Art Film: A Post-Truth Pinocchio In Venice

That title. We can't decide if it's ironic or tautological, nevertheless, Pinocchio - known the world over for his lies and the biggest tell on the planet - is having a revival, of sorts.

While Pinocchio has been associated with (almost) every President in the US (in fact, someone could probably create a book of Pinocchio POTUS', there have been so many images made with the telling long nose), our current era is more concerned in associating Pinocchio with fake news, specifically, fake news originating from the office of the Presidency (whether POTUS himself or his staff and entourage). With all the 'alternative facts' and 'post-truths' still constantly barraging the news and media, Pinocchio is fast becoming the poster boy for US politics (no matter which 'side' you take) and he, President of Fake News Pinocchio is cropping up more and more in writing, cartoons and contemporary works of art and film.

One of the most recent appearances is in a festival film, titled "Spite Your Face: A Dark Venetian Fairytale", by artist and filmmaker Rachel Maclean, where alt-Pinocchio is essentially displayed in a de-consecrated church in Venice, for the 57th Venice Biennale, a unique contest, "like the Eurovision song contest for art. People represent their countries." 

Fittingly, the film was created in a large, portrait format -something unusual, even for art films, and the constant impression that you're looking at a portrait, reinforces the sense of Pinocchio's importance - to himself and to those watching.

We've assembled a partial synopsis by combining two sources (both cited after their extracts):

Spite Your Face, transforms the 19th century Italian tale of a wooden puppet who wants to be a real boy into a dark and disturbing satire of the era of celebrity, fake news and reality television... and Maclean plays all the characters herself, (aided by) costumes elaborate costumes and the help of prosthetic designer Kristyan Mallett, who has worked on the Harry Potter movie franchise.

The film tells the rags to riches story of an urchin called Pic. His life is transformed when he is catapulted into "The World Above", a consumer heaven where money equals power. (BBC News)

Pic (full name Pinocchio Gepetto) is a street kid in a grey, hopeless world. He makes a wish on an iPad in the Other World Offerings temple – a digital recreation of the Chiesa di Santa Caterina – and finds himself transported by the blessing of a fairy godmother / Virgin Mary figure to a golden heaven where (through the application of a perfume named Truth) he is able to become a gilded hero punting rubbish perfume (named Untruth) to the masses. 

Standing atop a golden plinth, Pic rants and raves to an adoring crowd. "Smell that? This place used to smell great. Now it stinks. The facts aren't known because the media don't report them." (TheSkinny - we recommend reading their whole article)

As the face of a perfume brand called Untruth, Pic becomes a rich and famous media personality, and a political demagogue, at the expense of his ethics and happiness. 

... "I was interested in how lies had played out in the Brexit campaign and the Trump campaign. Journalism exposed the lies but that didn't affect the outcome. I was interested in how democracy works. We are less rational than we like to think we are and driven by belief systems." (said Maclean - BBC News again) 

Venice is a city that still exudes luxury. Things glint and glitter, look expensive, of high status, and that adds to the setting of Pic, aka, alt-Pinocchio's journey. Perhaps the fact that it was written 'in situ' helped capture that.

The Herald (Scotland) got a preview of the film, and additional comments by Maclean are so very relevant, we had to include an excerpt to give readers a better idea of why this film has caught so many people's attention:

The Herald had a preview of the film - which also features song, satire, special effects and parody - and afterwards Ms Maclean said of the disturbing assault scene: "I've been disturbed and troubled by the recent rise and confidence in misogyny, the rise in anti-feminism, and reactionary attitudes to feminism, and that coupled with a feeling that we are immune, as a culture, to violence against women in images and the exploitation of women, images of women's bodies used to sell perfume or cars, and it is so ingrained we are not shocked by it anymore. I wanted the film to feel jarring, to make it uncomfortable and difficult to watch, and didn't want it so sit at that level of immunity." 

The film does not directly make reference to either Trump or Brexit, but the artist said: "I was processing a lot of the sense of how these lazy lies that were used through the Brexit campaign and the Trump campaign, and that didn't effect the result. 

"I got interested in how difficult it is to penetrate a narrative that has gained political currency, and how easy it is to use lies to substantiate ideas that already have currency. 

