Sponsored Archives - Little White Lies https://lwlies.com/tags/sponsored/ The world’s most beautiful film magazine, bringing you all the latest reviews, news and interviews about blockbusters, independent cinema and beyond. Tue, 20 Feb 2024 16:00:15 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7 Meet the artist behind the Scottish Curling Championship’s stunning ice art https://lwlies.com/articles/orla-stevens-artwork-scottish-curling-championship-hendricks-gin/ Tue, 20 Feb 2024 15:59:12 +0000 https://lwlies.com/?post_type=article&p=35558 Hendrick’s Gin teamed up with Orla Stevens to add a splash of colour to this year’s competition.

The post Meet the artist behind the Scottish Curling Championship’s stunning ice art appeared first on Little White Lies.

]]>

If you happened to tune in to this year’s Scottish Curling Championship between 4-10 February, you’ll have been greeted with a rather wondrous sight. To promote its sponsorship of Scottish Curling’s showpiece event, Hendrick’s Gin commissioned a local artist to bring the usually unadorned playing surface to life with a burst of colour and flavour.

Inspired by the rich plant life found in the greenhouses at the Hendrick’s Gin Palace, the atmospheric coastal landscape that surrounds it, and the rich heritage of the sport of curling itself, Glasgow-based artist and illustrator Orla Stevens created a series of spectacular abstract designs in her home studio, which were frozen under the ice for the duration of the championships.

Curling stones are traditionally made of granite harvested from Ailsa Craig, a legendary volcanic outcrop that sits just off the mainland – a stone’s throw away from the Hendrick’s Gin Palace. This local connection formed a key part of the narrative that Orla weaved into her artwork, together with her own passion for nature and the outdoors.

She explains: “Nature and the outdoors are a big part of my life; they go hand in hand with my creative process. For this project, I was able to reference a lot of nature imagery from the research trip that we had, drawing from the landscape, and then also drawing from the plant life in the Hendrick’s greenhouses.”

Watch the short film below to learn more about Orla’s creative process, which is as refreshingly curious as a Hendrick’s Gin & Tonic served with a slice of cucumber. You’ll also discover how she took inspiration from meeting both Lesley Gracie, the Master Distiller at Hendrick’s, and Scottish Olympic Curler Scott Andrews.

Try a refreshing Hendrick’s & Tonic garnished with a slice of cucumber. To find out more visit hendricksgin.com

The post Meet the artist behind the Scottish Curling Championship’s stunning ice art appeared first on Little White Lies.

]]>
Film
Danish Scum! Welcome to Lars von Trier’s The Kingdom https://lwlies.com/articles/danish-scum-welcome-to-lars-von-triers-the-kingdom/ Mon, 21 Nov 2022 11:11:11 +0000 https://lwlies.com/?post_type=article&p=32457 Recapping the mad ’90s hospital-based horror-comedy in anticipation of its long-awaited third series, The Kingdom Exodus.

The post Danish Scum! Welcome to Lars von Trier’s The Kingdom appeared first on Little White Lies.

]]>

With Christmas in our sights, it’s worth noting that Lars von Trier is offering us his own spiky bauble to hang atop the tree with a new TV series. It’s a very belated continuation of one his most beloved early works: the phantasmagoric, hospital-based comedy-horror hybrid, The Kingdom. The Kingdom Exodus premiered to plaudits at the 2022 Venice Film Festival, where many believed that the filmmaker managed to deftly recapture the earnestly ironic spirit of the original run.

The first of five episodes arrive on MUBI on 27 November (with the grand finale arriving in our stocking on Yuletide morn!), and LWLies readers can now claim a 30-day trial to watch The Kingdom Exodus and the newly remastered The Kingdom I and II. Let’s take a quick journey back to the go-go ’90s to explore the origins of this iconic serial.

Early in his career, von Trier casually set his stall as one of the most exciting and innovative young filmmakers on the planet. His “Europa” trilogy, which consists of 1984’s The Element of Crime, 1987’s Epidemic and 1991’s Europa, was lauded for its maker’s beyond-his-years skill and preternatural understanding the ins and outs of visual storytelling, but von Trier himself displayed an impish annoyance that none of his films netted him the big prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

And so he shifted to television as a way to make some fast cash for the newly-minted production company, Zentropa, that he and his production partner Peter Aalbæk Jensen had founded after making Europa, chiefly as a way to expand creative control over their work. If, indeed, The Kingdom was made for reasons that weren’t entirely artistic, it goes some way to demonstrate von Trier’s aptitude for imposing his singular sensibility on a range of artistic forms. In short: it definitely doesn’t look or play like a cash-in. Quite the opposite in fact.

Von Trier himself sold the series as his version of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, and the many stylistic and tonal overlaps between the two would suggest that this wasn’t just one of the director’s famous publicity stunts. The story takes place in Copehangen’s Rigshospitalet which translates as The Kingdom’s Hospital (and is often shortened to Riget). As with Twin Peaks, The Kingdom offers a wry, often fond satire of its cheesy genre forbear (in this case, horror serials and hospital dramas), while committing fully to the story, characters and episodic structure, to the extent that it maintains a compelling grip on the viewer’s attention and operates as a work that can and should be taken seriously.

The machinations all revolve around a massive ensemble, though boiled down there are three key protagonists: Kirsten Rolffes’ Sigrid Drusse, a Miss Marple-type “little old lady” who possesses the powers of a spiritual medium, and is seen inventing ailments for herself in order to investigate the sound of a crying child she hears in a lift; then there’s Søren Pilmark’s Krogshøj, the slyly confident underling surgeon who feigns ignorance while quietly amassing one-ups on his hateful colleagues; and, finally, there’s Ernst-Hugo Järegård as the Swedish attendant brain surgeon, Stig Helmer, one of the lesser-known icons of ’90s TV and a brash, entitled baddie up there with the best of them.

