Kew Gardens and the Hive: bees, plants & people

I last visited the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew more than 30 years ago, and all I remember of it is being on the raised iron walkway in the palmhouse with a thundering, vomit-inducing headache (I’m not prone to them, which is why it’s stuck in my memory). The long gap between visits isn’t related and I’ve often thought “Must go back to Kew”, but as with all places relatively nearby time whizzes by and visits go unmade. However,  this summer I finally made the plan, took the day off, arrived early at the station and headed for Kew Gardens, a UNESCO World heritage site and globally important centre of scientific research.

In through the Victoria Gate

A vista worthy of any Jane Austen-style ramble.

The weather was perfect for me (and the bees): sunny and HOT – very welcome after weeks of cloud and rain. I’d met one of my dearest friends at Liverpool Street station and we took the tube out of central London. Kew itself is an affluent village-atmosphere district with its mixture of quaint, pretty buildings and low-rise blocks of 1930s-style flats. Although the hum of London permeates everything and the constant drone of overhead aircraft is tedious, first impressions were of a calm and attractive part of town. A 10/15-minute walk brought us to the Garden’s perimeter wall; once through the entrance, the city’s grime melted away and a magnificent, expansive green space opened up. One picnic later (in view of Kew Palace), we went in search of plants.

First up the Boardwalk border, just coming into its high summer colours:

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Just behind one of the borders is the Hive, an installation celebrating and investigating the role of bees and it sits within the treeline just off the boardwalk. It’s an intriguing man-made construction among all the greenery. A pathway led towards this mysterious object, up through a wildflower meadow that’s humming with bees. The whole structure is connected to real-time bee activity – it’s a multi-sensory experience for humans to connect with the amazing activity of bees. You’d perhaps think that a metal structure  would seem heavy and incongruous against the plants and trees, but it’s light and delicate, and quite beautiful.

The Hive is situated just behind the Boardwalk Border

Wild flower meadow slope on the way in to the Hive

Close up

From the Kew website (http://www.kew.org/visit-kew-gardens/whats-on/thehive)

“The Hive is the design of UK based artist Wolfgang Buttress. It was originally created as the centrepiece of the UK Pavilion at the 2015 Milan Expo. It is constructed from around 170,000 parts including thousands of pieces of aluminium, which catch the changing sunlight. There are 1,000 LED lights dotted around its core which glow and fade, while a unique soundtrack hums in response to the activity of real bees in a beehive behind the scenes at Kew“.

Entering the Hive challenged my vertigo even though it’s not especially high up. But it’s constructed from glass and metal so although it feels solid, you can see through the ‘walls’ and (much more unsettling) the floor. But the experience is well worth that shot of fear. The complex honeycomb structure of a beehive is visible through the glass floor but the circle at the centre of the floor is clear revealing the ground below and if you stand on it, you’ll look up through the opening in the roof. It was fascinating to watch people’s reactions. While lots of people peered down into this ‘hole’ the adults seemed to avoid walking over it, although one could plainly see it was safe. Some children skirted around the edge, avoiding stepping into the clear section but a couple danced on it and others laid down on their bellies peering below. I didn’t see any child laying on their back looking up at the sky. The elevation of the Hive means the views over trees into the city  are spectacular.

looking throught he clear glass to the structure and ground beneath

Look up!

LED lights react to bee activity from Kew’s hives

The heat of the day brought out the fragrance of nearby flowering lime trees, making the Hive smell of honey. LED lights gently glowed in reaction to activity from beehives, and an electronic soundtrack, also connected to bee activity, faded in and out. There’s a lot going on but it doesn’t feel hectic, just alive.

You can walk underneath the Hive too, which gives a very different perspective:

From under the Hive

…a couple of kids weren’t at all phased by the glass floor

The Hive is open until November 2017.

 

Moving on to the Princess of Wales Conservatory for the desert plants:

Princess Of Wales Conservatory

The entrance to the conservatory

Inside it’s a desert…

Is this a sago palm?

Spiny!

