Gadjo’s Turner Prize #1

A brief glimpse at The “News” on the BBC yesterday informed me that it’s that time of year again. I love Modern “Art”, me... it makes me righteously indignant as no amount of tax rises or human rights atrocities ever could. I’ll get onto the business of singing “Whispering Grass” in a Bratislavan public lavatory as a masterpiece to rival Rembrandt later, but there’s another reason for me to bring up the subject now: we have several blank spaces on our walls chez Dilo. I’ve tried to get my pictures and their frames over from UK but it was too difficult for the big ones. So I want to buy some masterpieces over the Internet that I can hang up, and here are the criteria for choosing them:

The Right Colour: Our walls are lime green, and any picture should match this tastefully.

Easy on the Eye: We don’t exactly have that Brian Sewell coming round for dinner too often, so no art in the house should be too challenging for our guests: poetic or classical scenes, countryside and animals, etc would probably be OK.

No Pornography: I did bring over some smaller pictures, including Edvard Munch’s lovely Yellow Madonna - that’s the mother of Jesus, not the Madonna - but Mrs Dilo’s convinced it’s Pornography! She’s even insisted I keep it my study, with a small curtain that can be drawn across it. I’ll have to be careful.

This narrows it down, and to narrow it down even further I’ve decided (for this first selection): No Rubbish. Here are some I’ve found that may fulfil the criteria:

#1 The Farmer's Daughter (by John Everett Millais): Mrs Dilo and I liked the recent Millais exhibition at London’s Tate Gallery - very Christmassy. This is like that sweet little Connemara Girl, but this one’s made a bit more of an effort. She’s a ginger, so is never going to be appreciated as anything except “Art”; but, oh, what if she starts feeling tired carrying all that milk about and has a lie down in the grass and... oh, I mustn’t think about that – maybe the wife will see what I’m thinking.

#2 The Washerwomen (by Camille Pissarro): Mr Pissaro’s pictures have plenty of green in them, like he got a job lot of it and didn’t want to waste it - I’m the same. Like me he also loves to watch women at work - but, hang on, what if they splashed each other and their blouses became really quite wet and....? Ah.

#3 The Lady of Shalott (By John Waterhouse): You really can’t beat the Pre-Raphaelites for sheer good taste - and gingerness. And there’s some nice greens here and.... but, oh heck, imagine if she thought nobody was watching and decided to take off her clothes and have a skinny dip??

#4 Deux Poires (by Édouard Manet): Paintings of actual limes – which would be perfect for our wall, obviously – were rarely done by your old masters, but other fruit can be a similar colour. Here.... oh, no, that’s just one pair, Édouard – we know what you’re trying to suggest.... typical bloody Frenchie!

#5 Diana and Callisto (by Titian): Blimey! This is more difficult that I thought it would be. A nice classical scene, outdoors, and I think there's even a farmyard animal in there somewhere, but..... And here’s loads more where this came from!! I had no better luck with dryads or nymphs either.... I’m going to have to give this up.

#6 The Alan Carr “Tennis Girl” Poster: Ah, now, maybe this is the one: tennis is classy, there’s some green in the background, and it’s a classic scene - the original Athena poster showing a girl on a tennis court scratching her arse (remember?) was indeed a classic, selling 2 million copies – but luckily here there’s not a woman in sight. I can’t see anybody objecting to this.


Ok, now the “prize”: choose the one you think is best for us and you could win Gadjo’s Turner Prize! Yes, Lana/Tina/Anthea/Alan Turner (subject to availability) will visit your home, dance for you, and let you paint her/his sensual, writhing, naked body with a set of Rowney Artist's Watercolour paints in the art movement style of your choosing - Fauvism, Dadaism, Vorticism... it’s entirely up to you. In the next episode – when the painting you’ve chosen is up on the wall and accepted as part of the furniture - I’ll offer you a selection to chose from that’s a little more modern and daring. To end, and especially for zmkc, here’s the immortal Peter and Dud on the subject:

Hindi Cinema Interlude #2

(Can one have consecutive interludes? Isn’t that a bit oxymoronic??) While we have the expert services of Mr Ghanshyam Nair with us, here’s Anglo-Indian “vamp” Helen dancing with Indian sailors in a Calcutta dive. (Calcutta is the one Indian city in which I’ve spent any amount of time, and I have good memories of the cricket-crazy kids and the amazing driving skills of the adults!) I think I’m right in saying that being Anglo-Indian was enough in itself to suggest loose morals, but if you can also move about like this then you’ll probably need a large retinue of bodyguards wherever you go. She’s voiced here by playback singer Geeta Dutt and the film is the 1958 Howrah Bridge. It’s Mrs Dilo’s favourite song.

