Built on the shores of Califonia’s Salton Sea, Bombay Beach has somehow endured long past its 1950s heyday to become a shell of its former self. A ghost town in the poorest county in the State, its residents scratch out bleak existences amidst extreme poverty and unbearable temperatures. Music video director Alma Har’el has made her feature film debut documenting the lives of three of the people who linger in Bombay Beach, whose desperate stories are as oddly inspirational as they are depressing.

Buoyed by a soundtrack from Beirut and Bob Dylan as well as some beautiful dance sequences, Har’el’s film is undeniably powerful, if intellectually troublesome. To mark the film's release, we spoke to Har’el.

What made you want to tell these people’s life stories?

I wanted to make a documentary that had dance sequences in it, but I put it in the back of my head because I couldn’t find people who I thought could really do it. Then I came and saw Bombay Beach for the first time in the middle of shooting a music video with Beirut. I thought the place itself was so haunting and had such a specific mood. I was really curious about who lives there  I thought they had to have interesting stories because they live off the grid. It’s so hard to survive there  it’s tragic on one hand and yet so freeing. It’s very post-apocalyptic. It’s like this place gave up on society, or society gave up on it. I’m not sure who did that first.

All photos: Stills from Alma Har’el's Bombay Beach.

Considering how fragile the people you were documenting are, did you feel a responsibility to portray them in an accurate manner?

Oh, definitely. I felt a big responsibility to portray them in a way they would feel comfortable with, but at the same time I saw this project as a much more artistic endeavour than purely a documentary, even though it captures how they got pushed away by society into a trap. The town is a great case study of what happen to the weak in society, but it’s a complex situation and the film is more impressionistic than purely political.

I ended up calling it a documentary because it documents the lives of incredibly real people, but the purpose of it was to engage in something that was more artistic, to externalise thoughts that are internal and not necessarily factual. Like with the dance sequences, I was trying to say something that isn’t verbal and have the people in the film express feelings that maybe only dance can portray.

Do you think it expresses a truth about its subjects?

For me the whole concept of truth is something that is so bogus when it comes to film. Documentaries are obviously from the point of view of the filmmaker and they choose what moments to show and they use editing and music to emphasise things. Also, if you’ve ever had a camera directed at you, you end up “playing yourself”, and this is what my subjects were doing in this film. At the same time I think the film reflects how it feels to be around these people and how it feels to be in their lives.

Even though certain scenes were dramatised or you’d give them directions beforehand?

I didn’t script anything, but I created situations that I feel make the film more cinematic or that allowed them to improvise and explore the themes that I wanted to bring out. I also told them never to look into the camera which is a direction which immediately creates an awareness that you’re performing. It is a more controlled environment than the usual documentary but I feel that all of these ideas are more fascinating for film festival programmers than for actual viewers. I don’t know, I think it’s much more interesting to have something cinematic and interesting than just engaging in documenting something. That doesn’t leave a lot of space for me as a filmmaker. I have interests and fantasies and mythologies and tastes and a connection to people and experiences, and I want to explore that too. I’m not a documentarian.

What would you hope that people take away from the film?

I don’t want to impose anything on anyone, but I hope they get a certain insight into a side of America that they don’t know and meet characters that they otherwise wouldn’t meet and just have a cinematic experience that is different from what they usually see.

I think it depends on the person. When you see a film it’s how it echoes with your own history and tastes. It’s up to the chemistry you have. I have this one great fan who saw the film with his girlfriend and wrote to me. He said that after they saw it they separated because he realised they didn’t have real intimacy and that there was something he was missing. He was feeling so many things when he saw the film and didn’t feel like he could share them with her. So that’s something I could have never imagined happening. You never know how someone will experience a film. All you can do is make it. I tried to create this thing about how I feel about this place and these characters. And it has its own life now.

For more information on Bombay Beach, visit the film's website here.

We'd just started daydreaming about and planning oh comely when Borders closed down. This was bad news for independent magazines, because it was a great place for them: there was a large, almost bewildering range of magazines, plenty of space for each title and pleasant space to browse in.

It's pretty tricky for many smaller magazines to be distributed in the UK: there's big jump between selling in a small number of select shops (like our wonderful independent stockists) and distributing to Tesco. This is why Borders was great, and why we're excited about Paperchase. Paperchase is only selling magazines in their flagship Tottenham Court Road store for now, but if things go well they're planning to sell magazines in their shops across the country. 

