Date: 28 October 2006 | Season: London Film Festival 2006 | Tags: London Film Festival
GAMES PEOPLE PLAY
Saturday 28 October 2006, at 2pm
London National Film Theatre NFT3
Miranda Pennell, You Made Me Love You, UK, 2005, 4 min
‘Twenty-one dancers are held by your gaze. Losing contact can be traumatic.’
Shannon Plumb, Olympics 2005 Track and Field, USA, 2005, 18 min
From the opening ceremony to awarding the medals, Plumb plays all the characters in this burlesque of the trials and triumphs of the summer games. Rooted in silent comedy, its homespun style references equal parts Keaton and Riefenstahl, and is the vehicle for a series of witty observations.
Victor Alimpiev, Sweet Nightingale, Russia, 2005, 7 min
In a theatre, a crowd perform a series of choreographed gestures facing the stage. Left unexplained, this mysterious ceremony appears more symbolic than absurd.
Judith Hopf, Nayascha Sadr Haghighian & Florian Zeyfang, Proprio Aperto, Germany, 2005, 6 min
An off-season stroll through the temporary ruins of the Giardini, home of the national pavilions at the Venice Biennale.
Phil Solomon & Mark Lapore, Untitled (for David Gatten), USA, 2005, 5 min
Made as a ‘get well card’ for a friend, this uncharacteristic work invokes a sense of absence, and ultimately loss.
Pablo Marin, Blocking, Argentina, 2005, 3 min
By contravening archival guidelines on water damage, the original image is erased from a ‘mistreated’ filmstrip, to be replaced by an organic explosion of colour.
Matthias Müller & Christophe Girardet, Kristall, Germany, 2006, 15 min
Shards of emotions from Hollywood melodrama are combined in a Chinese box of reflection and refraction. Kristall is a cinematic hall of mirrors, which ruptures and multiplies the anxieties of narcissistic, star-crossed lovers.
Angela Reginato, Contemplando la ciudad, USA, 2005, 4 min
‘Perfectly without affect, a girl sings along with a pop tune, transporting herself through space and time to Mexico City circa 1978.’
PROGRAMME NOTES
GAMES PEOPLE PLAY
Saturday 28 October 2006, at 2pm
London National Film Theatre NFT3
YOU MADE ME LOVE YOU
Miranda Pennell, UK, 2005, video, colour, sound, 4 min
You Made Me Love You, Pennell’s last film to date, is based on a sort of exercise, a game, in which a cameraman portrays 21 male and female dancers. They are asked to form a queue facing the camera (a very English idea). As with a stationary queue in which people start getting restless, those at the back try to gain a view of the counter, i.e. camera. But the picture is mostly filled by the four or five faces that are nearest to the camera, which block the view of the others. However, the camera does not allow the situation to settle; mounted on rails, it moves, sometimes slowly, then very rapidly, and always surprisingly, to the left or the right. The queue has to follow, which means that the faces that have just filled the picture suddenly disappear, allowing the deeper levels of staging, the dancers who are further away, to be seen. This video is thus shaped by a ‘constant line’, a rigid concept which, through its realisation, creates a lot of movement, overlapping, and surprising revelations. Meanwhile, within the sound track, moments of tense calm alternate with the patter of many bare feet, a noise that is all the more confusing because we never see the feet in the picture. What these 3½ minutes allow us to see instead is a wealth of strangely touching portraits: 21 people ‘making love to the camera’. (Dirk Schaefer, Oberhausen Festival)
www.mirandapennell.com
OLYMPICS 2005 TRACK AND FIELD
Shannon Plumb, USA, 2005, video, colour, sound, 18 min
Shannon Plumb’s new film is based on the summer games of the Olympics. Inspired by Buster Keaton’s College (1927) and Leni Riefenstahl’s 1938 documentary Olympia, Plumb’s sketches include the opening ceremonies and several track and field game sports. Plumb’s films rely on spontaneity and character traits to investigate the possibilities of laughter in our most serious and competitive of sporting events. Through our need to achieve greatness and through the individuality of her characters, Shannon Plumb presents the humour in going for the gold. (Sara Meltzer Gallery)
www.shannonplumb.com
SWEET NIGHTINGALE
Victor Alimpiev, Russia, 2005, video, colour, sound, 7 min
In his video works, Victor Alimpiev combines elements of diverse artistic genres like painting, theatre, dance and music in the moving image. The human ‘material’ that seldom performs as individuals but mostly as a group of people in Alimpiev works, becomes a mouldable ‘mass’ formed to a living sculpture, which reacts to its surrounding space. The movements of the mass in the space are defined by the repetition of monotone gestures, whose function seems familiar, but is subordinated to the dramaturgy of the moving image and are isolated from its context. (Galerie Anita Beckers)
PROPRIO APERTO
Judith Hopf, Natscha Sadr Haghighian & Florian Zeyfang, Germany, 2006, video, colour, sound, 6 min
The artists take the viewer on a stroll through the landscape of Venice Biennale’s Giardini during winter. A voiceover talks about ruined landscapes, ghosts and living in obscurity of cultural hegemony. The work consists of photographs edited in slow pans in which different degrees of obliteration of the pavilions become the central theme of the work. Collaboration is an important aspect of the three artists’ working process. Proprio Aperto is the first collaboration between the three. They all work in a broad variety of media and materials, creating works that often investigate contemporary socio-economic structures. With very simple means they both find and create small poetic slippages in society. (Jørgen Riber Christensen,Nordjyllands Kunstmuseum)
UNTITLED (FOR DAVID GATTEN)
Phil Solomon & Mark LaPore, USA, 2005, video, colour, sound, 5 min
Mark and I made this for our friend David Gatten, as a prayer, an offering, a ‘get well soon’ card … for all three of us. It was made on the last night that I saw Mark, my best friend of 32 years. (Phil Solomon)
BLOCKING
Pablo Marin, Argentina, 2005, 35mm, colour, silent, 3 min
Made strictly by opposing the Association of Moving Image Archivist’s ‘Disaster Recovery for Films in Flooded Areas’, this film was kept under water until its emulsion started to melt, then removed, tightened up and finally dried directly by the sun. The result is what you see, a film trailer, reborn from its very own ashes, in which the few small portions of images that remain are overcome by the freed, colourful chemicals. Blocking is, thus, an homage to all the footage lost by the unpredictable dangers of nature and, at the same time, a true song to the beauty in destruction. (Pablo Marin)
KRISTALL
Matthias Müller & Christophe Girardet, Germany, 2006, 35mm, colour, sound, 15 min
Kristall creates a melodrama inside seemingly claustrophobic cabinets. Like an anonymous viewer, the mirror observes scenes of intimacy. It creates an image within an image, providing a frame for the characters. At the same time it makes them appear disjointed and fragmented. This instrument for self-assurance and narcissistic presentation becomes a powerful opponent that increases the sense of fragility, doubt and loss twofold. (Christoph Girardet & Matthias Müller)
CONTEMPLANDO LA CIUDAD
Angela Reginato, USA, 2005, 16mm, colour, sound, 4 min
Perfectly without affect, a girl sings along with a pop tune, transporting herself through space and time to Mexico City circa 1978. (Angela Reginato)
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