At the beginning of each episode, we see variations of Helmer rolling up to the hospital in his red Volvo (of course!) and jimmying off his hubcaps so they’re not nicked by a group of marauding youths. Then, another trademark comes at the end of each episode, as Helmer is given an enraged soliloquy which he delivers on the roof in season one and directly into a toilet bowl in season two, and each time he wraps things up by yelling, “Danish scum!” – a reflection of his belief that he’s denigrating himself as a no-nonsense and officious Swede working in Copenhagen. When it arrives, it’s always hilarious.

In the same way as Lynch made Twin Peaks as a tumult of questions without answers, so too does von Trier cleverly extend his plotlines in a range of weird and wonderful ways that always tantalisingly delays the possibility of resolution. Having been away from Riget for nigh-on 25 years, von Trier has opted to return to its ghostly (but, for him, soothing) hallways for this third season which was always mooted, but was put on ice when Rolffes and Järegård died before production could begin. The story picks up where things left off, with many of the key cast returning for more and various long-tail narrative payoffs finally achieved. And fans of the brilliantly awful Stig Helmer can be sated by knowing that his son turns up to pick up the baton.

The Kingdom Exodus launches exclusively on MUBI on 27 November, with new episodes dropping weekly.

Our readers can enjoy 30-day trials to watch The Kingdom Exodus and the newly remastered The Kingdom I and II on MUBI. Click here for more details.

The post Danish Scum! Welcome to Lars von Trier’s The Kingdom appeared first on Little White Lies.

]]>
Film
Sensitive Scumbags: The male characters in the films of Ruben Östlund https://lwlies.com/articles/sensitive-scumbags-the-male-characters-in-the-films-of-ruben-ostlund/ Thu, 27 Oct 2022 14:38:23 +0000 https://lwlies.com/?post_type=article&p=32295 Ahead of the release of Triangle of Sadness, we look back at the Swedish provocateur’s intriguing depiction of men.

The post Sensitive Scumbags: The male characters in the films of Ruben Östlund appeared first on Little White Lies.

]]>

From various, vaguely outrageous public appearances at film festivals across the globe, it would probably be sound to deduce that filmmaker Ruben Östlund is not a shy person. Both times he occupied the stage of the Grand Theatre Lumiere in Cannes to accept the Palme d’Or – for The Square in 2017 and Triangle of Sadness in 2022 – he opted to lead the audience in a wacky call-and-response routine which also perfectly surmised his MO as a filmmaker: to do anything bar physically shaking the seat to provoke a reaction from his viewers.

Yet, unlike the traditional auteur, there’s little sense that Östlund sees cinema as an outlet for personal reflection or as a way to air his own interior anxieties. Ideas; yes, anxieties; no way. It was in Cannes in 2014, at a screening of his crowd-pleasing ski holiday nightmare farce, Force Majeure, where I first encountered his predilection for writing men who appear very different to himself. Instead of being forward, outspoken and fearless communicators, these men are sensitive, fragile and blithely unaware of their own extreme moral deficiencies.

In this film, we receive a fairly thorough defenestration of traditional fatherhood as a man, Johannes Kuhnke’s Tomas, is introduced as a chest-beating hunter-gatherer patriarch-type and is quickly revealed to be a self-involved softy at heart. Östlund takes great glee in punishing this man for the amusement of the audience, and stretches his incessant needling to the point of discomfort. The film offers a psychological case study (and critique) of knee-jerk self-preservation instincts, and in Östlund’s eyes, it’s always the man who will succumb to his most base instincts.

In The Square, we see a version of Tomas, albeit one operating in a different social context. His deficiencies, as well, are teased out through alternative means. Claes Bang’s Christian exudes confidence and poise as the head curator of a fancy Stockholm art gallery. The film’s ironic statement of intent is introduced in its opening scene, as Christian attempts to massively overcompensate for his intellectual shortcomings by talking in garbled culture speak during a live Q&A session. Later, his activities surrounding the promotion of a new conceptual art exhibit called The Square, which professes to be a space of equality and peaceable understanding, clash with his questionable long-game attempts at revenge on a thief who steals his wallet and phone.

The ironically named Christian – like Tomas before him – reverts to empathy-free preservation instincts as soon as the situation allows it. There’s an extreme pettiness to his actions, for which he is eventually punished, but not in such an extreme fashion as his forbear – he is ring fenced a little more tightly by his status as a leading voice in the arts. Östlund appears to believe that men want to project the image of empathy while enacting just the opposite through their arrogance and hardwired disdain for anything that muffles personal freedoms. To be male, is to accept a life of performative strength and dominance.

Finally, in Triangle of Sadness, we meet the hapless Carl, who is slightly different to Tomas and Christian, but not so different as to prevent him from existing as an Östlundian brother-in-arms. This ostentatious and icky class allegory presents Carl, played by Harris Dickinson, as a thoughtful male model who is seen questioning (rather forcefully!) his girlfriend’s request that he – the man – should pay the bill at dinner. Here, the director gives us a male character who fights back against certain conservative precepts of the patriarchy, and seems to have broadly taken on some zeitgeisty politics about sexual equality.

As with Force Majeure and The Square, a social infraction has been committed, and will be duly punished throughout the course of the film. Carl wants to have his sensitive beta male cake and eat it, and when a luxury cruise for social influences goes extremely wrong, he is no longer worried about overturning antiquated gender stereotypes. In fact, he seems happy to uphold them and revert to his inner himbo for dear life.

As a filmmaker, Östlund is unforgiving, some might say vaguely demonic, in the manner he reveals and chides contradictory character traits and the male ego. Some may see reflections of themselves in these tragic men who are stripped of their dignity in the name of satirical burlesque. The scene in Force Majeure where Tomas weeps for what feels like ten straight minutes had punters howling in the aisles in Cannes, and it seems that Östlund knows that, more than anything, people love to see these men stripped of their status and made to grovel for a reprieve.

