I’d bought a copy of the The Adventures of Prince Achmed about 4 months ago, but had never got around to watching it. As my mum was coming over for the evening for a belated Christmas evening, I suggested we watch it…
"errr…. that’s what I got you as your Christmas present!"

Doh! Anyhow, we watched it and were transported into a magical animated world; it was hard to remember the silhouettes were all hand cut, the animation stop-frame and this done in the 20s.

The new edition has beautiful saturated colours, swirly and smoky effects that make you really think hard as to how it was achieved and delicate, delicate silhouettes.

It reminded me of the Kingdom Under the Sea book I had as a child with illustrations by Jan Pienkowski and of the magic lantern slides I’d seen on a barge in Little Venice. Perhaps on the puppet barge? I love the pic from the early 80s which exactly evokes my memories of the lock from when I was small

Am determined not to miss out this year, and with the Ritzy just up the road it’d be pretty slack if I didn’t manage to go!… As part of the festival there is an homage to Latin American Women Filmmakers including Maria Novaro (Mexico):
"she has focused on the self-assertion of women in Mexican society and has taken women’s liberation as her main theme"
It’s showing 4 of her films, Sin Dejar Huella/Without A Trace, El Jardin del Eden/The Garden of Eden, Lola and Danzon (a type of Cuban dance).

I have (paper) notes from my trip away, but stuff has to be written out / scanned in so for now here are just a couple of links, thanks to bits of crumpled paper found in the bottom of my rucksack whilst emptying it!

We went to Cinders Gallery that had an exhibition of posters by bon goût – made me super happy looking at them and then a bit cross I wasn’t doing more drawing myself.. one of the books reminded me of work done by Nate Williams so here is a link to his site just because it’s good to look at..

… got some cool ideas about doing a new Banjo show…

oh and I bought a copy of The Drama cos it featured an interview with the amazing talented Geneviève Castrée about her, and her new book – Pamplemoussi.

Also saw in ReadyMade mag a link to fallenfruit.org and it reminded me of how we made the jam this summer -  blackberries from Wormwood Scrubs and apples fallen on the grass in K’s back garden.

Also on the plane home watched the film Crash (Paul Haggis) a brilliant film about people living in LA and their racial (in)tolerence… made me cry…