Main work carrying on at a reasonable pace with various welcome distractions and diversions. One of which was an interview of Eamon Gilmore, the Irish Foreign minister who was in Moscow a week or two ago to sign a trade agreement with Medvedev and which I recorded together with Estelle Winters of “The Voice of Russia” who conducted the interview . You can listen to the whole interview here.
Central House of Artists - Moscow
Tomorrow and Sunday the J-FEST of Japanese Contemporary culture is being held at the Central House of Artists in Moscow in central Moscow. Its a two day exhbition of all the elements of modern Japanese culture from fashion to manga and Anime to music with an accent on new directions in Japanese art and culture. Today we received press accreditation and I intend to film this event.
All the other work moving along step by step. Today there is another episode of the web documentary “Japan - Philosophical Landscapes” An ongoing film and internet project about Japanese landscape and its expression in Japanese art, culture and living. Watch below.
The theatre projects centred around a film adaptation of “The Fairground Booth” is still very much in a development stage of writing and research and at them moment is on the back burner as I clear my way through other projects.
This section of the film focuses on the Silver Pavilion of Ginkaku ji. It suits my purposes over the more popular Golden Pavilion in Kyoto as it describes more directly the phenomenon of Philosophical landscapes. Most people are concerned with the Golden pavilion because of its obvious beauty, a striking golden temple set in the middle of a pond, its still golden reflection a mirrored upturned version of itself creating an uncanny sensation of a floating vision in mid air.
However in some ways the Silver Pavilion, Ginkaku ji, is no less beautiful despite its subdued presence if compared to the Golden Pavilion. The addition of moss covered grounds and what I would call “sandscapes” – abstract images made with sand and grit give it a unique quality as a Zen temple. They do not represent the landscape or depict a particular landscape but communicate an essence or idea. The cone of sand in the garden resembles Mount Fuji however this is but a surface interpretation. A mountain is seemingly a solid thing ostensibly made of hard rock. However mountains can fall or increase in size with volcanic eruptions. A miniature mountain of sand conveys this state of flux or indeterminateness of things and life which Zen Buddhism teaches. The volume of sand shaped into a cone is held in a state of static but fluid tension which can change with a gust of wind or a heavy downpour of rain and then reconstituted anew. Similarly sand as waves convey the inter penetrability of things. This constant blurring of borders between materials conveys the solid but non materiality of an idea given expression in three dimensional space. The essence of Zen Buddhism.
This section of the film focuses on the Silver Pavilion of Ginkaku ji. It suits my purposes over the more popular Golden Pavilion in Kyoto as it describes more directly the phenomenon of Philosophical landscapes. Most people are concerned with the Golden pavilion because of its obvious beauty, a striking golden temple set in the middle of a pond, its still golden reflection a mirrored upturned version of itself creating an uncanny sensation of a floating vision in mid air.
However in some ways the Silver Pavilion, Ginkaku ji, is no less beautiful despite its subdued presence if compared to the Golden Pavilion. The addition of moss covered grounds and what I would call “sandscapes” – abstract images made with sand and grit give it a unique quality as a Zen temple. They do not represent the landscape or depict a particular landscape but communicate an essence or idea. The cone of sand in the garden resembles Mount Fuji however this is but a surface interpretation. A mountain is seemingly a solid thing ostensibly made of hard rock. However mountains can fall or increase in size with volcanic eruptions. A miniature mountain of sand conveys this state of flux or indeterminateness of things and life which Zen Buddhism teaches. The volume of sand shaped into a cone is held in a state of static but fluid tension which can change with a gust of wind or a heavy downpour of rain and then reconstituted anew. Similarly sand as waves covey the inter penetrability of things. This constant blurring of borders between materials shows the solid but non materiality of an idea given expression in three dimensional space. The essence of Zen Buddhism.
A long time has passed, or so it seems, since completeing the film "Stanislavsky and the Russian Theatre" and a process of reflection has replaced the frenetic rush to finish the film in time for the premiere and get it released at roughly the same time. The […]
The snow is starting to melt as the days become warmer here in Moscow. All day the "alpenists" have been noisly clearing snow and ice from the roof of our apartment block. […]
Michael Craig is a director and producer of independent films and lives and works in Moscow. He founded Copernicus Films which has produced the arts documentary series: "The Russian Avant-garde - Renaissance or Revolution", a series of six films about the Russian Avant-garde of the 1920s and 30s.
After a decade working in the film industry in the UK, mostly on the packaging of feature films for international prodcution companies and later in the financial and production aspects of feature films, he travelled to Moscow in 1995 to make films and write where he has lived and worked ever since. He started making his first documentary film about Alexander Rodchenko in 1998 and from this experience embarked on series of films about the Russian Avant-garde of the 1920s and 30s. Three more films in the series followed:"Architecture and the Russian Avant-garde and , "Meyerhold, Theatre and the Russian Avant-garde" and "Mayakovsky" . Two further films have now been completed "David Burliuk and the Japanese Avant-garde, with locations in Moscow Tokyo and Kyoto and a 6th film "Kandinsky and the Russian House" shot in Germany and Russia. Michael Craig returned to Japan for two 3 month periods to shoot a film about Japanese culture and art. The project is called Japan Philosophical Landscapes and is being released in short episodes on the internet-Click Here to Watch for Free.In 2011 a documentary about the Russian theatre director and founder of MXAT (The Moscow Art Theatre)
This section of the film focuses on the Silver Pavilion of Ginkaku ji. It suits my purposes over the more popular Golden Pavilion in Kyoto as it describes more directly the phenomenon of Philosophical landscapes. Most people are concerned with the Golden pavilion because of its obvious beauty, a striking golden temple set in the middle of a pond, its still golden reflection a mirrored upturned version of itself creating an uncanny sensation of a floating vision in mid air.