Triangle of Sadness is a Curzon Film release. Catch it in cinemas nationwide from 28 October.

The post Sensitive Scumbags: The male characters in the films of Ruben Östlund appeared first on Little White Lies.

]]>
Film
Masters of Suspense: On Park Chan-wook’s love of Alfred Hitchcock https://lwlies.com/articles/masters-of-suspense-on-park-chan-wooks-love-of-alfred-hitchcock/ Mon, 10 Oct 2022 14:23:48 +0000 https://lwlies.com/?post_type=article&p=32134 Decision to Leave reframes the blueprint of Hitchcock’s Vertigo, but it’s not the first time Park Chan-wook has looked back to this classic-era muse.

The post Masters of Suspense: On Park Chan-wook’s love of Alfred Hitchcock appeared first on Little White Lies.

]]>

Artists tend to face the constant scourge of being asked by journalists to list their influences. What was your influence behind that scene? Did you reference this in the making of that? What were you watching or reading or listening to in the process of creating this new piece of art? Sometimes, the artist might demure, not wanting to be perceived as having ripped off someone else. Or worse, being seen as having produced something that might be deemed inferior to the work that may have directly inspired it.

South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook has, through the years, been diplomatic about discussing his own influences, perhaps redolent of his trademark precision, but also a need to keep the conversation focused on the text rather than the text behind the text. But one thing has become abundantly clear with the release of his award-winning latest feature, Decision to Leave: Park Chan-wook is a big fan of the late British filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock. And “big fan” may be something of an understatement.

Park has talked openly about how Hitchcock’s more-than-seminal 1958 feature Vertigo became a gateway film in prompting him to become a director. And that admission has risen to the fore once more as, from certain oblique angles, Decision to Leave offers a unique riff on Vertigo’s innovative diptych structure, as well as its depiction of human desire as something that traverses a broad spectrum between the violently destructive and the romantically transcendent.

As with Vertigo, Decision to Leave is a film whose ellipses and blank spaces – the things it pointedly doesn’t say rather than the things it does – are vital to how it operates. That it revolves around a dizzyingly complex murder mystery is also more than a coincidence, as well as the fact that it takes us to a place where the ultimate question of whodunit? is mere bagatelle when compared to the tumultuous central relationship between a cop and his suspect.

It’s fun to place these two films side by side, but it’s also energising to see a modern filmmaker produce an homage to a great film and actually retain a detailed understanding of what it is about the film that makes it great. Decision to Leave is no mere photocopy; it’s taking the profound and often ambiguous insights of Vertigo, and channelling them into something new.

Yet looking back over his career, it’s only recently that this love of Hitchcock has seemed so fundamental to Park’s cinematic project. He worked as a critic prior to his shift into filmmaking, and it’s clear from interviews that his cinephile credentials have been spotless, but how far back is this love of Hitchcock detectable in the films he has made?

If we travel back right to the beginning, to his debut feature film The Moon Is… The Sun’s Dream from 1992, we might suggest there are hints of Hitchcock’s sunny Riviera caper To Catch a Thief in its blustery tale of a gangster and his moll running off with a stash of company cash. Yet the tone is all wrong, and the main crossover – a filmmaker asking us to overlook the moral shortfalls of the film’s lead protagonist – doesn’t really confirm the link.

The first time in which Hitchcock unequivocally rears his bald pate within the Park’s oeuvre is in his breakthrough 2002 film, Joint Security Area (aka JSA), which is predominantly set in a small shack on the politically fraught border of North and South Korea. There is a procedural element at the centre of the film, but its minute focus on the actions that occur in a single space (and are perhaps inspired by the claustrophobic confines of that space), recalls Hitchcock’s one-take murder mystery, Rope, from 1948, or even his more polticially and historically trechant single-set 1944 film, Lifeboat. Both works offer a template on how to cultivate a drama in a single enclosed setting and to use the details of both situation and architecture to drive the story and characters, and that is more than evident in how Park spins out the intricate plot of JSA.

Glancing over the Hitchcock back catalogue, and one thing that doesn’t crop up very often is the theme of revenge. It’s perhaps too unrefined, too messy for Hitch. And as any Park Chan-wook aficionado worth their salt would know, revenge is a theme that the director has served up multiple times, in various different guises and on ever more ornate platters. But looking again at 2002’s Oldboy, which still stands as the director’s most iconic early missive, there are fundamental elements to the film which connect it to another key Hitichcockan pet theme: that of the “wrong man”.

If you tamp down the retrospective knowledge we have about the film – that’s it’s an operatic revenge saga – Oldboy actually plays quite cleanly as a Hichcockian “wrong man” movie on similar lines to 1959’s North by Northwest, in which Cary Grant’s wisecracking fop suddenly becomes the target of a murderous cadre of criminals. In both films, we are watching a character methodically answer the question of why they have become embroiled in a world of violence.

Things may stray into conspiracy theory territory were we to match up every Park Chan-wook film with its Hitchcock equivalent. Yet it’s worth dashing forward to Park’s 2016, fairytale-like Sarah Walters adaptation, The Handmaiden, in which a cloistered damsel is imprisoned in a palace-like homestead, and it’s down to the wiles of another person – driven by romantic affection – to liberate the damsel. Which is almost identical to Hitchcock’s 1946 feature Notorious, which many connoisseurs (rightly) consider to be one of his greatest works and a complex forerunner to Vertigo.

And last but not least, it’s worth drawing attention to the DNA crossover between Park’s only English-language feature to date, 2013’s Stoker, to 1943’s Hitchcock deep cut, Shadow of a Doubt. This was likely the point at which Park flaunts his affection for Hitch the most directly, as the two films even share a character in the ominous, malevolent chiseler known as Uncle Charlie – played by Joseph Cotten in ‘43 and a craftily counter-cast Matthew Goode in 2013.

