This film is a collaboration with my AMAZING friends. Pro and amateur boxers (active and retired), trainers and students came together with experimental dancers, noise, print and zine-makers to create a fight scene. Structured within choreographed as well as improvised sequences, Holding sets rules and bodies off-balance, shifting identities of fighters and falling into a time pushed out-of-joint.

The bout’s percussive composition (by Gibran Andrade, sound design by Jonah Falco) draws on boxing’s corporal rhythms (including reproductions of sequences of punches from historical fights), blows become beats as fighting and dancing merge. Bodies switch and morph as the action unfolds. In one gory episode (prosthetics by Valentina Urra) I face myself in a visceral expression of Multiple Sclerosis - a chronic illness in which the immune system rubs out the central nervous system. In another section,Ricardo Daniel makes a strange paranoid victory dance in a lake of blood, undoing inadequate binaries of win/loose... maybe.

The film is a loop that begins/ends with 2 Mexican boxers, Mony "Monita" Jimenez and Hector "Churritos" Hernandez, who endlessly pick themselves up and dust themselves off to fight again. The circular nature of this fight narrative might lead the viewer into contemplation of the strange loops of highs and lows.

Conveying the blood n’ guts-body through intimate cinematography (by Jose Luis Arriaga) and sound composition that responds to the rhythms of boxing, the viewer (hopefully) plunges into the slipperiness of desire and embodiment, circling spirals of self-reflexivity, weaving assertion, uncertainty, competition, power and weakness.

Holding is accompanied by a small zine including a text (below) and collages by Duncan Mcgonigle who also collaborated with me on fight choreography and fight scene research.

Ask what you fear
So as to admit what scares you,
Now hold it tight.

Sometimes it’s hard to leave a room
Awkward silence...
Pregnant pause...
Out of which
Vulnerability and Humiliation
give birth to identical twins:
Fear and Anger

Meanwhile, in the arena...

Presenting:
Million Dollar Freaky Baby!
Fight of the centureeeee!
Mythical proportions!

You vs the rest of us vs everyone else
Vs rich and poor
Vs Death Squad vs Big Baby
vs Bad Boy Bouncy Bashful Baby
Totally rigged of course
Ding, ding, wham, bam, thwack, ufff
You:
Genie of the lamp,
Slave to the light,
Their wish is your command

(They ain’t never had a friend like you)

Them, the customers, the clients, the crowd:
Seated in the dark, munching on snacks
Watching you, at work, out there in the light

Your freaky tireless body
Driven on by a conviction:
Gain is achieved through pain
No pain means no gain
But also, for this to work:
No gain must mean pain,
Another kind of pain that’s way worse
Pain equals gain equals
Pain equals pain
Fucking totally painful constantly basically

The crowd opens their poisoned mouths.
Tongue’s full of hot, contaminated blood

You: exposed from an early age
To all kinds of outbursts of fearful rage,
Cheerful hope endlessly blossoming
That this will afford you special powers:
They can kick all kinds of dirt in your eye
But you’ll just keep on fighting
And fighting, that’s just your way of introducing
                                         yourself to the world

You’re happy that you hit the other one
You smile when they smack you back
Your massive swollen heart thumps with the
                                          intention of love
Your heaving great chest:
A pulsating bundle of joy and sorrow

Your skin: super thick
Your body: Glad to take up space
Absorbing every punch
Shipping the shock to the parts that you’ve
                              deemed less important:

You’re cutting off your eyelids
So you won’t fall asleep on the job
You’re tattooing and branding
Layer upon layer of motivational slogans into
                                                    your flesh
With unsterilized equipment

Break it down and it’ll grow back better, right?

YES WE CAN!

A ship wreaked face looks back
From deep inside your pain
A million dollar baby shaped shell,
A Roman ruin
Home to:
Sclerotic unnerving
Palsied fluttering
Osteoporotic sighing;
A brave face pasted upon
An unending flaring
Of undiagnosed conditions
Very sick, very soon

Apologising your way towards self destruction
Putting in the work
So your opponent won’t have to
Sorry, thank you, sorry
I was just... never mind,
Acting anxious at taking up space,
Contorting your face
Into a repertoire of harmless expressions
While crashing onwards, blurting, blundering
Dear diary... I... I just... Self love...Inner peace...

 

Oblivious to your impact
Gliding through on mushroom clouds
In the warrior pose
Popping every kind of medication
While playing 50 guided meditations
All at full volume
Surrounded by crystals and linghams
You feel so fucking powerful...
Because no one wants to hurt you
Because it wouldn’t be any fun
Fair un fair
Your privilege: to fail over and over,
Better and better
Meanwhile, deep underground
In UNDISTURBED SILENCE
You’re busy...
Damming up the vitriolic lake.
Nothing can grow there anymore,
Roots all brittle from bleaching

You, Million Dollar Baby,
                                      fall
Letting the ground deal you an upper cut
Face obediently crumpling into the image of pain
And then, your next trick:
Disappearing into a pool of blood

The crowd looks on
Just fucking standing there!
Taking a tally of the ripples!
That’s entertainment:
Dress rehearsal for the bystander effect

Freed from figuration
You fight on through swollen eyes
Only the strange bubonic jewel of your smile remains
(This part of the game hasn’t been fully written.)
The dark black cloud of their fist
Hangs in the corner of your eye,
A premonition of a punch

You try to contact your non-conscious
So as to persuade the cells not to die,
Failing that, you fall upwards,
Giving up                                            
With all the weight of your body                                                      

Your heavy Million Dollar Baby meathead
Thuds into a world without
Uttering sounds of extinct animals
Meanwhile...
The sun comes out
The world turns around
Blue poppies burst from your chest
Bull rushes cluster around your waterlogged mouth,
A peach tree pushes up from out of your anus.

Ask what you fear
So as to admit what scares you,
Now hold it tight

­­

Keep holding

CREDITS

Starring (in order of appearance)
Mony “Monita” Jiménez
Héctor “Churritos” Hernández
Hectorín Hernández
La Señorita Lupita
Joaquín del Paso
Karen Carillo Silva
Hosooka Takumu
Fernando Alanís
Frantz Barosy
Benjam Seifu
Mito Elizondo
Saïd Hernández
Jaqueline Ana Zarazua
Lucy Pawlak
Sacrlett Lindeman
La Banda
Ricardo Daniel

Directed by Lucy Pawlak
Cinematography - José Luís Arriaga
Editors - Lucy Pawlak and Charlotte Ginsborg
Composition - Gibrán Andrade
Sound Design - Jonah Falco
DIT and Colour Grading - José Luís Arriaga

Stage Combat advisor - Duncan McGonigle
Fight Choreography - Lucy Pawak, Duncan McGonigle, Ricardo Daniel, Moni “Monita” Jiménez, Héctor “Churritos” Hernández
Prosthetics and Makeup - Valentina Urra
Prosthetics Assistants - Javier Lieva, Karen Carillo Silva
Art Direction and Wardrobe - Lucy Pawlak
Production Assistant - José Luis Juarez

Camera Assistants - Hugo Arriaga, Jahaziel García
Gaffer -Edgardo López
Grip - Diego Camacho
Camera Equipment Provided by -
AM Rentals
Edgar2 Grip Crew

Thanks to
Hugo Arriaga
Jahaziel García
Andrew B. Martin
Marion D’Ornano
Paweł Tarasiewicz
José Luis Juarez
Joaquín Del Paso

Produced by Lucy Pawlak and José Luis Arriaga

Supported entirely by The Stuart Croft Foundation