médecine qui permet de regarder l’histoire sur laquelle on travaille avec un regard différent, nous révélant des éclairages dont on n’avait pas la moindre idée. Il permet de sauver des scenarios mal en point ! Le monde est plein de ces scenarios moribonds qui nécessitent des interventions d’urgence. C’est la magie de McKee que de leur redonner vie. Ce n’est pas dans les écoles de cinéma que l’on apprend ça.
Magali VanderVorst
STORY
The seminar by Robert McKee
What would you think about a guy who kills another? And if that was not enough, he also kills his king. Then, just to reassure himself, he does the same with his son. All because he was told to do so. Not the kind of person you want to cross on the street, is it?
And if I tell you his name is Macbeth? Does it change he game? Really? Macbeth is a murderer. The kind of killer you end up loving … in the theater. Strange feeling, isn´t it? Don´t worry, you are not crazy. This is called empathy. Macbeth is neither more nor less than a murderer, but after the completion of his crimes, you see him suffer. He is besieged by nightmares, pursued by an inexorable guilt… and this is where the magic of a story lies; a story where the empathy starts working with identification. We all have within us something of Macbeth. A curious feeling that leads us from tears to laughter. Fascinating screenwriting devilry – who knows what we should expect of ourselves: we are all guilty of something. This sense of empathy is what Robert McKee addressed in his “Story seminar ” and he wants to burn it into our memories.
Robert McKee is an internationally recognized guru of the scenario mentioned above. He just finished delivering a seminar in London. The same seminar he has delivered for the last 26 years and with the same success. He once again demonstrated that a good story comes from a good script. “A master of direcition can turn a good script into a great movie but a bad script will never lead to a good movie”.
McKee is a world reference. Even if the seminar is based on his book Story, now in its 32nd edition, he fills the halls with an audience of writers eager to learn and relearn how to build their stories. He has sometimes been accused of being prescriptive about how to write, but what he proposes is nothing but an efficient and accurate method to succeed in writing a good script.
His seminar is what I would call a medical course that lets you watch the story you are working on, from different eyes, revealing insights that we had no idea existed. It saves scenarios in bad shape! The world is full of these scenarios often requiring an emergency response and this is not something we can learn in film schools. It’s the magic of McKee that gives them their new life.
Magali Vander Vorst
Filed under: NADIA BETTEGA
Raised in Zambia of Italian father and Swedish mother, Nadia has a background in Psychology (BSc) and Health Research (Msc) with a focus on Stigma and Risk. She has held research fellowships at the University College of London and spent 2 years working for a strategic research consultancy firm. She now works as a freelance reportage/portrait photographer. Nadia recently completed a commission for Art on the Underground. She is currently working with the British Institute of Human Rights (BIHR). Past projects include collaborations with The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund and the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) in Cote D’Ivoire. A nation still emerging from the legacy of civil war, Cote d’Ivoire has, since 2003, been one of 15 “focus countries” to receive funding from the largest single-disease health programme ever launched by one nation. The photographs chart the effect of this unprecedented intervention on the lives of local communities, providing a chronicle of a society facing up to its deep-seated stigmatisation of the HIV/AIDS. Nadia has been involved in a wide variety of projects dealing with asylum seekers, refugees and BME youths in the UK. She is a founding member of Eyes Wide Open, a community partnership project running participatory photography projects. The project is aimed at facilitating creativity, innovative thought and talent in young people. She is also involved in delivering outreach and educational projects with The Photographers Gallery
Filed under: NADIA BETTEGA
Les explorations de Nadia continuent. Nadia Bettega photographie les moments de bascule du monde, les fractures flottantes, et l’ironie définitive. Son site http://www.nadiabettega.com/
http://www.participatoryportraits.org/
A participatory project exploring human rights in the UK today
Preview Evening and Website Launch: Wed 7th April from 6.30pm
Host Gallery
1 Honduras Street
London
EC1Y 0TH
020 7253 2770
info@hostgallery.co.uk
Opening times:
Mon-Fri 10am-6pm
Sat 11am-4pm
There will be another exhibition from 5th – 20th August at Free Word – a fully accessible venue
Free Word
60 Farringdon Rd
London
EC1R 3GA