Maybe what we can take from this is that in future, when needling Park about his influences, we can fast forward to the question of which Hitchcock film he’s been watching lately to acquire a true measure of cinematic provenance. Let’s also hope he doesn’t develop a kink for Hitchcock’s savagely violent 1972 film Frenzy, as we could all be in for an extremely dark time.

Decision to Leave is released in cinemas nationwide from October 21, with previews from October 15. Book now at mubi.com/decisiontoleave

‘Sympathy for the Devil: The Films of Park Chan-wook’ is now showing on MUBI, with new films being added throughout October and November. For more details head to mubi.com/specials/park-chan-wook

The post Masters of Suspense: On Park Chan-wook’s love of Alfred Hitchcock appeared first on Little White Lies.

]]>
Film
The Joys of a Curious Cinematic Mind https://lwlies.com/articles/the-joys-of-a-curious-cinematic-mind/ Tue, 21 Jun 2022 15:05:45 +0000 https://lwlies.com/?post_type=article&p=31338 FilmFeels unlocks the door to curious movies and a curious mindset when it comes to seeking out new experiences.

The post The Joys of a Curious Cinematic Mind appeared first on Little White Lies.

]]>

See if you can name a movie which doesn’t contain some thematic overlap with the notion of curiosity. It could be the guiding force behind an entire narrative. Or a simple motivator that transports a character from point A to point B. Curiosity is integral to human interactions, and movies tend to fixate on showing people as they accrue knowledge, or meet new people, or experience new locales or sensations.

The act of going to the cinema can involve a fair amount of curiosity too. Away from the eye-scorching strip-lighting and eau de popcorn of the multiplex, it can sometimes take a curious mind to breach the front doors of the local art house or cinema club, to wonder what goes on inside, away from the comfort of the Hollywood mainstream. Bong Joon Ho, on his triumphant 2020 awards tour, invited people to search for their inner curiosity when it came to watching films with subtitles.

Film Feels, a BFI FAN initiative supported through National Lottery funding and led by Film Hub Midlands, have cleverly taken the curiosity inherent to cinema, and the curiosity inherent to cinemagoing, and channelled them both in a season in which cinemas, film clubs and events organisations have been empowered to programme screenings and events that riff on that expansive but distinctive impulse of curiosity.

As part of this celebration, Film Feels have awarded funds to 27 organisations around the UK, who have each interpreted this tantalising brief in their own unique way, from Blaenau Ffestiniog to Chester, and from Belfast to the Isle of Skye. Our trail, like all epic journeys, starts in Bedford and the multi arts organisation, The Place Bedford, which is partnering with Youtube channel The Cinema Cartography [CC] to curate a season of six films focused around the theme of Curiosity. To add a cool immersive element to the physical screenings, CC have also created a thematically-apropos video essay which you can see below.

Elsewhere, in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Newcastle, Cinetopia and feminist-surrealist magazine The Debutante, will present an expanded programme called Electric Muses, a women-led evening of surrealist film and creative technologically including screenings of Germaine Dulac’s The Seashell and the Clergyman (1928) and Maya Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) with live scores provided by Bell Lungs and Aurora Engine. Curiosity is here represented in the artist’s creative muse and a desire to expand upon conventional forms of storytelling.

Jacques Rivette’s seminal Celine and Julie Go Boating (1973) – which may be the ultimate meshing of curiosity as both a narrative device and central theme of a movie – will screen on 35mm in July at Nottingham’s Broadway cinema, and on the back of that, various other ethereal off-shoots will screen as well, including David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive (2001) and Robert Altman’s 3 Women (1977). London Short Film Festival, in partnership with Zodiac Film Club, will also screen the film alongside a specially curated shorts programme at the end of July.

Birds Eye View‘s Queerious programme will be touring Reclaim The Frame Partner venues across the UK, including Glasgow Film Theatre, Showroom (Sheffield), Komedia (Brighton) and Rio Cinema (London), inviting audiences to get curious and explore multitude of desires on screen, through stories of sexual (re)awakening and queer love through a feminist lens. Selected titles are also available online via BFI Player.

And this is all just the tip of the iceberg, offering a sense of the range of cinematic treats in store, and the creativity of programmers around the UK reacting to such a wide-ranging brief. The entire project symbolises the idea that, when it comes to discovering new art, it takes efforts from both the individual and the arts programmer working together for the magic to truly happen. For information of all Film Feels screenings that are happening through June and August of 2022 you can head to FilmFeels.co.uk. All we have left to say is: get curious about curiosity.

Film Feels: Curious is running in the UK now. For more details head to filmfeels.co.uk

Little White Lies is committed to championing great movies and the talented people who make them.

By becoming a member you can support our independent journalism and receive exclusive essays, prints, monthly film recommendations and more.

The post The Joys of a Curious Cinematic Mind appeared first on Little White Lies.

]]>
Film
Creative polymath and paper magician Lobulo on the art of making mistakes https://lwlies.com/articles/adobe-creativity-hub-lobulo/ Fri, 13 May 2022 12:11:24 +0000 https://lwlies.com/?post_type=article&p=30957 In partnership with Adobe.

The post Creative polymath and paper magician Lobulo on the art of making mistakes appeared first on Little White Lies.

]]>

In The OFFF Dispatch we’ve partnered with Adobe to report back from OFFF Barcelona, one of the world’s largest showcases of creativity, art and digital design. Here, animators Amanda Schrembeck and Linda McNeil share their best creative advice.


There’s no easily definable category in which to place Lobulo. His primary medium is paper but that’s where the simplicity ends. Looking at his entrancing animated and still-life creations, you’re never quite sure where the analogue handmade ends and the digital trickery begins.

In truth, Lobulo is a creative polymath – a craftsman, animator, director and speaker – whose magical work effortlessly blends paper and pixels. A self-described “stubborn artist,” he refuses to take the easy route, either, when it comes to approaching commercial, editorial, and personal work.

