Matt Lloyd Turner

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2020

Space Afrika

Space Afrika

The year is almost out and it is time to collect thoughts again. Normally, I’d talk about all sorts of things here, though mainly about my experiences of the world over the year and the role that art has played in how I navigated it. This year, as many things have been experienced from home—in a muted, isolated, and often very inadequate form, almost as if underwater—I’ve stuck largely to listing what I’ve liked, eschewing much of the narrative detail that might usually accompany such an indulgence. That is what 2020 has felt like for me—a lot of consumption but not much community; continual stimulation and yet little to no elation. Mainlining, flatlining. Carrying on towards some unknown horizon.

First, music. My all round favourite album was the Pretty Sneaky LP, which was released in the middle of the summer without any description or supporting details. It is the sort of thing that sounds good straight away, so confidently and cleverly constructed that is immediately captivating, comforting, full of pleasant wobbles and nice, interesting textures. The lack of context was nice somehow: a big blank orange square with two circles inside it that make relaxing reverberations when spun round on the record player. Otherwise, Space Afrika’s hybtwibt? (and this accompanying NTS show), was probably be the best thing I heard all year, a mixtape made of sketches, field recordings, beats, textures, and snippets blended together into a sombre sonic tapestry, a memory imprint released during the summer’s uprisings against racialised police brutality. Intimate, diaristic, expressive, affective; it is deeply impressive piece of music and a powerful document.

Beatrice Dillon’s Workaround was also a favourite. Philip Sherburne’s review describes it very well, calling the record a “marvelous paradox”, and noting how despite “the music’s rigidity, it breathes like a living thing.” In terms of live shows, for obvious reasons there is not much to talk about, but it is worth saying that the Beatrice Dillon show at Somerset House would have been a highlight in any year but will always feel extra special now, given that it was the final live event I went to before the first lockdown hit. Way back in March, it was the last time I was in a hot and dark room, swaying amongst people whilst sound and colour vibrated around and inside of me. When this is all forgotten, I will still remember that evening, all of us standing together amongst sound in a space that was positively swelling with warmth, love, and good sentiment.

TWENTY FIVE NEW RECORDS

Time (Garrett Bradley, 2020)

Time (Garrett Bradley, 2020)

The last thing I saw in the cinema before the reality of pandemic hit me was In Vanda’s Room (Pedro Costa, 2000), at the ICA in early March. It was the last of his films I had left to see, and I had been quite stringent about saving his work to watch in the cinema, waiting on screenings that would inevitably show up. I’ve been less fussy about such things since then. In June, my friend gave me his old television (40 inches, 1080 pixels!) and I bought a playstation, and, for the last 9 months or so, I’ve been squirrelled away, watching most of my movies that way. It isn’t the best way, certainly, but it works all the same.

Early on, I watched a few films made by Japanese directors, including a slew from the 1980s and ‘90s that are quite hard to get a hold of, and probably wouldn’t have been likely to play any London cinemas any time soon anyway. Everyone should watch His Motorbike, Her Island (Nobuhiko Ōbayashi, 1986). It’s so slick and exciting. I watched a few more of Ōbayashi’s films after, but this one remains the best that I’ve seen. Other than that, two coming-of-age films stood out: Like Grains of Sand (Ryosuke Hashiguchi, 1995). an extraordinary and really quite profound queer melodrama; and August in the Water (Gakuryû Ishii, 1995), a stylish supernatural-ecological teen film with a slow, strange twist. Later, I caught up with a few longer-length documentaries I had been meaning to watch, because, well, why not? Equally amazing: A (Tatsuya Mori, 1998), a provocative all-access look at the Aum Shinrikyo cult; and The Shiranui Sea (Noriaki Tsuchimoto, 1975), about the aftermaths of a mercury poisoning incident in South-western Japan. Sometimes a subject really does require an obsessive, studied focus and a total commitment.

More recently, I got round to catching up with Personal Problems (Bill Gunn, 1980), which is also a longer one, This was met with so much acclaim last year, and it’s really great—a reminder that I should make my way around to the rest of his work, of which there is not as much as there should be. I also saw Old Joy (Kelly Reichardt, 2005), which was a balm. For me it is her finest film. Just thinking about it makes me feel calm.

Oddly though, even at home with the whole world of cinema at my disposal, some of the best things I saw were still programmed by other people. As much as anything about the experience itself, that is what really makes me want to get back there. In Abby Sun and Keisha Knight’s “My Sight is Lined With Visions” series, two films took me totally by surprise: Sea in the Blood (Richard Fung, 2000), a fantastic experimental diaristic film about grief, sexuality, race, and illness; and Kelly Loves Tony (Spencer Nakasako, 1998), a superb collaborative documentary about two young Asian Americans adjusting to life’s challenges. I think if there was any filmmaker whose work I’ve seen this year that I’d implore people to try to track down, it would be that of Spencer Nakasako. For a much better sense of why than I would be able to offer, you can read this article by Devika Girish, and this one by Miko Revereza. My life is fuller having watched his films, and I likely wouldn’t have seen them were they not introduced to me through this project, which, in turn, oddly probably wouldn’t haven’t happened were it not for the pandemic.

As far as new film was concerned, I always find it odd when people say they didn’t see much that was good this year, or that any given year was a weak one. If you are looking in the right places, I think that every year has an ample supply of goodness. It just takes a bit of time and attention to drown out the noise and filter through the filler, and maybe more than a little curiosity. This year, I think I might have watched more new films than ever before. Below, a list of twenty five of my favourite 2020 premieres.

TWENTY FIVE NEW FILMS

  • A Shape of Things to Come (Lisa Molloy, JP Sniadecki)

  • Communicating Vessels (Maïder Fortuné, Annie MacDonell)

  • Corporate Responsibility (Jonathan Perel)

  • Crestone (Marnie Ellie Hertzler)

  • Days (Tsai Ming-liang)

  • Don't Rush (Elise Florenty, Marcel Türkowsky)

  • Figure Minus Fact (Mary Helena Clark)

  • Labor of Love (Sylvia Schedelbauer)

  • Lovers Rock (Steve McQueen)

  • Malmkrog (Cristi Puiu)

  • Mon Amour (David Teboul)

  • Never Rest/Unrest (Tiffany Sia)

  • Once Upon a Youth (Ivan Ramljak)

  • Purple Sea (Amel Alzakout, Khaled Abdulwahed)

  • s01e03 (Kurt Walker)

  • Time (Garrett Bradley)

  • Tendre (Isabel Pagliai)

  • The Calming (Song Fang)

  • The Inheritance (Ephraim Asili)

  • The Viewing Booth (Ra’anan Alexandrowicz)

  • The Year of the Discovery (Luis Lopez Carresco)

  • The Woman Who Ran (Hong Sang-soo)

  • This Day Won't Last (Mouaad el Salem)

  • Voices in the Wind (Nobuhiro Suwa)

  • Z = |Z/Z•Z-1 mod 2|-1: Lavender Town Syndrome (Andrew Norman Wilson)

Year in ReviewMatt TurnerFilm, music, 2020