So, Londoners, do go along and say hello to Paperchase. Here are three of my favourite magazines from their range:

Apartamento. A lovely interiors magazine that is a genuine celebration of home, rather than a selection of glossy furniture. 

Wrap. Great illustration magazine, each spread of which doubles as a gorgeous sheet of wrapping paper. 

Anorak. It's called 'the happy mag for kids', and does just what it says.

Cinema is very good at capturing life. It’s death that it finds tricky. The problem isn’t that death is undramatic, but rather that it doesn’t conform to the tidy demands of narrative. In life, death is untidy and unpleasant, seldom accompanied with a noble sacrifice or a secret-revealing speech. There’s rarely a good time for death to come, so it rarely does. Instead, it arrives without warning, in the middle of the night, or on a bus, or in the frozen foods aisle of a supermarket; or maybe it drags out endlessly, over weeks, months or years, accumulating misery and tedium in equal measure.

Alexander Payne’s new film The Descendants is about such a thing: a death in slow motion, as inconvenient as it is devastating. What makes this more complicated is that it’s the death of someone the audience don’t know: the dying woman is only seen in the film’s opening shot, smiling gleefully moments before the boat crash that will put her in a coma. What follows in its wake is scene upon scene of her husband Matt King (George Clooney) visiting family members and friends to announce the death of someone who is a stranger to us.

By not having an emotional investment in Elizabeth, the film sidesteps what could be potentially maudlin and instead contemplates the idea of inheritance and legacy. The imminent death of his wife sharpens Matt’s mind, revealing to him a lifetime of missed opportunities and mistakes that it just might still be possible to make up for. Played with lumpy desperation by Clooney, Matt learns in the most painful way possible that there is a better person inside of him. Grumpy and awkward, Matt King is reminiscent of the protagonists of Payne’s other films, from Paul Giamatti in Sideways to Jack Nicholson in About Schmidt: completed flawed but wonderfully, heartbreakingly human.

The Descendants is buffered from predictability or cliché by its Jim Rash and Nat Faxon’s sensitive screenplay, as well as a host of fine performances: in particular Shailene Woodley as Matt’s daughter Alex, taking the overly-common trope of a disapproving teenage daughter and turning it into something tender, angry and real. Even moreso, it is the unusual setting of Hawaii that makes the film seem fresh. The story is a familiar one, but the unhurried, relaxed nature of Hawaiian life (where powerful people “look like bums and stuntmen”) makes it feel different.

This foreignness doesn’t dilute the emotion: Matt explains in his opening voiceover that living in a paradise doesn’t protect you from the pain that life brings. The film and its protagonist come to the bittersweet conclusion that perhaps it’s okay that so much of life is rubbish and painful: what’s important is learning to endure, so that we can protect and pass on what was passed on to us. It’s a realisation that might seem trite in other films, but here is one that is well-earned.

If Zoolander's Slashie Awards were a real thing Ismay Ozga would have won a bunch. Not satisfied with simply being a successful artist, illustrator and blogger this Worcester-based lovely recently set up jewellery label Paper & Chain with her childhood friend Naomi. What better business partner could you have?

Her jewellery is simple and pretty, feminine but not too girly and exactly what I wear every day. Her drawings are raw, fragile and overflowing with wonderful women and her blog is a dreamy combination of new artists and designers, soft photography, great music and pictures of her kittens. Her aesthetic is coherent and beautiful, gentle and inspiring.

Intriguing, yes? Ismay took some time out from her many creative pursuits to answer some of our questions.

Photo: Ismay and Naomi - BFFs and founders of Paper & Chain.

You recently started a jewellery company with your best friend, is this something you have always wanted to do together? Did you make friendship bracelets in the playground when you were little?

Yes, we did! We used to make those really complicated ones where you wrap different coloured threads around each other in different patterns! We have always wanted to do something together, we weren't sure exactly what it would be until more recently, we just had a dream that we would create something special together.

A jewellery company made sense for us as it's something we both love, and between us we thought we had the skills to make it work- Naomi studied Jewellery and Silversmithing and I have an interest in design and fashion. We design everything together and make everything by hand.