Lobulo delivered an Adobe Live session, sharing his skills and encouraging others to follow their own path, at OFFF Barcelona, which brought together leading professionals in the creative and design industries for three days of masterclasses, talks, and workshops from 5-7 May.

Adobe, OFFF’s main partner, curated a space for free-ranging discussions through the Adobe Creativity Hub, where creatives from all corners of the globe could hear talks from the best designers in the business and pick up new skills with Adobe’s latest industry-leading tools built to enhance creativity across a range of fields.

Here, Lobulo reveals why, when it comes to creativity, sometimes you have to be prepared to get things wrong in order to produce your best work.

How would you best describe what you do?

I’m something in between a graphic designer, model maker and a really stubborn artist. I’ve never been a fan of putting a tag on who I am, so I always say I just cut stuff and glue it all together.

What’s the most interesting thing about OFFF to you? Why is it an essential visit for creatives?

OFFF is very unique in the way it gathers creative people from around the world in one place for a few days. It gives an amazing opportunity to meet people you may have worked with remotely or those you just know virtually. This year, you could feel an especially powerful vibe after not being able to see friends and people you admire for almost three years. It’s hard to explain. There are design festivals and then there’s OFFF.

Tell us about what you did at OFFF Festival and the thoughts, ideas and insights you wanted to share in your Adobe Masterclass?

I’ve been known to be very honest about what I do and how the creative industry works. I try to be as direct as I can with the audience and students who come to get inspired. I want them to understand that ‘success’ can be not what it seems to be. We all struggle and get frustrated when we have bad experiences with clients or are not making it to what we imagine is the best level. In the end, it’s just work. Can it also be our passion? Yes, but you need the fridge full to feed that passion.

When did you realise you wanted to be a creative?

When someone asks me when I started to be creative, I always say I never started because I never stopped. When we’re kids we love to play, explore, paint, try different things… And then once we get to those horrible teenage years, some of us stop doing those things as they’re not cool anymore. Some of us keep going and become a bit nerdy. So here I am! I just want to keep playing and exploring and hopefully never get too bored.

How did you decide to work with paper?

I’ve always been very interested in working with my hands. My dad was a builder and my biggest inspiration. He and I always had this internal romantic fight about who could make it better. Paper was just there. A material that is easy to get, not too expensive and with infinite possibilities. It was a bit like love at first sight, probably because bricks were a bit expensive and messy to work with in my bedroom!

Could you share any lessons or inspirations that were pivotal in the evolution of your style?

Don’t stop making mistakes. They lead you to try different paths. A big quote from the film Little Miss Sunshine goes, “Do what you want and fuck the rest.” That’s the best advice.

What would you describe as your first big break?

I did a terrible but cute first illustration using some leftover papers I had in my room and put it on Facebook. Surprisingly, people loved it and it went viral. I started getting commissions after that. I never thought about being a craft artist but here I am now. That was an amazing coincidence which changed my life.

When there are so many talented creators out there, how do you stay unique and stand out from the crowd?

Not paying too much attention to the trends and keep doing what I like. This is better to keep me motivated, even if other people don’t like it.

What advice do you have for young creatives who are working hard to try and get noticed?

‘Likes’ don’t mean good work. There are amazing artists out there who don’t even have social media. People believe that the more ‘likes’ something gets, the better it is, but that’s not true. Find your own style and push it hard until you get rewarded. If you really want it, it will come, but you have to work your ass off.

What are the biggest lessons you’ve learned from dealing with client work?

Invest time on the sketches and planning. Good organisation is key. It will help avoid surprises or having to work until 6am. If you’re not organised, drinking lots of coffee and ordering pizza late at night can be good sometimes too!

Tell us more about working with paper. What do you love about this medium and working with your hands?

It’s very calming. Coming from a graphic design background, paper has this feeling that you can do almost everything you want to, you can print on it, wrap it, fold it, burn it, cut it…. It’s very versatile.

How does your handmade work come together with digital tools, such as Adobe Creative Cloud?

We have to evolve in the end. I mostly work with video or digital, not so much print lately, unfortunately. That means my work will end up being in a digital campaign, so you will see it on your phone or computer. As much as I like to keep everything handmade, tools are tools. It doesn’t matter if you’re doing it by hand or in 3D, what people are going to see is the final image. I use lots of software to create my videos and images but always try to keep the handmade essence in the work.

When did you start using Adobe products, and what impact did they have on your work? How have Adobe projects aided you in your creative evolution?

I started using Adobe when I was… probably 14? A long time ago! I studied graphic design, so Illustrator and Photoshop taught me a very specific way of working. I can’t imagine doing what I do without having that design background and working with Adobe for so long.

How do Adobe products help you stay ahead of the competition?

Software and technology are very helpful for a faster workflow, for creating presentations for clients, producing pitches or sketches. But sometimes it’s good to take a step back and enjoy the slower path.

What does the future look like for you?

As I said, I just want to keep playing, making good work and trying new materials. These bad years of lockdown helped me learn lots of different techniques that I’m currently putting to good use in a new animation project. Hopefully it will come out soon!

Follow along for more stories from The OFFF Dispatch and learn more about OFFF Barcelona at offf.barcelona

Watch Adobe Live on-demand, which took place at OFFF from 5-7 May, and check out what’s new in Adobe Creative Cloud.

The post Creative polymath and paper magician Lobulo on the art of making mistakes appeared first on Little White Lies.

]]>
Film
Leading female animators OK Motion Club on how to perfect your portfolio https://lwlies.com/articles/adobe-creativity-hub-ok-motion-club/ Mon, 09 May 2022 11:00:21 +0000 https://lwlies.com/?post_type=article&p=30867 In partnership with Adobe.

The post Leading female animators OK Motion Club on how to perfect your portfolio appeared first on Little White Lies.