"The rags-to-riches tale is so much in our culture, you see it in things such as Britain's Got Talent...I was inspired by how compassion-less those [rags to riches] narratives are, and generate a lack of compassion for other people's suffering."

And so Pinocchio meets Cinderella - and neither look good because of it.

We became even more interested in how this film came to be, knowing it had its genesis well before Trump campaigned or before Brexit rose its head. We found that fairy tales were always a part of her exploration but things evolved quite differently when finishing writing it at the end of 2017.

From TheArtNewspaper:

...Maclean anticipated (the film) might be an extension of her earlier films and photographs exploring fantastical, fairy-tale and clichéd images of Scottish identity, The Lion and the Unicorn and I ♥ Scotland. Presciently, the latter, made in 2013, included a Donald Trump-like figure. Back then he was merely symbolic of corporate greed—a golf-club wielding, saltire-faced, frightwig-sporting ogre, enacted, like all the figures in her work, by Maclean herself.  

But in early December, Maclean visited Venice and her ideas shifted: Spite Your Face (2017), her film for the Biennale, has a wider political target. “Because I went to Venice for about a week or so to write a script for it, and it was shortly after Brexit and shortly after the American election, I was quite interested in this political landscape and the rise of nationalism and the ‘alt-right’ and something that was larger than specifically Scottish nationalism,” she says.  

...Does her Trump-like character reappear? “It’s more allusive,” she replies. “You can pick up on certain things or certain tropes in political characters, but I didn’t want there to be somebody who, for example, directly referenced Trump or directly referenced a recognisable political figure. I wanted the characters to feel a little bit more like an amalgam of different characters and different ideas.

And so they do. But they can't help but mirror the most obvious public examples either, and the images - both the public one of Trump and, in the film, Pic, are such strong ones, it takes a while to see the other characters woven in, characters like Cinderella, Jack and the Ugly Duckling and perhaps a Midas who has yet to learn his lesson.

The show will be on display in Venice from 13 May-26 November then will be shown at Talbot Rice Gallery at the University of Edinburgh from March 2018 and at Chapter, Cardiff from Oct 2018.

#RRR

Folkloric Oscar Nom'd Short 'Blind Vaysha' Now Available Online in Full

Blind Vaysha, a short film with all the earmarks of a folktale, though it is based on a relatively new story, was nominated for the 2017 Academy Award® for Best Animated Short Film. It was recently made available for everyone to watch online in it's entirety and, as intriguing as the trailer was, when the whole is viewed, it's easy to see why this nabbed a nomination. 

If you haven't seen it, it's worth taking the 8-ish minutes to watch. It's very folkloric in feel and form, though, in true modern style, doesn't wrap a neat bow for the listener at the end. It's wonderfully done and feels quite unforgettable...

This short film tells the story of Vaysha, a young girl born with one green eye and one brown eye. But colour isn’t the only thing that’s different about Vaysha’s gaze. While her left eye sees only the past; her right sees only the future. Like a terrible curse, Vaysha’s split vision prevents her from inhabiting the present. Blinded by what was and tormented by what will be, she remains trapped between two irreconcilable temporalities. “Blind Vaysha,” they called her. (Official summary)

In this metaphoric tale of timeless wisdom and beauty based on the eponymous short story by Georgi Gospodinov, filmmaker Theodore Ushev reminds us of the importance of keeping our sights on the present moment.

From Rotoscopers.com:

Using the linocut style, a printmaking variant of woodcut that he has specialized in since age 12, Ushev animated the entire short himself, creating somewhere between 12k-13k drawings. With a unique algorithm at hand, Ushev completed Blind Vaysha in a record six months. 

“You don’t animate characters – you animate the colors,” Ushev said. After separately animating each color and digitally printing, his algorithm superimposed the layers, creating a distinct, hand-printed look. As it kept the colors moving constantly, the algorithm made each frame a unique work of art. The style feels and looks like classic European folk tales, achieving an aesthetic that is both familiar and unusual. In cooperation with what could be considered a dark theme for an animated film, the short mirrors much of the anxiety we feel in today’s world and grants the audience a chance to really interpret the film themselves with a sort of interactive ending.

Canadian actress, Caroline Dhavernas (Wonderfalls, Dr. Alana Bloom in Hannibal) narrates the tale beautifully (both in the French and English versions), as if telling the tale to children, which is the perfect tone, ultimately leaving the viewer with questions - as intended. 