Your jewellery is simple and beautiful but surprisingly affordable, is price accessibility important to you?

It's an incredibly important part of what we wanted to achieve with Paper & Chain. We found that most of the jewellery available to us at an affordable price was not of a very high quality- the kind of stuff that turns your skin green after a few wears! The options seemed to be either cheap jewellery that lasted a couple of weeks or lovely jewellery that was way out of our price range. We knew we could create beautiful things at a price people like us could afford.

Photo: Jewellery from Ismay and Naomi's collection.

You have already proved yourself as an illustrator, a jeweller and a blogger, which of these is your favourite persona and what could possibly be next?

Oh gosh, who knows? I really do like to have my fingers in all the pies! I am so excited to be working on the jewellery with my oldest and dearest friend, it's a dream come true and it's something I hope to be doing for a long time. At the same time I have been drawing for as long as I can remember and I absolutely love working as an illustrator - getting exciting commissions to work on is the best feeling. I see blogging as another creative outlet, so how could I choose, I guess I'm greedy - I want to do it all!

On your blog you post a lot about the work of other artists, do you think blogging helps to foster artistic communities? What are your favourite aspects of blogging?

My favourite part of blogging is sharing things that I find inspiring, it's great when you find something (whether it's a piece of art or a photograph) and you instantly want to tell everyone about it - having a blog is a brilliant way to do that. Blogs are a fantastic place to find inspiration, and inspiration is key for artists, so yes I do think blogging is really helpful for creative people.

How do you integrate blogging into your life and how you decide what to write about?

I make blog posts about things that catch my eye: artists I find inspiring, street style shots I like, whatever takes my fancy! I try to post on my blog as often as I can, whenever I can find the time - nobody likes a neglected blog.

Photo: Ismay's 'Beth' print - available at her shop.

You make amazing monthly mixtapes, what are you listening to on repeat at the moment?

Thank you! Right now I can't stop listening to Gotye - Making Mirrors, and also Cults - their album is really good. I always find myself listening to Arcade Fire too. Oh and secretly I absolutely love Beyonce's new album!

What is your party trick?

Hmm... I can't say I have one! I can meow pretty much exactly like a cat though - does that count?

How do you take your tea?

Well, Earl Grey is my favourite tea, and I don't have any milk (weird, I know). Sometimes I have a little bit of sugar or lemon.

Our issue eight cover girl is Juliette Fazekas, and she has stolen our hearts with her smile. 

Born in Florida, USA Juliette moved to France aged six years old. Today, she lives by the coast in Brittany and has a calm air about her that comes, I imagine, from long walks by the sea. 

Juliette told me that when she has a bad day, the best cure for it is her close friend sending a voice message and singing a tune. She doesn't quite sing well, so that never fails to make Juliette laugh! She's also a big fan of carrot cake, and let us know her favourite way of baking it:

You will need: 

250g grated carrots

125g sugar

2 eggs

60g chopped walnuts        

125g melted butter

200g flour

11g baking powder

1/2 teaspoon of powdered cinnamon

One. Preheat the oven to 150.

Two. Whisk the eggs with the sugar. When the mixture has doubled in size and become frothy, gradually add the flour and melted butter, continuing to whip together.

Three. Mix in the cinnamon, baking powder and, finally, the grated carrots and walnuts. Stir will.

Four. Pour the mixture into a cake pan and bake for 1 hour. Let it cool before taking out of the dish. Enjoy!

More portraits of Juliette are on Flickr.

Clare Gallagher is a still life photographer based in Ireland. You might remember her work from Issue five of oh comely where we featured images from her Domestic Drift series. She photographs the quiet moments of everyday life: the shadows, patterns of light and familiar objects that have a simple beauty about them, if only we stopped to notice it. 

Clare's most recent photographic series is called Verges, where her subject is weeds and overgrown city plants. They're the sort of botanicals that no one cares too much about but under Clare's lens, become full of life and characterful disorder.

What were your initial points of reference for the Verges series?

My garden (with chickens, veg and lots of weeds), seeing my kids create little worlds for themselves with unprepossessing materials, memories from my childhood when anything could be fascinating, and ideas about impermanence and equanimity: everything changes, nothing is permanent. 

What's your working process? Do you spend a lot of time searching out locations?