]]>

In The OFFF Dispatch we’ve partnered with Adobe to report back from OFFF Barcelona, one of the world’s largest showcases of creativity, art and digital design. Here, animators Amanda Schrembeck and Linda McNeil share their best creative advice.


OK Motion Club creates eye-popping animation full of colour, energy and life for some of the world’s biggest brands.

Co-founded by Amanda Schrembeck and Linda McNeil, OK Motion Club is an Atlanta-based, women-run studio, where creating unparalleled creative work and giving back go hand-in-hand.

Inclusivity and opening doors for others is a core pillar of OK Motion Club’s mission. Amanda and Linda host talks, workshops and run initiatives, such as Ladies, Wine & Design, to inspire, empower and share skills with women and non-binary people in the creative industries.

This passion for supporting others is also a core value of OFFF Barcelona, which brought together innovative professionals in the creative and design industries for three days of masterclasses, talks, and workshops from 5-7 May.

Adobe, OFFF’s main partner, will be creating a space for these conversations through the Adobe Creativity Hub, where attendees will hear from the best designers in the field and learn about Adobe’s latest cutting-edge tools aimed at supporting creators of all kinds.

Here, Amanda and Linda discuss why focussing on the work you really want to do is the secret to creating a winning portfolio.

What interests you most about OFFF? Why is it an essential visit for creatives like yourselves?

Amanda: They do such a great job pulling a variety of talent, as well as the smaller activations like Adobe Live Sessions and panel discussions to spotlight up-and-coming artists. Not to mention that it’s hosted in Barcelona; an incredible city that is already a hub for art and creativity.

Tell us about what you’ll be doing at OFFF and why you wanted to take part in the Adobe Portfolio Reviews?

Linda: We’ll be giving a talk at OFFF on how we built our studio, as well as taking part in a discussion called Women at Work by Hey, about female creatives in our industry. We’ll also be taking part in the Adobe Portfolio Reviews, which is important to us because it relates to our core values of wanting to help individuals break into the industry.

Do you remember the first time you had to deliver a portfolio for review? What did you learn from the experience?

Linda: I remember having a portfolio review after college with a studio in Atlanta. They critiqued the hell out of my work. But to be fair, they gave me a lot of helpful advice. My portfolio at the time looked like any other college student’s. I needed to showcase work that spoke to me and the work I wanted to do.

How did you break into the creative industry? And how did your portfolio play a role in that?

Amanda: I went to a university for a fine arts degree in printmaking. So I knew that I wanted to pursue a career in art after school. But because of [printmaking] being such a hard industry to make a successful career in, I ended up moving into graphic design and then later animation.

I actually made up a fake portfolio to be able to land that first graphic design gig – and by fake, I mean none of the work inside was real life projects from clients. I just came up with random prompts in order to prove I could do the work. My portfolio was crucial to me landing that job. You just have to be willing to adjust your portfolio and add work relevant to whatever the role is.

What are your top tips for creating the ideal portfolio? What are the most important things to consider? And what are the major pitfalls to avoid?

Linda: Only share the type of work that you want to work on. If you don’t have that experience, create fake projects similar to the work you want to do. Avoid putting in projects that you didn’t like working on, because otherwise you’ll be getting more of that kind of work.

Amanda: It’s always good to adjust your portfolio for whatever role you’re applying to; unfortunately it’s not one-size-fits-all. You might need to add or remove work to better cater to that client.

Is there a particular piece of advice you have received that had a huge impact on you?

Amanda: I had an old boss tell me to focus on ‘doing only the work that you can do.’ I’m someone who tends to take on too much work and tell myself that I can handle everything. But that line resonated with me: I should focus on my strengths and let other people help me with the rest, so I have more headspace to create my best work.

What is the one thing you think most important to help you stay at the top of your creative game?

Linda: I think finding inspiration from multiple sources can help keep your creative momentum high. It could be from seeing live music, going to an art museum, or just going for a walk in your neighbourhood. Also, remember to take time off. You’ll get burnt out if you work too much, so consider taking breaks as part of the process.

How do you and your team approach a new project? Tell us a bit about how your team works.

Amanda: There isn’t one way we approach projects because every project scope and client request is different. It depends on the client’s needs and wants, as far as style goes. Then we consider the availability between the two of us. Sometimes we just trade off who leads based on who led the previous project. But sometimes one of us is better suited, depending on our different expertise.

How do you use Adobe products in your work?

Linda: We use all the Adobe products but we tend to use After Effects and Photoshop the most. We usually start out by sketching or just writing down a few key notes before we jump into a project.

Tell us about how Adobe products have been part of your creative journey?

Amanda: Both Linda and I are self-taught in animation. Adobe Creative Cloud makes it really easy to try out new programs, like After Effects or Animate, to just see what you can create. You never know, it could lead to a whole new career!

What excites and inspires you about Atlanta, the city you live and work in?

Linda: Atlanta often gets overlooked next to US cities like New York or Los Angeles, which I feel like puts Atlanta in a unique position to thrive in a way unlike other major cities. There’s a lot of room to grow in Atlanta and the creative community here is incredibly supportive. It’s also culturally diverse and open for collaboration. There are multiple creative avenues to find inspiration in Atlanta, from the ever-growing music scene to artist collectives and organisations.

Follow along for more stories from The OFFF Dispatch and learn more about OFFF Barcelona at offf.barcelona

Watch Adobe Live on-demand, which took place at OFFF from 5-7 May, and check out what’s new in Adobe Creative Cloud.

The post Leading female animators OK Motion Club on how to perfect your portfolio appeared first on Little White Lies.

]]>
Film
Take a look at this amazing artwork inspired by Audrey Diwan’s Happening https://lwlies.com/articles/take-a-look-at-this-amazing-artwork-inspired-by-audrey-diwans-happening/ Fri, 22 Apr 2022 11:09:10 +0000 https://lwlies.com/?post_type=article&p=30783 To celebrate the release of Happening, Picturehouse spotlight 10 creative responses from female artists, writers and creators.