This little film will likely come up again in the near future however: it's rumored that it's now being developed and adapted into a virtual reality (VR) work. We can only imagine how much of an impression this tale will make in that medium!

How Did Gaston and Le Fou Meet? (Disney Enlists Kids To Create Stories Inspired by BatB, and Turns Them Into Short Films!)

Possibly our favorite things about the gigantic release and popularity of Disney live action Beauty and the Beast, is the creativity boom in so many areas as a result, a large focus of which is on reading and storytelling. (Yay!)

Disney themselves are participating in encouraging this as well, which makes it even better. Some of their publications are focused on 'what you can read' if you want to read like Belle, or mining the earliest written forms of Beauty and the Beast (Villeneuve and Beamont) and republishing in various ways, not to mention emphasizing storytelling and eco-conscious creation through fashion and foot ware. The best of the initiatives we've seen to date, however, is likely a writing and filmmaking collaboration with non-profit group, Young Storytellers, who aim to give a voice to low-income students by helping them write their own stories, through a one-on-one mentorship, and see them brought to life on stage and screen.

Partnering with Young Storytellers* and Tongal**, Disney enlisted the creativity of kids by giving them a pre-release showing of the movie on the Disney lot, then asking them to come up with stories, or 'spin-offs', based on their favorite characters. (* Young Storytellers is a non-profit organization in Los Angeles. "Every child has a story worth telling." **Tongal is an independent creative network with a global community of more than 120,000 writers, directors and animators) 

The title of the project was 'Beyond the Castle: Stories Inspired by Disney's Beauty and the Beast'.

(T)hey were paired with their mentors to write scripts inspired by their favorite characters from the film. Tongal* then matched these Young Storytellers'** scripts with its network of creators who turned them into live-action and animated short films...The Young Storytellers got the added surprise of seeing their projects come to life on the big screen with a premiere at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood. After the screening, they were surprised by a video greeting with actors from the film, Luke Evans (Gaston) and Josh Gad (Le Fou). (Hollywood Reporter)

Four talented young people were chosen to have their stories made into short films. Here are three of them (we can't find Acacia's story and film, Cooking Catastrophe but have no doubt it's just as wonderful as the others and hope it will be available on the Young Storytellers' YouTube Channel to see soon!).

This one is by 12 year old, Robert Nelson, who imagined how Gaston and LeFou might have met.

“LeFouston” from “Beyond the Castle: Stories Inspired by Disney’s ‘Beauty and the Beast’"

The video was created in stop motion by Tongal creator Kevin Ulrich, with music by Trevor Gomes.

"Pug in a Cup" from “Beyond the Castle: Stories Inspired by Disney's Beauty and the Beast"

Written by Hana Morshedi (age unknown) and directed by Tucker Barrie.

“Beauty and the Curse” from “Beyond the Castle: Stories Inspired by Disney’s ‘Beauty and the Beast’"

Written by Tamara Sims (based on her short story “Changing Ways”, age unknown) and directed by Maya Rudolph.

Many congrats to Tamara, Robert, Acacia, and Hana!

Here's a peek behind-the-scenes of these young people's storytelling adventure:

A brilliant and successful collaboration thanks in large part to the ongoing amazing work by Young Storytellers, along with Tongal and Disney. We only wish more kids got an opportunity like this, or are being encouraged to do this themselves with their own resources.

You can find out more about Young Storytellers and how to help with wonderful programs like this, by clicking the link HERE.

'The Singing Bones' World Premiere in Los Angeles Tomorrow! (Dec 8, 2016)

Have you read the short story "Bones" by Francesca Lia Block from "The Rose and the Beast - Fairy Tales Retold"?

It's a Bluebeard story... with a difference. (Anyone familiar with Block's writing will know exactly what I mean.)

Award winning indie fairy tale film film director, Danishka Esterhazy, has been working with Block on a project to bring her story to life. Now, thanks to some wonderful support via crowd funding and an amazing collection of film talent, behind the camera and in front, Esterhazy is presenting the World Premiere of the short film Thursday, December 8th, 2016, tomorrow night as of this writing and TONIGHT for many readers seeing this post for the first time.