I wanted to look hard at the most banal surroundings I could imagine – the ones that are so familiar that it’s hard to even see them at all. I limit myself to only photographing the places I see everyday when I'm walking the kids to school, on the way to work, or in the supermarket car park. If I photographed places that had a sense of excitement or novelty to me, I feel like I would be cheating.

What is it about overlooked, everyday places that catches your eye and curiosity?

The landscape, both urban and rural, is becoming so manipulated and stage-managed that it is difficult to find any wilderness at all. For me, urban weeds express a little of that wildness, creating pockets of growing, flowering, propagating and decaying life, where it’s not supposed to be.

I think that photography is often entwined in a search for the exotic or dramatic: special moments that seem remarkable enough to be recorded. So much of contemporary life is driven towards the pursuit of the extraordinary, shiny and new that there are whole chunks of life – the ordinary, everyday, mundane parts that take up most of our existence – that don’t get recognised for their value to our lives. To a large extent, capitalism is responsible by generating dissatisfaction with what we have and breeding desire for what is new. I believe that the potential for resistance to that is all around us. The challenge is in really seeing what’s already there.

Verges is a work in progress but what will be the finish to the series? 

My intention is for the shooting to take place over an entire year, to record the transformation and transience of the plants and the actions to constrain them. After photographing so intensively in such a confined space in Domestic Drift, my last project, I really wanted to get out more! I don’t however think of them as quite separate – to me home and urban landscape are subjects whose very proximity makes them difficult to really look at.

If you'd like to know more about Clare's work, head to her website.

Charlie May only started her blog, Girl a la Mode, in 2008 during her second year of studying Fashion Design at university. Since then, not only has she graduated and worked for fashion designer Thomas Tait, she has established her blog as a must-read for many and started her own fashion label, Charlie May. She presented her first collection in September and the next one is in the pipeline. That is a whole bunch of achievements. Some people might be gob-smacked by this and a tiny bit jealous. Some people might include me...

You can't be jealous for long though. Charlie's enthusiasm for brilliant and interesting design is infectious. Her blog gives you an insider's view into an East London fashion fantasy - behind the scenes glances at her creative process, photos from press events for other young designers, her favourite designs and editorials. Her beautifully shot personal-style pictures go far beyond awkward self-timers and the latest Topshop dress and make some people want to purge their wardrobes and move to Belgium. Again, some people might include me. Obviously I wanted to know more.

Photo: The lady herself, Charlie May, in a jacket of her own design.

Despite SS12 being your first collection it feels very mature and coherent. You seem to have a strong design identity already. Have you always wanted to be a designer or were there other childhood ambitions?

Thank you! As a child I never felt very creative; art at school wasn't inspiring to me, I always loved fashion so at college I studied business, thinking I would open my own boutique. It was whilst studying I starting getting into punk and riot grrl music, I began customising and making my own clothes and quickly realised it was a creative path I needed to take. Studying Fashion Design in Bristol really grew my passion and now I can't imagine not designing clothes; it was a random path to take but now here I am.

It is quite brave to go it alone. How did you make the decision to start your own label? Has it been scary at any point?

It was more exciting than scary, there aren't any jobs out there at the moment and it felt good to take a risk on starting my own brand.

Do you think your background as a blogger gave you an advantage in launching your label?

Without a doubt I couldn't have launched my label without my blog, I've met so many amazing people along the way that are supporting me now, I'd feel lost without them.

Looking back at your early posts, your style has developed a lot. Has blogging helped to hone your aesthetic or is that something that would have happened anyway?

My blog wasn't a style blog in the beginning, it was just a place to share inspiration and design; I think in my final year traveling to Antwerp and falling in love with designers like Ann Demeulemeester and Haider Ackermann helped me to start understanding my own style, then I began sharing my outfits on the blog.

Photo: Charlie May S/S12 collection - shot in an abandoned hospital.

Your personal style, which is often showcased on your blog, clearly has a big impact on your designs. Who and what else is inspiring you for next season? Can you give us any clues?

I think my next Autumn/Winter collection is going to be very rich compared to the last, it will still have the clear minimal Charlie May aesthetic but with a less muted colour palette. That's all I'm giving away for now!

Who would you be most excited to see wearing your designs?

Tilda Swinton.

What is your dream breakfast?