The post Take a look at this amazing artwork inspired by Audrey Diwan’s Happening appeared first on Little White Lies.

]]>

Based on a semi-autobiographical novel by French writer Annie Ernaux, Audrey Diwan’s lacerating drama Happening follows Anne, a young literature student in 1960s France whose future and bodily autonomy are suddenly stifled as she falls pregnant. Diwan’s film is a raw, chilling and necessary character study that pulls no punches, and arrives at a time when reproductive freedoms are still being stripped away from women across the world.

Ahead of the Golden Lion-winning film’s release in UK cinemas on Friday 22 April, Picturehouse have commissioned 10 women artists, writers and creators working across different disciplines, to respond to the film’s pertinent subject matter and its poignant portrayal of a woman’s right to engineer her own destiny.

A particularly striking response comes from Anna Bunting-Branch, whose artistic practice includes painting, moving image and writing, coalescing into a body of work that explores feminist visions and revisions of history. As well as attempting to express different relations to feminism and its complex histories, her practice locates fluidity and interconnection within art forms, disciplines and genres.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Picturehouse (@picturehouses)

For her animated work ‘After Happening’, she uses painting and animation to provide a sensitive representation of the film’s searing poignancy and resonance. Recalling a scene where Anne and her friends recite the conjugation of the Latin verb ‘agere’ (to act, to drive, to lead) in chorus, this work depicts the protagonist’s gold necklace as a symbol of action and reaction.

Anna Bunting-Branch’s work is part of a series of creative responses shared across Picturehouse’s social channels, including an episode of the Girls on Film podcast, where Anna Smith speaks to Audrey Diwan and Director of the Irish National Women’s Council Orla O’Connor.

Keep an eye out on the Picturehouse Blog for Anna Bogutskaya’s essay about the pragmatism underpinning Ernaux’s book Diwan’s film, as well as poetry from Sophie Herxheimer and Be Manzini, vibrant illustrations by Marylou Faure and Ruby Taylor, photography work by Ruth Medjber, a video introduction from Rhianna Dhillon, and a video essay by Jessica McGoff, which draws parallels between three films depicting three different parts of the world across three different decades.

Happening is exclusively screening in cinemas from today, 22 April – more details at happeningfilm.com

The post Take a look at this amazing artwork inspired by Audrey Diwan’s Happening appeared first on Little White Lies.

]]>
Film
How Paul Verhoeven defies genre trappings with Benedetta https://lwlies.com/articles/how-paul-verhoeven-defies-genre-trappings-with-benedetta/ Wed, 13 Apr 2022 09:00:37 +0000 https://lwlies.com/?post_type=article&p=30618 ‘Nunspoiltation’ doesn’t quite cut it when it comes to the work of this fiendishly talented auteur.

The post How Paul Verhoeven defies genre trappings with Benedetta appeared first on Little White Lies.

]]>

Paul Verhoeven comes at genre not just like a satirist, but more specifically like a caricaturist. The impish Dutch filmmaker specialises in isolating an artistic category’s defining quality and exaggerating it to warp his subject, ultimately upending our preconceived image of it. During his subversive Hollywood period, he regularly turned the obscenity of the US inward by giving the people a sickening dose of what they wanted.

Such anti-blockbusters as RoboCop and Starship Troopers ratcheted up the red-blooded thirst for violence in the police and military, while Showgirls turned the lubed-up American libido into a writhing, thrashing parody of itself. With his return to Europe came an accompanying shift away from outsized indulgence to equally over-the-top tastefulness. Rather than savaging common-denominator forms like action or romance by going garish, he’s taken to classing up the disreputable. With Elle, he brought a fresh aesthetic discipline and emotional nuance to the rape-revenge thriller, and his latest film Benedetta continues a proud, sacrilegious tradition in the most inspired terms yet.

From the moment that the phrase “Paul Verhoeven lesbian nun movie” entered the cinephilic lexicon, the naughtiest version of the concept dared us all to anticipate it. (The eye-grabbing promotional poster bearing a cheeky semicircle of nipple still left a great deal to the imagination.) The breathless tweets from the Croisette premiere at 2021’s Cannes Film Festival seemed to confirm that dirty old man Verhoeven was back at full lech, with excited chatter about whittled dildos and vaginal torture instruments flying this way and that. But the content belies its style, which brings a severe, hushed grace even to its most profane gestures.

The film’s not not nunsploitation, dedicated to the proposition that hotbeds of feverish erotic energy rage under the prim surface of sisters in Christ, and unshy about showing how it escapes. However, this classification implies too much to strictly apply, its connoted lurid sensibility alien to Verhoeven’s high drama of sincere jealousy and devotion. There’s no shortage of sin, but there may be a chance at salvation to go with it.

Changing course from expression to repression as he doubled back across the Atlantic, Verhoeven trained his sights on a subculture organized around systematic self-denial of pleasure as its chief tenet. As a 12-year-old Benedetta Carlini is informed upon enrolling at a Tuscan convent, the body is a shameful thing and we must estrange ourselves from it as devoutly as possible. Of course, the eternal paradox at the heart of Catholicism is that there’s nothing hotter than wanting something you can’t have, as it’s dangled just beyond your reach; a quandary that a desirous Benedetta (Virginie Efrie) confronts in adulthood.

Her undeniable attraction to fellow nun Bartolomea (Daphne Patakia) sends her into literal paroxysms of horniness – try as she may to channel those feelings onto the Sexy Jesus rocking her in fantasies straight out of a bodice-ripper paperback. She sees lust everywhere in religion: the constant orders to kneel and stand, the BDSM-adjacent rituals of punishment, the titillating closeness of fleshly temptation.