We are happy to announce our WORLD PREMIERE at the Culver City Film Festival in Los Angeles. Thursday December 8th at 1pm. Tickets are available HERE. (FTNH: $10-$50)

Production still from The Singing Bones - Red Czarina

Block posted a brief, but illuminating announcement when the first image from the film was released. We're including most of it here, as it will give you insights into the story, the film, why this is one to keep an eye out for, and, if you're in LA, worth giving up your Thursday night to go check it out, if it's at all possible.

I wrote the story "Bones" as part of my collection of fairy tale retellings, The Rose And The Beast.  It is an emotional story for me  because the nameless main character represents the sense of loss, isolation, and loneliness, and the self-destructive tendencies, of my late teens and early twenties.   When Danishka Esterhazy shot her adaptation The Singing Bones in Oakland this last weekend, I was transported forward into the world of her fairy tale and backward into my past.  As I sat behind Katie Polley, while Michael Klinger seduced her with blue cake, blue drinks and his blue gaze, tears filled my eyes. Katie's stunning, fine-tuned acting skills and the fascinating way I was situated made me feel I was reliving my painful past through her, facing my seductive self-destruction embodied by a gorgeous, charming and intelligent young actor playing a Bluebeard-like character. 

The cathartic aspect of theater is something I've never been so fully aware of. 

This is one reason I want to work in film. Perhaps nothing is more powerful.

(Doesn't that make you want to go to the theater or get involved in creating and supporting a film of a story you love as well? Us too. If you're serious about film, we know some worthy indie filmmakers, Esterhazy and her company Red Czarina included, who could use your help.)

Award winning, indie filmmaker, Danishka Esterhazy

Block also interviewed Esterhazy about her love of fairy tales and aspects of creating this new film. From Block's blog:

FLB: We share an interest in dark retellings of classic fairy tales. What do these tales mean to you? You’ve based work on Hansel and Gretel, Red Riding Hood and The Snow Queen (as well as Bluebeard in The Singing Bones). What do these specific tales represent for you? What other tales are important in your  life? Who introduced you to these stories? 

DE: My mother read fairy tales to me and encouraged me to be an avid reader. So I have her to thank. She has always liked ghost stories, too, so I grew up hearing a lot of fabulous scary tales. But what I love about retelling fables is the power of layered meaning that becomes possible when a story is ancient and well-known. The audience is already familiar with the characters, with the plot, so you have a shorthand for communicating ideas. You can draw attention to important themes in a powerful way. And I love to take a story where the moral is all about a woman's need to conform - to turn that upside down - and make it about empowerment.

You can read the whole interview HERE.

If you are one of the lucky ones to attend the premiere, let us know! We'd love to hear about it and what you thought. (We are predicting all good things!)

Short: "The Seven Red Hoods - Taupes"

This short film has nothing to do with Snow White, yet at the same time it's a completely delightful tribute.

This is more akin to Maria and the Seven Robbers (an Italian variation of Snow White) because this is actually a fun little crime story, (and not in the "Evil Queen has murderous intent" manner), with a Snow White twist. It would also work well as a very different beginning to the second act of Snow White, where she meets the dwarfs.

The designs have clear nods to the Disney film, as do some of the layouts, and the anthropomorphic animals add a humorous touch. Even a couple of the sequences echo the story, but not in a way you've seen before. We also loved the modeling - great mix of 3D and 2D techniques, giving it a storybook feel, while still obviously contemporary. It's clear why it made the Vimeo Staff Pick list.

We also thought it made for a delightful weekend watch. (Note: it's French but has English subtitles. Taupes is translated as Moles, unless we have misconstrued the meaning entirely.) 

Enjoy! 

We could have stayed much longer in this delightful world and hope to see more from this team soon.

A short film by Leo Verrier produced by Eddy and Arte Channel
Music: Pablo Pico
Sound: AOC
Models: Martine Lafont
Character Design: Maxime Mary
Anime Director: Jean-Baptiste Cumont

Dancing Ghosts and Haunted Shoes in Fairy Tales (+ The Most Adorable Little Short!)

A little ghost Singin' in the Rain (fan art) by Cellsai

Are there ghosts in fairy tales?

The answer isn't as straightforward as you might think. The dead - and symbols of someone dead (especially beloved dead) are fairly common in fairy tales (eg the help Cinderella receives from birds in the Grimm version are symbolic of her mother watching over her) but actual ghosts, not so much. Unless you're talking Irish fairy tales. Or Japanese. But then these are more often "spirits" than the ghost of someone people/the characters knew passed on.