 

Into the Waterlily House

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And the Palm House:

The Palm House

No idea what this plant is, but the leaves are terrific

Tropical gorgeousness

And finally the inevitable… (gluten free and all)

And then by way of farewell at the Embankment, a perfect finale:

 

 

The British Silent Film Symposium 2016

Every year in the middle of Spring, a roomful of silent film geeks (this is a compliment btw) gather at King’s College London for a happy wallow in the world of British silent film. Here’s my round-up.

The price of LOVE: Garbo & Gilbert do Tolstoy

LOVE

directed by Edmund Goulding, starring Greta Garbo and John Gilbert, 1927

 

MGM’s twist on the two stars being ‘in Love’ helped sell the film.

If you’re trying to impress your date with the magic of silent film, then LOVE might not be quite the right choice, despite its promising title. It’s not the best example of the ‘golden age’ of silent film and was of interest to 1920s movie-goers principally because the two stars, Greta Garbo and John Gilbert were, at the time, in love – a double entendre that MGM turned into a slogan for the film. Love is Edmund Goulding’s version of Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina, the turbulence of her life being echoed in the emotional dramas played off screen by G & G. It didn’t end well for the hard-drinking Gilbert: Garbo refused to marry him. After struggling to make the transition to sound films, he suffered a fatal heart attack nine years later.

In February, at London’s glorious Royal Festival Hall on a chilly end-of-winter night, Love launched the UK-Russia Year of Language and Literature, led by the British Council Frank Strobel conducted the resident, and brilliant, Philharmonia Orchestra for the world premiere of Aphrodite Raickopoulou’s new symphonic score, written especially for the Russian virtuoso Vadim Repin, whose tone and sensitivity with the violin was remarkable. According to the RFH website Yehudi Menuhin described him as ‘the best violinist I have ever heard’.

A Night In Victorian And Edwardian London

Early reality film was all about capturing movement: people, vehicles and animals doing something or going somewhere. If the object was static the camera moved – it would be loaded onto a boat, car, tram or train to film ships, buildings, views and panoramas (link). Nothing stayed still, least of all a city. London as a spectacle and a novelty was a big deal in Victorian visual media, which celebrated the capital in illustrations, literature, phonographs, engravings and magic lantern slides. By the time film came along in 1895, people everywhere wanted to see what the biggest city in the world really looked like.

Recently, the British Film Institute (BFI) staged A Night In Victorian And Edwardian London, a programme of short films (projected on actual film) about London, shot between 1895 and 1910; it was a captivating 100 minutes, enjoyed enormously by the full house in Screen 1. The BFI’s silent film curator Bryony Dixon introduced the programme and as she said, ‘chatted’ along, telling us where and when each film was made (if known). It felt like we had our own ‘barker’; Bryony’s knowledge and brilliantly dry wit was highly entertaining and informative. But we were a much better behaved audience than she could have expected in 1910… Neil Brand provided the piano accompaniment, an unexpected treat, and his light-touch improvised playing added sparkle to the moving images.

Cambridge Film Festival 2014

If it’s good enough for Buster Keaton…

The 34th Cambridge Film Festival (CFF) is done for another year and it’s been a cracking festival, which is especially heartening given the uncertain future of its home, Cambridge Arts Picturehouse, seriously threatened by an earlier ludicrous ruling from the Competition Commission (so who’s still here huh Comp Comm? It’s US!) The situation is still not finally resolved but the story is best read here: http://movieevangelist.wordpress.com/competition-commission/.

Moving the festival dates by just a week to the end of August/beginning of September has definitely worked – box office receipts are up 30% on last year and I didn’t have to work every day – the two don’t necessarily go together I hasten to add. In a year of brilliant films (so many that my developing Top 10 list has exploded), CFF added quite a few more to that list. As expected the Gerhard Lamprecht films were utterly gorgeous (here’s my introduction to this prolific German director for Take One: http://www.takeonecff.com/2014/introducing-gerhard-lamprecht), and the digital restoration of Le Jour Se Leve (Marcel Carne) was spectacular. From the first two days, two films have stayed with me: Tamar van den Dop’s Supernova and Kelly Reichardt’s Night Moves more than exceeded expectations. To those I’d add Cherry Tobacco (directed by Katrin Maimik and Andres Maimik) and Pawel Pawlikowski‘s Ida, both films with leading girls in their first films. Disappointments were few: Wong Kar-Wai’s Grand Master, the surprise film, was devoid of any narrative or interest. It looked amazing but couldn’t hold my attention. Philip Seymour Hoffman’s last film A Most Wanted Man just didn’t get going, although PSH was on top form – either the story itself is too thin or the screenplay has been cut too much. Regrets? I have a few: The Japanese Dog, Stations of The Cross, Violet, and Beloved Sisters. They go on the to-watch list. So here we go:

DAY 1

Supernova (Belgium, 2014) is a fairy tale with a hint of the Wild West but set in rural Holland. Meis is 15/16 years old; she lives at the frontier of adolescence, death and deep water with her family in a battered solitary house on a sharp bend in the road. Over the years several cars have hit the house and this seems to be a metaphor for their life: nothing much happens for most of the time then an explosion of activity, excitement and danger. It’s a tale of bursting sexuality, of pushing the boundaries – and then being scared by what might happen. Meis is reading one of her mum’s erotic fiction books, the storyline becoming so entangled with the film’s narrative that it’s impossible to know whether she is experiencing certain events or is fantasising. The entire focus isn’t on Meis, however. Her dad has been disabled in a car crash and can’t (or won’t) work, Mum is overworked, resentful and furious about their life; Granny has dementia, is mute and constantly shakes her head; Grandad has recently drowned himself, which turns out to be the defining element of Meis’ life so far. Director Tamar van den Dop, who also plays Mum, has a steady hand, likes the close-up, and isn’t afraid to delve deep into how (some) families work. The cinematography is beautiful, precise, fluid; in conjunction with the impressive soundscape, the film creates a sympathetic picture of growing up. Supernova is a languid, slow-paced film that effectively explores family life, with all the usual excitement, loneliness, boredom, grief and yet still being able to look forward.

The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq (France, 2014). A bizarre mockumentary (horrible word I know) about an apparently real event in the life of one of France’s most famous and revered writers. Michel plays himself. Inexplicably, he is kidnapped by a gang of burly thugs, who turn out to be complete softies at heart. Their entire family is involved in ‘looking after’ Michel throughout his incarceration – but he calls the shots. He loves a bottle of wine, a pack of ciggies and the company of a girl in his bed. It’s very funny, constantly surprising and baffling – we have no idea what the truth might be but it’s a very entertaining ride. The director, Guillame Nicloux, took part in a good-natured bi-lingual Q&A afterwards, in which he revealed that none of the participants are actors and that he was trying to offer a ‘pot-pouri of [Michel]s emotions, other than the usual media portrayal of him’.

DAY 2

World War II In Colour: The Redoubtable Miss Rosie Newman

We seem to remember the past in black and white, especially the 1930s and ’40s, but the work of Miss Rosie Newman, a British woman who happened to be a talented amateur film maker, allows us a wonderful opportunity to see what the 1940s really looked like – blue skies, sunny streets, the different tones of military kit, nursing uniforms, blooming flowers and neat gardens, vibrant shop windows, different skin colours. Being filmed in the 1940s was very much a novelty, especially if it was a woman behind the camera, some people couldn’t take their eyes off her. This novelty, combined with her impressive social connections and a determination to film wherever she could has left us with a terrific colour documentary about the war, Britain at War In Colour.

So who was Rosie Newman?

2013 film round up: fashionably late

2013 was a satisfyingly good film year!
Image: http://www.sodahead.com.

It’s been a hectic end of 2013/start of 2014 so my screen roundup has taken a back seat for a few weeks. Now though (before it really is too late) I’m knuckling down to thinking about what a very good film year it was. For the first time I managed to watch 100 films in a year: a drop in the celluloid ocean compared to some of my film friends but it’s pretty big for me. Cambridge Film Festival in September was hugely enjoyable, meeting lots of lovely new people, seeing many unexpectedly good (and a few bad) films and writing some reviews for Take One. I started a blog, penpaperaction.wordpress.com, where I post about film, theatre, books and anything else that catches my eye. The most-viewed posts are A Bit Of A Yarn: Knitting For The Cinephile and It’s A Stitch Up! (do have a look, click on titles), which are explorations of the connections between film and knitting and sewing. It’s a surprisingly fruitful thread, if you’ll pardon the pun.

