Michael Craig - Copernicus Films

Work on The Fairground Booth film proceeding well: My intention is to start a journal which will chronicle the progress of the actual process of editing and producing the film. Blok's aim in writing   The Fairground Booth  is to liberate us from whatever trust may have been placed in traditional theatrical practice. Part of this process involves another form of understanding.  The Fairground Booth  therefore has a visuality or pictorial sense in its graphic unworded movement. Blok wants us to see that out of the chaos emerges a new form or sense of order through the theatrical. The author is introduced  not as a god like creator but as fallible and weak. For Blok, the Cosmos as a subject underpins the apocalypse - as in the fall of the stars and the heavens crashing to earth. The very multilayeredness of themes invokes and multiplies new themes, direction,openings and expansions.

The Russian Theatre Film Series book - published and available: It’s difficult to find an appropriate description of the book "The Russian Theatre Film Series". Essentially it is an account of an arts documentary series with all its pitfalls, successes, limitations and achievements. The three films which have so far been completed are " Meyerhold, Theatre and the Russian Avant-garde ", " Stanislavsky and the Russian Theatre " and " Vakhtangov and the Russian Theatre ". This book is part of the overall project - The Russian Theatre Film Series and is a milestone and a marker in this developing project. It is also a commentary on what it means to make an independent arts documentary film series in a foreign country namely Russia. Not so much from the technical point of view although there is plenty of technical aspects covered but more from the point of view of a kind of interior process. It is an expedition into the phenomenology of film-m...

As I come to the end of  The Russian Theatre Film Series   book already new horizons opening up. Yesterday completed the artwork fro the cover, so all that remains is to proof read the book one more time and check everything over for layouts and other things. I have been tantalizingly speaking to a publisher but still feel I should work at my own pace and within my own resources although it is always worth exploring all the publishing outlets which might be available. Already there are ideas percolating through with regard to  The Fairground Booth book and beyond. As always it is too early to write about this as the ideas themselves are appearing more as clues to developing work. One idea is to do another book about the theatre but only biomechanics. To make it more as an illustrated book with pictures but also text. The black and white tones will make I believe a very good visual impact. Working on this tonight - fleshing out a broad plan and outline with possible...

Front cover for the book "The Russian Theatre Film Series" Cover completed for the Russian Theatre Film series book. A large step forward as I was worried about how it might look. In the end I only spent 3 - 4 hours putting it together ready for printing.  The book weaves together the experiences of filming in Moscow and Russia on The Russian Theatre Film Series. How it came together, who were the main characters involved in the series and charts the pitfalls, the struggles and the joys of making independent films in a foreign country in this case Russia, Moscow.  Often I am asked how do you begin to make a film, where do you start. For many it is easy, you start and that's it. For others that first step seems like a mountain standing before them. This book attempts to answer some of those questions by re living the steps which it took to make this series. Not necessarily step by step but the book certainly travels a distance that most independent film makers ha...

In an article by James David Jacobs about Shakespeare and music he writes "The Tempest stands at the crossroads of theatrical history: between the Renaissance and the Baroque, between the Elizabethan theatre of the imagination and the Jacobean spectacle, between the primacy of the word and the primacy of sensory entertainment". Similarly The Fairground Booth was written and performed at the threshold of a new epoch in 1906 in Russia. The common link between these plays is music. It's no coincidence that at the same time these upheavals were taking place in England, the art form known as opera was being born in Italy (the first operatic masterpiece, Monteverdi's L'Orfeo, was premiered in 1607.) And it is not an accident that  The Fairground Booth  appeared at the junction between two epochs and the beginning of what we understand as the modern era.

Showing this short film to a live audience tomorrow in Moscow. Never expected to present it as such so a bit nervous how it will be received. Was at the venue today checking things out. Good sound - which is welcome as the soundtrack is important. The film was shot in Tokyo and since it has been released on You-tube I have re evaluated the film and re edited it slightly for this particular presentation due to the specifics of the presentation. I will blog about that later with pictures and possibly a video clip of the event. I have been worrying about it for several weeks now mostly about how I would present the film to the audience but all those problems seem to have been solved. The work that I put into this video is now starting to pay dividends in terms of new projects and ideas for films. All the practical experience on this film portended  a completely  new direction. Have also been working on much of the writing. The next book about the Russian theatre   is in the ...