Pea Arts About

I have the great pleasure of reporting from Lausanne, Switzerland, this week. I've been here giving a guest seminar for my friend Jenn's MA linguistics module on language in TV and film. We did this before but via Zoom during lockdown, and this time everything worked out so I could come in person.  My task was to cover film stylistics and the terminology used in moving image/audiovisual analysis. I also wanted to link to topics such as accent and ethnicity covered elsewhere in the module. My go-to to exemplify all this is No (dir. Pablo Larraín, 2012) as it is a meeting place for television and cinema, the main character (René Saavedra played by Gael Garcia Bernal) has returned from exile to Mexico and is marked as not quite Chilean by his accent, there is a notable absent presence of Chile's indigenous peoples, and it is one of those films whose aesthetics directly impacted by the recording apparatus and the way it has been edited make it an excellent candidate for demonst...

It's just gone 3pm on Thursday 21 July 2022 and I'm on a coach waiting to board the Stena Line ferry home. I'm feeling quite panic-stricken at only having my telescopic keyring pen (an excellent gadget gifted by my dear friend Fran) with no refill or back-up. It'll be fine. There's pens at home, sure.  But what if it runs out now? Have I used it enough?  How tedious it is having an anxious brain. It takes my mind off being the only masked person on this nearly full coach, I suppose. We didn't reach Port Ryan quickly enough to get out for a breath of Irish Sea air (I know we're not quite there yet, but practically).  That wasn't why I started writing in my DYCP notebook. I've just read, today cover-to-cover, Diana Athill's late-life memoir Stet , or Somewhere Towards the End (2008). No, I'm not sure about the abbreviation. It's been an enthralling read. I have felt as if she's been telling me her life story and about all the people s...