Date: 28 May 2008 | Season: Videoex 2008
LONDON ON AND ON I: SOCIAL VISIONS
Wednesday 28 May 2008, at 4pm
Zurich Videoex Festival Cinema Z3
Few of these films of the urban environment were shot in London, the artists have more frequently travelled farther afield, to Europe, America and Asia, to conduct their visual inquiries into architecture and society. A musical interlude, tracing the migration of composer Stefan Wolpe, provides a more interior viewpoint.
Mirza/Butler, The Space Between, 2005, 16mm, colour, silent, 12 min
Emily Richardson, Block, 2005, 16mm, colour, sound, 12 min
Redmond Entwistle, Social Visions, 2000, 16mm, b/w, sound, 15 min
Jayne Parker, Stationary Music, 2005, video, b/w, sound, 16 min
Matthew Noel Tod, Jetzt im Kino, 2003, video, colour, sound, 12 min
Lucia Nogueira, Smoke, 1996, 16mm, b/w, sound, 5 min
Guy Sherwin, Rallentando, 2000, 16mm, b/w, sound, 9 min
PROGRAMME NOTES
LONDON ON AND ON I: SOCIAL VISIONS
Wednesday 28 May 2008, at 4pm
Zurich Videoex Festival Cinema Z3
THE SPACE BETWEEN
Karen Mirza & Brad Butler, 2005, 16mm, colour, silent, 12 min
Time and space shattered into shards of light. The footage was shot in India and thoroughly reworked in the optical printer into a rigorous, flickering duality. (MW)
BLOCK
Emily Richardson, 2005, 16mm, colour, sound, 12 min
Day through night, a portrait of a 1960s London tower block, its interior and exterior spaces explored and revealed. Patterns of activity build a rhythm and viewing experience not dissimilar from the daily observations of the security guard sat watching the flickering screens with their fixed viewpoints and missing pieces of action. (ER)
SOCIAL VISIONS
Redmond Entwistle, 2000, 16mm, sound, b/w, 15 min
Social Visions suggests the myriad histories and futures that constitute Los Angeles; a city whose public image has been used as cover for the abuse of its population but also a city where one senses the potential for radical social change. The film is about the impossibility of adequately representing a city when whole sections of the population are excluded from the channels of power. (RE)
STATIONARY MUSIC
Jayne Parker, 2005, video, b/w, sound, 16 min
Poetic record of ‘Sonata 1’ (1925) by modernist Stefan Wolpe – a Jewish communist who was forced to flee Germany in 1933, ultimately making the transition from the Bauhaus to Black Mountain College. An appropriately still and empathetic camera captures this vibrant solo piano performance by his daughter Katerina, who first recounts some of the composer’s personal history. (MW)
JETZT IM KINO
Matthew Noel-Tod, 2003, video, sound, colour, 12 min
Jetzt im Kino (literally ‘Now in the Cinema’) brings together adapted texts from Laszlo Moholy-Nagy’s ‘Painting, Photography, Film’, Rudolf Arnheim’s ‘Film As Art’, David Cooper’s polemical psychology book ‘The Grammar of Living’ and writings from and around Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s film The Marriage of Maria Braun into a hybrid narrative floating across the cityscape of modern Berlin. (MNT)
SMOKE
Lucia Nogueira, 1996, 16mm, b/w, sound, 5 min
A black bench looks out across the sea, and we hear the sound of kites flapping in the wind. Black pigeons fly through the air, their flight echoed by black kites. One kite is manipulated by an old man who looks like he’s performing hyperpassionate tai chi moves. The string is barely visible, and you only see the kite’s shadow, but it doesn’t matter – what’s more important is the outline of the man’s body against the sky and the graceful language he creates with his gestures. (Emily Spears Meers)
RALLETANDO
Guy Sherwin, 2000, 16mm, b/w, sound, 9 min
Accelerating and decelerating movements of a train, of film-speed, and of music derived from Honegger’s ‘Pacific 231’. (GS)
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