Date: 16 October 2002 | Season: Infinite Projection
JACK CHAMBERS’ HART OF LONDON
Wednesday 16 October 2002, at 7:30pm
London The Photographers’ Gallery
Canadian artist Jack Chambers made Hart of London at a time when he was diagnosed with leukaemia and given two months to live. Developing from his concept of ‘perceptual realism’, this incredible film rises from dense layers of superimposition before slipping into sharp focus and powerful clarity. The accumulation of images evokes universal memory through waves of nostalgia, emotion and wonderment. An awesome contemplation on mortality, creation and destruction: All life (and death) is here, humanity laid bare.
Jack Chambers, Hart of London, 1969-70, 79 min
Presented in association with the Canadian High Commission, who have generously bought a new print of the film for European distribution by LUX. With thanks to John Chambers and Maggie Warwick.
PROGRAMME NOTES
JACK CHAMBERS’ HART OF LONDON
Wednesday 16 October 2002, at 7:30pm
London The Photographers’ Gallery
HART OF LONDON
Jack Chambers, Canada, 1969-70, b/w & colour, sound, 79 min
“Hart of London (1969-70), Chambers’ last film, is a dense, feature-length, multi-image symphonic work whose scope is breathtaking. Without doubt it is a masterwork. In its quick cutting, its transitions from positive to negative imagery, its jittery, anxious camera movement, its vision of death as the slaughter of innocents, and above all its deep interest in the qualities of light, it resembles the work of American avant-garde filmmaker Stan Brakhage, whom Chambers much admired. Although Chambers’ familiarity with Brakhage’s work may have expanded his formal vocabulary, the film remains unmistakably his own. Hart of London is composed largely of newsreel, proto-cinematographic images which are wedded to a particular place and time. For this reason they evoke a sense of loss. These images are often arranged in patterns which consist in the alternation of icons of birth with icons of death. Made shortly after Chambers learned that he was suffering from leukaemia, the film, rather than suggesting that death balances birth, implies that death sooner or later savages every living thing.” (R. Bruce Elder, Image and Identity: Reflections of Canadian Film and Identity, 1989)
Back to top