In keeping with nunsploitation custom, Verhoeven draws attention to the hypocrisy, prejudice, and ignorance of the Church; the head abbess Felicita (Charlotte Rampling) shakes Benedetta’s father down for money in a meeting to arrange the girl’s service, and then excoriates him for trying to negotiate “like a Jew.” Her pettiness and cruelty reveal themselves to have roots in envy once Benedetta starts communing with God – the power struggle between the women not so dissimilar to a sexual battle of wills – with the Almighty as the contested trophy hunk. Organized religion is just another way for those in positions of authority to assert their influence, channeled through pathologies of pent-up need that translate to domination and submission.

And yet Verhoeven’s handsome visual polish goes hand in hand with a more receptive attitude toward Christianity out of joint with the premise’s origins in high-grade trash. Because his contempt for the Church stems from serious regard for the virtues they pervert, he’s not throwing the holy baby out with the blasphemous bathwater. He’s said in interviews that he believes in the existence of Christ but not his divinity, more “interested” in how the man “was extremely important for our culture and the development of humanism.”

The film would suggest a higher degree of credulousness on his part — Benedetta seems truly touched by the spirit, her voice lowering itself to a goblin register while possessed — even as it torches the institution built around the faith. Verhoeven knew that the most iconoclastic way to approach the hot-under-the-wimple nun film was to play it straight, turning down the sensationalism in favor of a more studious examination of how eternal carnalities collided with the dogma of a buttoned-up point in history. There’s too much full-frontal nudity to completely discount Verhoeven’s prurient side, and too much fervency to write him off as a horndog with one thing on the brain.

Benedetta is released in UK cinemas 15 April and streams exclusively on MUBI from 1 July.

The post How Paul Verhoeven defies genre trappings with Benedetta appeared first on Little White Lies.

]]>
Film
Discover a classic, booze-fuelled sequence of female self discovery https://lwlies.com/articles/compartment-no-6-female-self-discovery/ Tue, 05 Apr 2022 15:36:51 +0000 https://lwlies.com/?post_type=article&p=30544 In praise of Juho Kuosmanen’s Compartment No. 6 and a scene of human connection around shots of moonshine.

The post Discover a classic, booze-fuelled sequence of female self discovery appeared first on Little White Lies.

]]>

Laura (Seidi Haarla) is an aspiring intellectual from Finland who is ‘lodging’ at her girlfriend’s (Irina, a pretentious academic) place in Moscow. She’s there to sharpen her language skills and try her best to fit into a bohemian intelligentsia crowd of hippie academics, a crowd she’s clearly not cut out for. She soon sets out for Murmansk, the largest city north of the Arctic Circle, to look at millenia-old, recently-discovered petroglyphs. Despite the trip being Irina’s idea, she nonchalantly backs out of accompanying her. So Laura goes solo, and the closer she gets to Murmansk, the more their relationship dwindles.

Laura’s replacement bunkmate Lhoja (Yuriy Borisov) has a vodka bottle firmly grasped in hand, and seems to be your stereotypically virile, working class brute, whose kindness and fragility are concealed under his Soviet-style manhood. He’s en route to Murmansk to seek out a potential mining job, and his crude demeanour couldn’t be more different to Laura’s poised comportment.

Kuosmanen’s spatial awareness in his use of location very cleverly mirrors the relationship between the two. The train’s ongoing movement, as well as its stops and detours, signal that age-old road movie trope – the messy journey to self-discovery. Trains are (more often than not) uncomfortable, claustrophobic spaces and Kuosmanen’s camera is tightly squeezed to the cramped confines of carriages and narrow corridors. The widescreen aspect ratio makes the expanse seem vast and never-ending. Such several-day long journeys suspend their passengers in a transient non-place, where time seems to disappear as they rush through cities, villages, interesting landscapes and drab terrain.

It’s when the train makes an overnight stop in Petrozavodsk that the picture begins to breathe more slowly and freely. Ljoha won’t give up trying to win Laura over, and urges her to join him as he hot-wires a car to visit an elderly woman who appears to be his adoptive mother. “You’ll like her, you like old stuff and she’s really old … You’re so fucking boring! She’s got vodka! And an old Russian stove! And a cat!”, he insists. She finally gives in, not because she wants to, but to return a favour as he protects her from a menacing man who tries to oust her from the outdoor phone booth as she impatiently waits for Irina on the other end of the line (spoiler: she never picks up).

As soon as the narrow train confines are swapped for the expanse of the countryside, the relationship dynamics begin to shift, and that’s thanks to none other than that great equaliser: alcohol. Ljoha picks up some bottles along the way to the woman’s cabin, which is enveloped in a comfortable warmth. Shot magnificently on two-perforation 35mm, the camera moves ever-so-fluidly through the cosy interiors, while the use of light and tones of warmth amid snowy Russian landscapes are a welcome breath of fresh air.

Laura spends the evening drinking copious amounts of moonshine with the woman, long after Ljoha goes to bed. The older woman imparts her simple words of wisdom while doing shots of moonshine: Do what your inner self tells you. And so she does. Albeit understated, Kuosmanen’s camerawork always suggests that there’s much more than meets the eye, depicting infatuation with a realism that’s tender and charming, perfectly capturing that fleeting yet intoxicating feeling of having a crush.

Ljoha’s facial expressions slowly begin to reveal that his brooding exterior and machismo are products of having rarely experienced human kindness. The vaguely transcendental quality of alcohol in this sequence not only subverts the dynamics between the tentative pair, whose relationship begins to develop depth and dimension; it also illustrates the misleading nature of snap judgements, of rushing to evaluate whether someone is safe or dangerous, likeable or not.

Compartment No. 6 is released by Curzon and opens in UK cinemas & exclusively on Curzon Home Cinema on Friday 8th April. For more information on screenings and venues, head to Curzon.com.

The post Discover a classic, booze-fuelled sequence of female self discovery appeared first on Little White Lies.

]]>
Film