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Filmmaker Tyler Fairbank traveled to South Africa to capture this
incredible wildlife footage, then turned his adventurous safari into a
compelling hyperlapse.
The
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Know of a great short film that should be part of our Showcase? Email SFS@ngs.org to submit a video for consideration.
One of the reasons why Marilyn Monroe remains such a potent and visible
icon of beauty and glamour is because she never grew old in front of the
cameras. Unlike her contemporaries Elizabeth Taylor, Debbie Reynolds
and Jane Russell, she has been crystallised as an image of perfection: a
concoction of fluffy white blonde hair, sleepy-lidded eyes, and a
dazzling smile that appears both seductive and carefree. Just how
carefree she really was, however, is a longstanding cultural obsession
that today arguably exceeds the interest in her film performances.
The circumstances of Monroe’s death have always been seen as the dark
side of this luminous vision; a cautionary tale of excess and addiction,
to those who lust for the champagne-fuelled whirl of sex and glamour
conjured up by those rumours of the Kennedys, Sinatra and Joe DiMaggio.
Biographers and journalists have detailed stories of addictions and
psychiatric illnesses, which have all contributed to the legend of
Monroe as a tragic victim: a girl born on the wrong side of the tracks,
with a childhood in and out of foster homes, and an adulthood of
exploitation by the men she craved affection from and who eventually led
to her lonely, mysterious death.
In 2010, however, the publication of her personal papers revealed a far
more contemplative and poetic Monroe, evidenced in her handwritten
poems, letters and journal entries. These items of correspondence and
ephemera were published in a volume called Fragments: Poems, Intimate
Notes, Letters by Marilyn Monroe, edited by Stanley Buchthal and Bernard
Comment.
These notes are the writings of a poet: a person who is driven
to write and to express herself in carefully crafted words. She
attempts to capture the precise phrase to convey her mood or feeling,
and also shows a reflexivity and insight into her star persona which
evidences a sombre intelligence.
As the editors say, “the collection of documents revealed here is
nothing less than a treasure trove… there is nothing dirty or low, no
gossip in this book; that was not Marilyn’s way. What the notes reveal
is intimacy without showiness, the seismic measuring of a soul. They
take nothing away from Marilyn’s mystery but rather make the mystery
more material. She was an elusive star with a magnetic force that sent
compasses haywire whenever she got close.”
In notes she typed early on in her marriage to James Dougherty in the
early 1940s, the teenage Marilyn wrote that “all this thought and
writing has made my hands tremble but I just want to keep pouring it out
until that great pot in the mind is, though not emptied, relieved”.
This shows how the process of writing was integral to Monroe’s self care
and well being. She could also be honest here, perhaps in a way that
she couldn’t be elsewhere. On an undated scrap from a notebook she wrote
“I can’t really stand Human beings sometimes – I know they all have
their problems as I have mine - but I’m really too tired for it. Trying
to understand, making allowances, seeing certain things that just weary
me.” In her so-called Record notebook from around 1955 she writes that her
“first desire was to be an actress” and that she is striving to work
fully and sensitively, “without being ashamed of it”. Her drive to work
on herself and her craft was merciless: “I can and will help myself and
work on things analytically no matter how painful”, and she notes in her
notebook a single line, “having a sense of myself” – as if the words
ground her in some way and remind her of what she needs to keep in mind.
On notepaper of the Waldorf Astoria hotel she writes that she must “not
make commitments or tie myself down to engagements”, and that she should
“remember there is nothing you lack – nothing to be self conscious
about yourself – you have everything but the discipline and technique
which you are learning and seeking on your own.”
She was working on
techniques to overcome her fear, but it crept into every aspect of her
life, including her marriage to Arthur Miller. While they were in
England, filming The Prince and the Showgirl, she discovered a page of
notes by Miller that he claimed were sketches for a new character he was
developing, expressing disappointment in their marriage and confessing
that sometimes he was ashamed of her in front of his friends.
