Monday 17 October 2016

Cinema Mythica is a winner!

Fabula member Richard Clarke's latest film is selected for multiple film festivals and wins an award!

  Actor Mark Daniels as the despicable villain Mr Murnau, here he espies his nemesis the heroine Arianne.
Richard Clarke's latest film, Cinema Mythica, is a 16 minute film that tells the story of a female orphan's heroic voyage towards self discovery and dénouement (completion or fulfilment of life task). It is set amidst a transition landscape of period design in historic locations with fictional characters. 
Richard is a multi-award winning, international independent filmmaker with a master’s degree in Art and Design from The University of Brighton. His preferred filmmaking genre is short narrative fiction with a fantasy theme and his work has been described as dark, theatrical, imaginative, comical and thought provoking.  So far he has made twenty-two short films. 

As well as being the director, the lighting manager, cinematographer, editor and tea maker! - Richard also makes all his own props and sets and these are beautiful art objects in their own right.

Taking a break, the actor surprises the cast and crew during filming by turning the camera on them.  
We are pleased to tell you that Cinema Mythica has been officially selected and has won ‘Best Music Award’ in the following festival:

MAC Underground Film Festival in Manaus, Amazonia, Brazil in the famous 'Amazon Theatre’. It premieres in October 2016 and has been translated into Portuguese for this festival. ‘Best Music Award’

Further official Film Festival selections include:

10th River Film Festival in Padova, Italy premiered in June 2016 and it was translated into Italian for this festival.

Minikino Film Festival in Denpasar in Bali, premieres in October 2016 and has been shortlisted as finalist.

Indiewise Virtual Film Festival in Miami Florida, premieres in July 2017.

The film has also been submitted to the ‘Del Fic Autor Film Festival’ in Mexico and Jerzain Ortega, Director of the festival has said of it:

“The performances are very good also the direction and sound…overall a very cool short film from a talented director, it’s highly creative and imaginative”. 

The film stars the prestigious talents of Ruby Hermon, Mark Daniels, Juliette Rajak, Madeleine Swift, Dagmara Rudkin and many more. 

Behind the golden screen of the kiosk set; lights and camera are ready...here comes... ‘action’.




 Richard guides the Cinema Mythica ladies through a song rehearsal, they captured it perfectly.



















The wonderful singing Theatre Patrons perform, an eventually unused, film song 'Wagons Roll’.









The film took two years to make and it is inspired by the long history of filming and picture houses in the City of Brighton and Hove dating back to the late 1900’s. This includes the world famous Art Deco design of the Regent Cinema, opened in 1927 a building that once occupied the site of what is now Boots the Chemist in North Street.  

The theatre set on location -  designed and built for the hallway of a period Georgian house.
The interior of the Duke of York's picture palace was another inspiration for Richard’s set designs that were made on location in a period Georgian house with a theatrical ownership history in Brighton's Hanover Crescent. The picture house is another well known Brighton cinema landmark and, built in 1910, it is arguably the world’s longest running cinema.

Techniques of theatre and early cinema are embedded in the film, especially split screen techniques such as those developed by Hove filmmaking pioneer George Albert Smith in his 1899 film Santa Claus. Part of Richard’s research during the making of Cinema Mythica took him to Hove Museum which has a dedicated Early Cinema section on the history of film in Brighton and Hove, including details of Smith’s filmmaking exploits. 

It is well worth a visit to Hove Museum to learn more about the history and culture of filmmaking in the city. If you visit between December 3rd and April 2017 you will have a chance to watch Cinema Mythica. It will be screened daily on the Fabula film reel in the cinema on the first floor at the museum for the duration of our forthcoming exhibition. This will also be an opportunity to see many of Richard's beautifully crafted props that will be on show downstairs in the gallery.

 Reproducing early cinema split Screen Film techniques using modern digital editing.


Film Still from the beginning of Cinema Mythica, these film techniques show authentic early cinema screen size, inter-titles and screen quality.












Last but not least, please follow links from the Fabula website for more information about Cinema Mythica and Richard's work.

Saturday 15 October 2016

Happy Birthday to Fabula!

Today is a sort of birthday for us - Happy Birthday Fabula!









In September 2014 we formed our collective. After group discussion we decided on our name and two years ago today, we made ourselves public and joined Facebook! Since then we have been involved in nine shows and illustration events. Three have been solo exhibitions, one in the UK and two in China and we had a further overseas event when we took part in an illustration fair in Korea - thanks to our brilliant overseas members!


We're excited!

We've got twenty-one members now and we're currently planning our most exciting exhibition so far at Hove Museum (thanks to The Royal Pavilion & Museums) where we will be showing our work from December 3rd until April 2017. As well as showing work by sixteen individual members there will be collaborative work in progress inspired by myths and fairy tales called The Story Cabinet. 

Guest Artist

We are also pleased and excited to let you know that the very talented Joe Evans will be joining with us and showing his work as a guest artist. 

It's going to be an interesting exhibition including workshops planned over the course of the show for the public to take part in - details to follow. We do hope you will come.

Wednesday 12 October 2016

The Story Cabinet Develops...

More about The Story Cabinet - our on-going collaborative piece based around fairy tales and myths...

Entering the Fairy Tale Forest





















The art work from all nine artists involved will be combined in and around wooden boxes to make a rich visual display. 


An Old Wooden Drawer 

You may be able to imagine how these details might play a part in a fairy tale.

Whose Garden is This?

The project is still evolving and we are still meeting up to make work together using lots of natural materials.

Back into the Forest Using Mixed Media and Light


Textures











Several Fabula artists have joined together to work on this project. We work in many different disciplines and this creates a wide variety of potential ways to tell stories and collaborate with each other. Each of us responds to the project in a different way. 
Fairy Tale Trees - One Way to Make Them
Playing with Scale to Make These Trees.
































There are details that we're deliberately leaving out here - so there will be some surprises. This piece will appeal to children and adults and will have some interactive elements. We hope you will come and see it at Hove Museum from 3rd December.

Fabula artists involved in the Story Cabinet are Richard Clarke, Lou Wishart, Penelope Chong, Louise Dennis, Katherine Perret, Juliette Rajak, Dagmara Rudkin, Mags Swift and Ruby Hermon.   Further information about our work can be found on the Fabula website.