2013’s films started for me with The Angels’ Share at the community cinema I help run; it went down very well and surprised many of the audience, some of whom hadn’t expected to be so brilliantly entertained. 2013 was a big year for community cinema generally, as it seems to have made a small mark on the BFI Film Forever plan, with promises of potential funding and support to develop the network. Organising a community cinema is huge fun, very rewarding and a lot of work. We’ve managed to achieve near or complete sellouts throughout the year, with just a tiny autumn dip in attendances, and we’ve been delighted to hear positive responses to A Separation, Les Diaboliques and The Spirit of ’45, amongst others. Our new line is offering (sold out) film classes thanks to a BFI/Cambridgeshire Film Consortium pilot scheme; so far we’ve enjoyed Hitchcock’s Women, Introduction to film, Millions Like Us: Home Front cinema and Close Readings of 10 films.

In September, the Competition Commission announced its bizarre and ill-informed decision that Cineworld, the Picturehouse chain owners, must divest themselves of three cinemas, most likely Picturehouses, in Aberdeen, Bury St Edmunds and Cambridge. This soaked up many hours of thinking, emailing and discussing and the outcome remains uncertain, despite a high profile media campaign that was even debated in the House of Lords. So we enter 2014 not knowing if the Arts Picturehouse, so important to Cambridge culture, will survive the year; meanwhile 2014’s programme forges optimistically ahead. The Movie Evangelist’s blog is the best place to find out the ins and outs of this shambles.

Rounding up 2013

What a year it’s been! My 2013 has been filled with film, theatre, books and travel. In this post I’ll look back on theatre, books and travel; film is a weighty subject all on its own and will be covered in my next post – coming soon! I missed the hottest British summer month since…. the last one – when was it? I was in New Zealand. It was winter. But it was a brilliant trip to see my lovely daughter (now thankfully returned to the UK). We stayed in Auckland and basked in the city’s glittering winter sun, breathed the clean, sharp air.

Flying into Auckland, quite excited at this point!

The city from Battery Park.

It’s a stitch up!

Start ’em young, it’ll pay off big time! Love that little face…

While I was researching my knitting in film blog post, A Bit Of A Yarn: Knitting For The Cinephile, I had to steer my attention away from sewing and darning – this was a topic that deserved its own space. Just as knitting has been used to convey messages about the characters, I wondered if sewing fulfilled a similar function – and if it did what was the message? A film itself is ‘stitched’ together at the editing stage, so it could be said that film and stitching are soul mates. Both activities transform something unfinished into a tangible object, whatever its cultural value may be. Given that costume is so important to any film, it’s interesting to consider sewing scenes in cinema. There isn’t room to think about costume in its own right here, so I’ll save that, along with tailoring and craftsmen, for another day.

Cambridge Film Festival 2013: Reviewing Dead Cat (UK, directed by Stefan Georgiou)

Dead Cat is a funny, engaging and thoughtful film about being 30-something and realising what is important: it’s a kind of a coming of age film for adults. Relationships of all sorts are at the heart of this very British film – friendships, love and romance, families. It was one of my top three films at this year’s Cambridge Film Festival and I strongly recommend it to anyone. As well as watching Dead Cat on the small and big screen I spoke to director Stefan Georgiou about his debut feature.

A bit of a yarn: knitting for the cinephile

I love knitting. There I’ve said it. I don’t care if it’s cool or not. I love wool (and fabric, and embroidery thread), I love creating something lovely/useful/individual out of a not-very-exciting-looking pile of wool. If that creation can be specifically for someone else, then I’m happy. My gran taught me to knit on yellow plastic needles when I was six years old and I’ve knitted for most of my life. I wish she had taught me to crochet though as I just can’t get interested now. I’ve made countless cardis and baby clothes, several Shetland shawls, lots of Arans, one Gansey (which was nearly too much even for my patience). It’s a slow, painstaking procedure that is immensely satisfying. It allows space to think, or to switch off from thinking, to be creative, to play with colour and texture. And you get something warm to wear at the end.