Breakfast is my favourite meal of the day, so anything with eggs. Probably a full English with some fruit, yogurt and granola on the side!

Charlie May A/W12 will be showing in February. In the meantime, keep up with Charlie's exciting fashion adventures over at Girl A La Mode.

The best place to see some films isn't necessarily the cinema. Some are best viewed on drowsy Sunday evenings, some with friends, pizza, and sarcasm, and a few are best stumbled upon at some insomniac hour of the night, half awake and terrified of the horrible thing you're watching (say, Funny Games). Arguably, the best place to view Meet Me in St Louis is blissed out in front of the TV on Boxing Day, surrounded by Quality Street wrappers and your sleeping grandmother. Still, given how festive it feels, it's unsurprising that the BFI are re-releasing it cinematically over the Christmas season.

Meet Me in St. Louis is notable for being one of the first cinematic musicals to actually integrate its songs into the narrative, coming from the characters rather than being a random assortment of popular hits. Still, the plot is so paper thin that this scarcely matters. The patriarch of the Smith family (Leon Ames) plans to move his family from St. Louis to New York. The elder daughters (Lucille Bremner and Judy Garland) are bothered about this due to their blossoming romances, and the father eventually changes his mind. That's pretty much it, which means the film is heavily padded, featuring a weird fixation with minutiae that adds to the feeling that incredibly little is actually going on.

Perhaps more than in The Wizard of Oz, Meet Me in St. Louis represents Garland's apogee as a star. It makes the experience of watching her more poignant now than it would be for audiences of the time. Her character may get a husband and the happy ending that is compulsory with such things, but Garland herself was headed for a slow, tragic decline. What we're left with is Garland at her brief, winsome best, singing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" and completely breaking your heart. Interestingly, that most depressing of Christmas songs performs the function in the film of being a lie Garland tells her younger sister when all hope seems lost. A song which has always seemed excessively melancholy finally has a context: a sad, beautiful fiction, sung to a child.

More than the costumes, the songs or the plumminess of the accents, what feels truly old-fashioned are the attitudes of the characters. It's unsettling to see a world where a father is the only authority in his family and where getting married is the sole life goal for a proper young girl. But the film is lovely enough that it isn't too difficult to acknowledge that and put it aside—the past is a foreign country, etc.—and focus on just enjoying the thing. Gorgeously shot and filled with rousing songs and dialogue that's agreeably flinty when it's not being bland, Meet Me in St. Louis is one of the finer musicals of cinema history. If it's not to be watched while merry on mulled wine and waiting for someone to get out Trivial Pursuit, seeing it in a cinema feels like a rare treat—a way to spend a few hours in a glorious Technicolor world in which everyone sings and everything is going to be alright. For that small measure of escapism it's worth dressing up for and braving the cold: we could all use the break.

Christmas party season is upon us, and unfortunately the dress codes are often non-existent. Informal parties can fall anywhere between 'clean pair of jeans' and 'nice, knee-length skirt for your Gran.' The hastily presented and ever fetching Bridget Jones carpeting skirt-suit may be worryingly familiar to some of us. If only things were clearer and more beautiful.

Luckily in Aberdeen they are. Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums are currently putting on an exhibition of 1950s partywear at Provost Skene's House.

Dior's 1947 New Look echoes through the collection and reminds us of a time when fabrics were thick and lustrous and skirts were very, very full. Prints and pleats, beading and brocade, voluptuous velvet and voile. We are in awe of these swathes of figure-hugging, feminine lushness.

The exhibition is open until January 7th but, if you are in the area, do try to pop in before December 25th for a bit of luxurious and festive sartorial inspiration. Party season should look much more like this.

The people from Pyrus are running a competition: post a photo of yourself with your favourite mug on their facebook wall.

The winner will get £500-worth of Pyrus' clothes, and five runners up will win a free subscription to oh comely. You've got until the 29th December to enter. Full details are here.

Photo: Ash from Pyrus with his favourite mug.

Earlier, we collaborated with Pyrus to make this bag, and had a party to celebrate. We invited people at the party to have their photo taken with Impossible Project polaroids. You can see the full collection here and some more party photos.

Party thanks also go to Hope and Greenwood for some traditional English sweets and Belvoir for bottles of apple and ginger cordial. We're getting unfortunately addicted to the leftovers.

Photo: The mug that almost got away.