This was a
devastating blow to Monroe, and her notes at the time show just how
severe it was. She writes, “I guess I have always been deeply terrified
to really be someone’s wife since I know from life one cannot love
another, ever, really… starting tomorrow I will take care of myself for
that’s all I really have and as I see it now have ever had”. The fragments which she wrote on bits of paper reveal a woman constantly
striving to ground herself, help herself, and keep on top of her
demons. They also show Monroe’s determination and strong will: whether
it is in the planning of dinner parties or the preparation of a
performance, Monroe was meticulous and dedicated to doing her best. For those who are truly fascinated by Monroe’s personal and domestic
life, there is also the book about the contents of her filing cabinets,
called MM – Personal, in which the historian Lois Banner uses
the invoices, receipts, letters, contracts and business documents
contained in them to challenge many assumptions about Monroe, such as
the idea that she didn’t keep good financial records: the contents of
her cabinets show that she did.
Banner demonstrates how Monroe was a
capable person who enjoyed cooking, correspondences and many good
friendships. And in Marilyn Monroe: The Personal Archivesby Cindy De La
Hoz, facsimile items from Monroe’s archives such as birthday cards,
cheques and telegrams, create a feeling of actually being able to enter
Monroe’s domestic sphere, with tactile access to intimate
correspondences. This access to Monroe’s life off-screen has fuelled her contemporary
presence on social media, with innumerable Pinterest, Instagram and
Facebook pages dedicated to Monroe’s quips, quotes and writings. But it
is important to remember that these writings are not just jottings or
doodles.
They were not intended for publication. They are the
imaginative and poetic reflections and observations of a woman driven to
express herself cathartically and creatively. In them she can say
honestly what she is feeling about what she wants. These writings are
more consistent with the photographs of Monroe as a contemplative
thinker and avid reader. Perhaps the photographs of Monroe reading Ulysses were not staged ironically after all.
The most important things that these diaries and writings do is to
give Marilyn Monroe a voice: unmediated, created by her own hand, as a
direct line to her reflective consciousness.
This is a diametrically
opposed way to relate to Monroe to the two-dimensional pin-up, model, or
‘girl’ onscreen. These suggest what ‘the girl’ might have been doing in
her apartment while Richard Sherman was having his mid-life crisis
downstairs in The Seven Year Itch, or what Cherie might have been
writing in her journal in her dressing room in Bus Stop as she planned
her trip to Hollywood and Vine. In other words, they add a cerebral,
imaginative and personal dimension to the cultural icon that is Marilyn
Monroe, enabling us to relate to her as a thinking, feeling woman with
desires and opinions, like all of us.
June 2016 by Lucy Bolton who a is senior
lecturer in film studies at Queen Mary University of London, and guest
editor of #Marilyneveryday: The Persistence of Marilyn Monroe as a
Cultural Icon, in the journal Film, Fashion and Consumption.
A
Steinway grand piano consists of a staggering 12,116 parts.
The fascinating process by which these pieces come together is the focus of
Making
Steinway, a new
photography book from Christopher Payne.
As a
former architect, Payne has a natural interest in component parts and form. He
has explored the abandoned ruins on New York’s North Brother Island, and the world of American textile manufacturing. In
Making Steinway, Payne turns his lens onto the New York Steinway &
Sons piano factory, where 300 people work to create these extraordinary
instruments.
Payne first visited the factory in 2002. It made a big
impression—over the next nine years he thought about going back to
photograph it.
The shooting process, which took another five years, was
significant not just for its scale, but for personal reasons as well. “After my
father and grandmother passed away—both were pianists—my memories of the factory
took on a more profound, spiritual importance,” says Payne. “I felt an
obligation to return to take pictures of the instrument so deeply connected to
my family.”
Payne’s intended approach was to work roughly in chronological
order, documenting the piano assembly from start to finish. “I began with the
shot that I had been thinking about for nine years, the view of the piano rims
in the rim conditioning room,” he says. “The rims are lined up and you can walk
through them like a tunnel. It’s incredible.” However, “often I would get
distracted by something else in a different area. No matter how many times I
visited the factory, I always saw something new and
interesting.”
Making
Steinway is not just about the multitude of unseen
parts and minute details that together produce what Payne calls “one of the
supreme acts of human invention and imagination”.
It’s also about the talented
craftspeople who have the ability to create these instruments. “The people who
work at Steinway come from all over the world, and the factory is a microcosm of
the diversity that makes New York City great,” he says. “Some workers are new to
the factory, having recently immigrated to the US, while others have been there
for decades. There’s not a lot of turnover, and everyone takes tremendous pride
in their work.” [....]