Why all this gushing about wool? Well it’s a movie connection: last week the community cinema I help organise showed Les Diaboliques (1955, directed by Henri-Georges Couzet) and not far into the film, there was the supercool Simone Signoret knitting! Oh yes she was, with her wool tucked under her arm like anyone’s mum might, or sitting curled up in the corner knitting away while she plotted murder, sparks flying off the needles as her fingers sped along the rows.  Was it just something for her to do (unlikely – she could smoke with equal style), or does her character Nicole’s knitting represent something more calculated and mysterious?

Picture Post: Springtime in Cambridge

It’s often the way that when you live near a tourist destination you tend not to visit those places yourself. I’ve lived near Cambridge for a long time but I’ve never done the College tours, the open top bus nor the ghost walk, I’ve only been on a punt once and that was last year. Oh, I’ve seen the spring bulbs along the Backs, but it’s a pitiful effort when we’re talking about one of the world’s loveliest cities. Much as I love Cambridge, for me it’s been a place of work or retail rather than a leisure choice, except for the Arts Picturehouse, the best cinema in the region. So I started a new regime – to get along to some of the city sights that I have so far neglected.

Tories BOW to wealthy antiques dealers and DROP ban on elephant ivory in manifesto

Pride's Purge

Foxes, badgers, robins and now ELEPHANTS: hidden manifesto plan by Tories to allow ivory trade

Under David Cameron the Conservatives had pledged – along with other UK political parties – to put into place a ban on ivory trading. This follows bans by China, the US and other important ivory trading countries to end domestic trades in ivory by the end of 2017.

But there is no mention of the ban in Theresa May’s Tory 2017 manifesto. Sneakily, the Tories have decided to DROP their previous commitment to introducing a total ban on ivory trade in Britain. This comes after heavy pressure from wealthy antiques traders who have been lobbying Teresa May hard to drop the ban on ivory.

The most powerful UK antique traders association is the British Antique Dealers’ Association – whose president is Tory MP and pal of Theresa May, Lady Victoria Borwick.

On average, an…

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Whose Awards Are These Anyway?

Very thoughtful and thought-provoking, if somewhat depressing, piece on men’s power in the film industry.

Women's Film and Television History Network - UK/Ireland

Whose Awards Are These Anyway?

Natalie Wreyford

In a very timely article, Natalie Wreyford, BAFTA voter and member of Women’s Film and Television History Network, raises some key questions regarding fairness in award ceremonies’ voting processes. She asks whether we need to consider external contexts more seriously, such as the behaviour of nominees to their co-workers or the influence of marketing techniques on the voting process? And crucially, in a year when The Oscars seemed to take a tentative step from ‘escapism to empathy’ in choosing Moonlight as Best Picture, she considers what creative diversity has been lost through history as a result of the system as it still stands.

This article originally appeared at the f-word contemporary uk feminism online and is reprinted here, updated for Oscars 2017, with their kind permission. This article originally appeared at the f-word contemporary uk feminism online and is reprinted here, updated…

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Anti-Corbyn plots & the myth of the un-electable left

Road To Somewhere Else

By Daniel Margrain

 

Corbyn speaking at the Tolpuddle Martyrs’ Festival and Rally in 2015

 

In 1978, the Australian social scientist, Alex Carey, pointed out that the twentieth century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: “the growth of democracy; the growth of corporate power; and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.” The corporations that now dominate much of the domestic and global economies recognize the need to manipulate the public through media propaganda by manufacturing their consent in order to defend their interests against the forces of democracy. This is largely achieved as a result of coordinated mass campaigns that combine sophisticated public relations techniques.

The result is the media underplay, or even ignore, the economic and ideological motivations that drive the social policy decisions and strategies of governments’. Sharon Beder outlines the reasoning behind the coordinated political…

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Nitrate Picture Show 2016 review: intoxicating celluloid

Originally posted on Silent London:
This is a guest post for Silent London by Amran Vance, who runs the London Silent Film Meetup group and is part of the team behind the wonderful Kennington Bioscope. When I wrote about the…

Ey up love! York in Spring

Spring brings out the travel-bug in me so this year I headed for York. I hadn’t been there for many years so it felt like a whole new experience.