Good afternoon everyone,

How are you faring? Well, I hope. Today I want to share with you some films by Joanna Hogg, whose work I have been enjoying enormously recently. I don't know if you remember or enjoyed films made under or adjacent to the Dogme 95 manifesto. I did and Joanna Hogg's films remind me of the best of those – seethingly awkward actual silences, like dead air, meaningful and desperate glances between characters, high tension hovering in the background. AAAAAAaaahhh they're so good. Let's start with The Souvenir.

This is an autobiographical piece which is, as you might have guessed, fairly excruciating to watch on a number of levels. This is a good interview with the director, in which she talks about memory and objects (the objects she has in her films are perfect):

I didn’t want to have that kind of period detail that was outside of my experience just for the sake of expressing that point in time. Everything that I’ve included in there, in terms of political events, is true to my memory. This relationship I had was tied into some of those events, and even beyond that, they were possibly connected to that person that I was with.

https://www.vulture.com/2019/05/joanna-hogg-the-souvenir-interview.html

If what you want though is to experience pure discomfort in the knowledge that it's not happening to you, what you want is Archipelago. Here are some stills that illustrate what's going on:

Everyone is wondering when this conversation is going to end:

Anxious hovering:

NO ONE IS HAVING A NICE TIME:

The scene described in this review had me keening with frustration and rage. So good.

In an exquisitely timed and observed scene of escalating embarrassment, they all lunch at the otherwise empty restaurant of a local hotel. Under Cynthia's direction, they change tables until finding the right one and the proper seating order. Then Cynthia, who combines insecurity with social assertion, criticises the food and demands to see the chef.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/mar/06/archipelago-philip-french-review

Let me know if you watch any of these. I'm getting so much out of her work right now.

A xx.