William Pryor: Oriental Rugs of Bath has been hosting some interesting events in its enormous shop at Bookbarn International. On the 26th of October Wiktor Wyszynski who runs Tribal Rugs Ltd brought an enormous bag of hand-made rugs, trappings, saddle and salt bags and other stuff he has collected on his many visits to the nomads of Iran to illustrate his passionate and fascinating talk about them. Paul Bradley was also there to make his evocative improvisations on guitar, loops, and many other exotic instruments. On the 2nd of November, we hosted our first film show. First was The Noon Gun, an extraordinary film shot and edited by the experimental film-maker and glass-blower Anthony Stern. He made it in 1971 on his travels through the then peaceful and beguiling Afghanistan, using the stop-frame technique he was one of the first to develop. When he refound the footage thirty years later, he re-edited it and added some hypnotic music to make a film of a country that then had a king and was tasting a brief prosperity before it was to descend into another 30 years of war. David James then gave a talk about his time in Afghanistan illustrated with extraordinary footage that he shot when in the army and afterwards. He was a TV cameraman before joining the army and doing two tours in Afghanistan. He was so taken by the country and the Afghans themselves that, once hed left the army, he took his young family to live in the Wakhan Corridor, that strange long strip of north-east Afghanistan that projects into Tajikistan and Pakistan. He was compelling in his account of the mess the West (and Russia) has made of the country and that the problem is not opium or the Taliban, but poverty. More events are planned.
Posted on: Tue, 05 Nov 2013 14:37:38 +0000
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