There is a whole category of folktale categorized as The Grateful Dead (and Heidi of SurLaLune is busy working on a collection of these! I can't wait!) but usually these aren't classic ghost stories in the usual sense either.

Enchanted - or haunted - objects appear every so often as well but not usually in the modern sense of the word haunted. I often wonder, though, what on earth happened to those red shoes, once they were cut off Karen's feet? Did they continue dancing through the ages? Did they change form and haunt other people who had to dance or they felt they would die?

OK, I admit it. I don't have a well researched and deep article on this topic for you. It's really an excuse to bring you this completely delightful little animation I saw for the first time today. It will at first puzzle you, then make you smile wider and wider the longer you watch. Full disclosure: I had to watch it over again immediately when I first saw it, so consider yourself warned. ;)

Lovers of musicals, prepare to fall in love again:

義足のMoses from ががめ on Vimeo.

Seeing a short like the one above makes me wonder: what if one of the Twelve Dancing Princesses was caught in that limbo or underworld land because she loved dancing so much and was doomed to wander and dance alone for the rest of her days? What if that princess found her way to the abandoned stage of a musical?

Or, what if the spirit of Karen (the girl from The Red Shoes by HCA) was forced to walk, er float, upon the earth (considering her feet were cut off). I would think that perhaps the saddest thing for her would be not necessarily that she was dead, but that she couldn't dance. And what if she found some shoes that continued to dance by themselves, long after their owners stopped? What would her response be?

I should go look up that Ferragamo exhibit o shoes again (The Amazing Shoemaker - Fairy Tales and Legends About Shoes and Shoemakers), which JUST GOT EXTENDED THROUGH TO MAY 18, 2014! No doubt the topic of ghosts or shoe haunting will be addressed there in some form...

{Aaaand this is how my hooked-on-fairy-tales brain works, much of the day... be glad you don't live inside my head. }

As always, feel free to add your own crazy thoughts and/or studied insights in the comments below. The whole topic is pretty fascinating and I'm sort of surprised there isn't more literature available on it regarding fairy tales in particular. Folktales however, I'll bet some of you have entire shelves just devoted to those, and we'd love to hear about it.

Now, I'm going to go watch the short again...

Note: I'm sorry I don't have much information on the animator. All I know is that they're Japanese and I can't access the websites they appear on without an account. Your best shot is to go to the Vimeo address and leave a message, or follow up via that way. Good luck!

"White Shoe" - A Ferragamo Fairy Tale

A lovely short film was made specially for a uniquely "fairy tale entwined" exhibit, built on the many stories, tales, legends - both fairy tale and real - of shoes. This particular film is based on the life, talent and work of one of Italy's most famous shoemakers, Salvatore Ferragamo (saying "cobblers" doesn't seem quite right!).

The exhibit is titled The Prodigious Shoemaker: Tales and Legends of Shoes and Shoemakers so the specific fairy tale quality of the film fits exceptionally well.

The film was designed to be viewed by visitors as they wander through the presentation in which art pieces and works in various media, blend together. They put history and fantasy side by side, with the express intent of showing one couldn't live without the other (as aspect I LOVE!). The stories range from tales - both true and fantastic - around Chinese foot binding, to Cinderella, to The Red Shoes and much, much more.

The official website for the exhibit is in Italian and to do too much to translate it in a hurry from the auto-translate seems to lose a little of the magic of the description, so I'm leaving most of the odd language intact for you to be enchanted by, just as I was on first reading it:

To show the tales, it would seem a contradiction in terms to show what was/is real physically and what is fantasy. Instead, the Salvatore Ferragamo Museum in Florence will show from April 19, 2013 to 31 March 2014 that you can also watch the legends and not just listen to them. It will be through the world of the fairy tale, filling the spacious rooms of the Palazzo Ferroni with "The Prodigious Shoemaker," which will open in Florence on April 18. It's a magical time for fairy tales. At the movies Tim Burton brings his "Alice in Wonderland" and other filmmakers have updated certain icons of childhood, from Little Red Riding Hood to the Beauty and the Beast, to two recent versions of Snow White. And this month are leaving "the great and powerful Oz" and "Jack and the Beanstalk" while in the near future are provided "Hansel and Gretel" and a "Maleficent" starring Angelina Jolie, taken from "The Sleeping Beauty". In short, what was a wealth of children today it is also great, so need to dream.

