United We Stand

This post is by way of introduction to a new and hopefully (reasonably) regular voice on the Cubelog. I’m Ben Slater, I used to work at the Cube, probably back at a time when most current volunteers were merely a twinkle in Hogge’s eye. Scarily enough, I can say that I started my work there during the last century…

Anyway, I’m in Singapore now – a strange and small place in South East Asia, where I write, teach, curate and plot my escape.

What I’d like to contribute to the blog is some news and content about film and other cultural phenomema around the the globe – which is in some tenuous way relevant to the sort of events and films that the Cube shows. And since I am in Asia, I might also tell you what’s hot in the cinemas here right now. Sort of like Barry Norman’s man in Hollywood, moustachio’ed Tom Brook, except I’m not. In Hollywood. Or moustachio’ed.

Anyway, to get things rolling – the above image is for part of a new poster campaign put together by media artists 0100101110101101.org, known in real life as Eva Mattes and Franco Birkut. They did a piece I read about a couple of years ago where they declared an area of Vienna had been renamed NikeGround, and put up huge fake billboards declaring this fact, as well as manning a booth of fake Nike PR staff to inform the public about this latest piece of branding for the sportswear giant. Their website has tons of documentation of their activities… and there’s a fun recent interview with them here.

This latest work is an fictional film starring Ewan McGregor and Penelope Cruz which imagines an action movie scenario whereby Europe unites to bring down the forces of tyranny – namely, America. To see a bigger version of the poster – click here. It’s a lovely idea -although they do make the false move of called Ewan’s character ‘The English’ (shouldn’t it be the British?). And I hope they get a fake trailer up on their very convincing website soon.

Perhaps The Cube can take things further – organise the European ‘premiere’ of the film.

(Originally tipped off to this by the wonderful Green Cine Daily )