The 3rd International Gadjo Dilo Film Festival

Just when you thought it was safe to scrape the popcorn off your crotch and go home to watch Celebrity Chlamydia Swap on the Jade Goody++ Gold channel, here’s your third festival of art and education! I was sorely tempted to include a double bill of Eisenstein films (Battleship Potemkin and October: Ten Days That Shook the World) on one of the nights, but I thought that might be too much communism (and montage) for some people. Watch and Learn!

Land and Freedom (1995)

British director Ken Loach makes socialist films, as you’ll know. Many are interesting, but the “realism” can be dispiriting and the politics not to everyone’s taste. Land and Freedom, however, concerns the Spanish Civil War, which people generally seem to find quite romantically idealistic. Ken’s onto a winner then. It tells the story of the POUM, a Spanish communist organisation that tried (in vain) to fight Franco’s Falangists. It’s all very moving – and I know Spaniards whom it’s reduced to tears - and seems more real than any other war film I’ve seen. But perhaps the best scene in my opinion is the longest and the slowest, where the International Brigaders discuss with Spanish peasants how to partition their land “come the glorious day” – it’s nothing more than that, a long and difficult but life-changing discussion.

Persona (1966)

Of the Ingmar Bergman films I’ve seen this is my favourite. It concerns an actress (Liv Ullmann) who's had some trauma and does not speak any more. In most cultures she'd simply be given a slap and kept in a backroom where she couldn’t be an embarrassment to her family; but in Sweden she gets an indefinite all-expenses-paid seaside holiday and her own personal nurse. The nurse (Bibi Andersson) is a chirpy, “normal” young woman, whereas the actress is menacing simply by her silence. The two are alone, and their personas begin to meld together as the nurse tries to maintain the barriers of her own sanity. It’s brilliantly handled, with “arty” cinematic techniques to point up the psychological conflicts. (There could’ve been a companion film to this one where Liv Ullmann is simply given a slap, but I don’t think it was ever made.)

Underground (1995)

I need a “music movie”, and my choice is East European gypsy. You wouldn’t necessarily want to employ one, but when they play it can be exhilarating. Tony Gatlif’s films - e.g. Latcho Drom and of course Gadjo Dilo - showcase this music, but Underground’s director Emir Kusturica is the other big name in the genre. He made the riotous Black Cat, White Cat which has a better plot, albeit a challenging one for non-gypsies. Apparently, Underground symbolically depicts and satirises the history of Yugoslavia since the 2nd World War, but, frankly, it just looks like chaos. A lot of the action takes place in a cellar - complete with brass band and an army tank – in which the inhabitants are unaware of the changes in the outside world. The soundtrack brought arranger (he claims he’s a “composer”, but he’s not, he’s a lyin’ thievin’ gadjo) Goran Bregović to the world's attention. What matters to me is that the film has terrific energy and the music is great, pumping, gypsy brass.

In the Heat of the Night (1967)

I choose this film for a variety of reasons. It features perhaps my favourite straight Hollywood actor, Rod Steiger, and also the beautiful Sir Sidney Poitier, who’s probably the reason why it’s one of Mrs Dilo’s favourite films. You must know the story: Deep South USA, era of the civil rights movement; it's all very steamy, racist, and vengeful, but luckily we know that Our Sid is going to win through in the end. They call me Mister Tibbs!!! It’s also a bit like Bergman's Persona, in that the two blokes get to share a few “special moments” together. There are some great touches in the film, like using a quirky pop song for a whole scene long before Tarantino milked the idea; and the soundtrack also features my favourite musical instrument, the ţambal (a.k.a. "tsymbaly", "cimbalom", etc)

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And so, my turn to choose 4 people to carry on the tradition of presenting their 12 favourite films. I nominate Kevin Musgrove (whom I'm suspecting has a lot to tell us on this subject), my two new friends The Dotterel and Daphne Wayne-Bough, and my homey Andy from Csíkszereda Musings.

For All Our Moldavian Friends: A Disclaimer

There now follows a party political broadcast by the Regional Prejudice Popular Front. Gadjo Dilo takes no responsibility for their opinions – and Mrs Dilo says that people from other parts of the country are actually not too bad sometimes - but under EU regulations they have the necessary demographical mandate to air their views publicly.