"The Prodigious Shoemaker - Tales and Legends of shoes and shoemakers," curated by Stefania Ricci, Sergio and Luca Recovered Scarlini hath been given the task to fly the minds of visitors through the history of the shoe, a theme that has always fascinated writers of fairy tales. Wearing shoes was a sign of wealth and power but the shoe is also a job, that of shoemaker and cobbler, antique flavor of passion and sacrifice and so hungry. It 's the story of Salvatore Ferragamo, who has taught so much. 

Many authors and artists from different disciplines who have joined the show, creating works by helping interventions. Experts in children's fiction, as Faeti Antonio and Michele Rak, film scholars like Alexander Bernardi, writers and poets such as Hamid Ziarati, Michele Mari, Elisa Biagini for this project have written new tales supported by illustrators like Francesca and Michela Petoletti Ghermandi.The great composer Luis Bacalov wrote a new musical score as an overture to the show, while young photographers Simona Ghizzoni and Lorenzo Cicconi Massi, along with expert Henry Coppitz, have the photographer Salvatore Ferragamo shoes make them fabulous. And then the work of Annette Lemieux Messenger was approached by the myth of Mercury, that of Carol Rama to the hard version of Cinderella, that of Daniel Spoerri at Tom Thumb. An entire section of the exhibition is dedicated to the sculptures and drawings by Mimmo Paladino: For this occasion the artist field has collaborated on an original animation with the writer ecomico Alexander Berger, author of a visionary tale. And many others.

I hope to be able to write more about the exhibit soon, because the details of various pieces in particular are amazing, but for now, I'll just include this excerpt of the official introductory blurb from The Salvatore Ferragamo Museum, that's hosting and housing the exhibition:

...fairy tales are invading our imagination. As if now, more than ever, there was the need to address through the paths mysterious fantasy and dream solutions, the answers to that set of moral questions, doubts  and hardships that afflict our times. It is in times of crisis that presents a more urgent need to fantasize with imagination and overcome obstacles and fears. It is a universal need as this  is primal instinct. That's why fairy tales are considered inexhaustible reservoir of our archetypes,  of our primitive experiences.

Without further ado, for your viewing pleasure, White Shoe:

The Prodigious Shoemaker: Tales and Legends of Shoes and Shoemakers (in which White Shoe is shown in various backdrops as part of the multi-media presentation), is currently showing in Florence, Italy at The Salvatore Ferragamo Museum until March 31st, 2014.

"Kin" - The 1st Gorgeous, Fairy Tale Must-See, Short Film of the "Kin Fables" Series

A request from me: please put aside 8-ish minutes and make it a priority to see this!

I just saw this short film, made this year, a few days ago and it's the first I've heard of this series of short fantasy fables. I don't know why it isn't everywhere.

It's like visual poetry and is, quite simply, stunning and mesmerizing.

Just look at these screen grabs:








There is no dialogue in this short, only a song and visuals that move like a dream brought to life. The cinematography is amazing. Every frame is beautiful.

Kin is apparently the first of four short films under the banner of "Kin Fables", with the remaining three titled Salvage, Her & the River and Requiem.

Here's a note from GeekTyrant, which is where I first saw it:

Here's an amazingly stunning fantasy film called Kin, which is the first in a series of short fables, called Kin Fables, to be released by Five Knights Productions. The series is described as a musical and visual journey into fable. This one in particular was directed by Seb and Ben McKinnon. 

I don't really know what else to say except if you don't see this and love fairy tales, you are missing out. Take a look. If you're not hooked after the first minute I'll be very surprised.

There is a beautiful website with more information about this film and a peek at the coming ones, as well as some development images, such as those below:

There are many more if you click the link HERE.

There's also an explanation - and a preview - of a graphic novel in the making, to support the short films. Here's an example:

Are you being drawn in? This world is so beautiful. I want more!

I'd love to work with these filmmakers. Their vision seems very solid and complete, while at the same time poetic and allowing a lot of room for people to find their own stories within.

I'm so impressed.

I dearly hope the rest of the films are as beautiful and that there will be a DVD available at some point.

In the meantime, I'll be keeping my eyes peeled for Salvage.