artfirstprimo at the Screening of John Akomfrah's the Nine Muses

Yesterday, Saturday 11th Feb I went along to a special screening of a film called the Nine Muses by John Akomfrah followed by a Q&A with Akomfrah.  This film did not feature an explicit narrative in the conventional mode as one would experience in a so called mainstream film.  Indeed this documentary (because that is what it is) presented the viewer with a collage of experiences on the theme of the outsider, arrival or the other, against the backdrop of the bleak, but beautiful winter wilderness of Alaska.  The experience of arriving in a new land can at once be the excitement of the new as well as a frightening experience; both beautiful and dangerous. 

This collage of experiences consisted of an all pervading, imposing and omnipresent soundscape, readings of works by James Joyce, Homer, EE Cummings, TS Eliot, and many others along with archival footage of Windrush arrivals and Ugandan Asian arrivals in the UK.  Although the theme of this documentary is clear, that of the outsider, the experiences of the immigrant, the stranger in a strange land that uses the symbolism of the harsh Alaskan landscape, the film does not impose a didactic narrative on the viewer, but instead leaves the viewer to contemplate and think what the experience of these images together with their sounds and texts might say to them. 

However, the structural narrative that binds all of these strands together in a lyrical mellifluous fashion is that of memory for we are introduced at the start to the Greek mythological story of Mnemosyne; she who lay with Zeus, king of the Olympians, for nine nights and whose progeny form an imposition on this film of a division into nine parts; nine parts introduced and given the names of those progeny the nine Greek muses: Calliope - Muse of Epic Song, Clio – Muse of History, Euterpe – Muse of Lyric Song, Melpomene – Muse of Tragedy, Terpsichore – Muse of Dance, Erato – Muse of Erotic Poetry, Polyhymnia – Muse of Sacred Song, Urania – Muse of Astronomy, Thalia – Muse of Comedy and Bucolic Poetry. 

There is an underlying romanticism about this film, but not the romanticism one would associate with the false romance of Hollywood; more the romance of the 19^th century romantic painters exemplified by Casper David Friedrich (1774 – 1840), which Akomfrah acknowledges is indeed deliberate inclusion. This is the melancholy romance of the solitary person in the wilderness, which is not only is the subject of Friedrich’s paintings but also a presence in this film as well as Akomfrah’s film of a few years earlier - Oil Spill, which was about the Exxon Valdez Disaster.  The solitary figure, as in Friedrich's paintings is never really identified, but also never really belongs to his/her surroundings.  In Akomfrah's films this aspect is given greater emphasis by dressing the solitary figure in bright, high visibility thermal snow wear.  The Nine Muses features beautiful photography that can only be truly experienced on the big screen of a cinema.  Part film, part instillation; it would not be out of place in a contemporary art gallery. It is a sensuous and ultimately haunting experience.

http://www.riocinema.ndirect.co.uk/2012/feb12/specialcreenings.htm