Date: 1 November 2003 | Season: London Film Festival 2003 | Tags: London Film Festival
ILLUMINATION
Saturday 1 November 2003, at 7pm
London National Film Theatre NFT3
Rebecca Meyers, Glow in the Dark (January-June), USA, 2002, 6 min
A somnambulant chronicle of night-time luminosity, and the sounds that keep us awake in the lonely twilight.
Goh Harada, Lampenschwarz, Japan-Germany, 2001, 12 min
Tactile, imageless film created using clear film and black pigment, which has been manually rubbed into a layer of transparent silicone. In projection, it becomes a rapid and infinitely complex hypnagogic vision.
Fred Worden, If Only, USA, 2003, 7 min
Points of light burst through the darkness in a surge of abstract motion. Luminous stimulation for the subconscious.
Ichiro Sueoka, I am Lost to the World, Japan, 2003, 7 min
Re-appropriation of anonymous footage shot in Kyoto 1934; its fractured images ravaged by chemical and physical decay. ‘Film is not an immortal document; it is a vanishing existence.’
Thomas Draschan, Encounter in Space, Austria-Germany, 2003, 7 min
Science, the space race and more earthy pursuits: formal and narrative strategies applied to found footage to create a supernatural adventure.
James Otis, Common Knowledge, USA, 2002, 2 min
‘Upbeat, fast-paced, crowd-pleasing investigation of marketing and the original sin, based on a South African apple juice commercial. The sound track is an obsessively synchronised, mad marimba version of the old mission hymn, ‘From Greenland’s Icy Mountains’.’
Sandra Gibson, Outline, USA, 2003, 6 min
Direct cinema barrage of light and colour, in cinemascopic glory.
Louise Bourque, Jours en Fleurs, Canada, 2003, 5 min
A symphony of nature told in a shower of golden colours that reveal a microcosm of cellular structures. Film emulsion transfigured by incubation in menstrual blood.
Trish Van Huesen, Resurrection, USA, 2002, 3 min
The emergence of consciousness as beatific reawakening. A whiff of the ‘The Passion of Carl Th. Dreyer’ somehow embodied within a hand processed, scratched, painted and bleached Super-8 blow-up. Music by cyclic Icelandic wonderkind Eyvind Kang.
Lewis Klahr, Daylight Moon, USA, 2002, 14 min
Using collage animation, Klahr conjures up an evocative, hermetic world. The sense of quiet melancholy suggests a loss of innocence, both personal and collective, which is pictorially represented by the 1950s consumer boom.
PROGRAMME NOTES
ILLUMINATION
Saturday 1 November 2003, at 7pm
London National Film Theatre NFT3
GLOW IN THE DARK (JANUARY-JUNE)
Rebecca Meyers, USA, 2002, 16mm, colour, sound, 6 min
Radiators clang while spheres and cypridina phosphoresce. A rubber ball held up to light becomes a snowy crystal. Looking out and up when the sun is down. Home science experiments and other attempts to see with the camera in the dark. —Rebecca Meyers
LAMPENSCHWARZ
Goh Harada, Japan-Germany, 2001, 16mm, b/w, silent, 12 min
Black surface made with black pigment meets white surface created by the projection lamp. The film Lampenschwarz was made solely by manual work only using black pigment (Lampenschwarz), transparent glue and blank film. These materials were brought onto the transparent film with the tips of the fingers, frame by frame. This film shows 17,000 of these different black and white images through the rapid speed of the projector, thus creating ‘black and white movements’. —Goh Harada
IF ONLY
Fred Worden, USA, 2003, 16mm, b/w, silent, 7 min
The bubble shaped orb of the human head, perched atop its touchy-feely transport system has seven moist oval openings through which everything outside comes in: two eyes, two nostrils, one mouth and two ears. Inside the bubble head, bubble universes spawn ad infintum and the only passable direction is directly into the steady headwinds of an ever advancing infinity of veils. A high wire bobbing and weaving just to stay upright. These artful if endless veil penetrations are at once the human job description as well as nature’s shot at vindicating the transient in the face of the impassive infinite. Nature makes the orifices moist so things can stick, at least momentarily. The intoxicated camera operator shoots the moon slipping through the barren trees. The rabbit hole’s light shadow appears and he obliges, head first, no looking back. His cranium (like yours) is packed with illusions, but down the rabbit hole they treasure the same just so long as they’re custom fabricated, hand tooled and conscious. Down this hole, stalking the unforeseen non-translatable is all. Join in here. —Fred Worden
I AM LOST TO THE WORLD
Ichiro Sueoka, Japan, 2003, 16mm, b/w, sound, 7 min
This title is quoted from the poetry of Friedrich Rueckert (“Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen”). This German romanticist poet wrote of the sadness of disappearance. An anonymous amateur cineaste shot and recorded the some scenes of Kyoto in 1934, but the films are suffering from vinegar syndrome, since they have been badly stored. The films were just falling into decay, and would probably only disappear, without looking back to anyone. ‘Film’ is not an immortal document, but a vanishing existence. —Ichiro Sueoka
ENCOUNTER IN SPACE
Thomas Draschan, Austria-Germany, 2003, 16mm, colour, sound, 7 min
Encounter in Space relates the story of a man and his alter egos, abandoned in the midst of an unknown extraterrestrial region, immersed in the sinister light of an unholy radiation, which arouses in him sexual craving and human desire. He has to encounter a number of adventures and to give proof of his potency, while having to cope with an eye operation and several other incidents. He is noticeably getting lost in the battles among his alter egos. Eventually, part of his personality leaves the planet, and the part of his personality that remains behind is able to embark in peace on a quest for new amusements. —Thomas Draschan
COMMON KNOWLEDGE
James Otis, USA, 2002, 16mm, colour, sound, 2 min
Upbeat, fast-paced, crowd-pleasing investigation of marketing and the original sin, based on a South African apple juice commercial. The sound track is an obsessively synchronised, mad marimba version of the old mission hymn, “From Greenland’s Icy Mountains”. —James Otis
OUTLINE
Sandra Gibson, USA, 2003, 35mm, colour, silent, 6 min
Defining the shape of everyday objects (ferns, forks and flowers), the strip of film was unwound on the studio floor and decoratively stencilled. At 24 frames per second, the objects dissolve into a filmic downpour. —Luis Recoder
JOURS EN FLEURS
Louise Bourque, Canada, 2003, 16mm, colour, sound, 5 min
A reclamation of flower-power in which images of trees in springtime bloom are subjected to the floriferous ravages of menarcheal substance. The title is based on an expression from my coming of age in French Canada, where girls would refer to having their menstrual periods as ‘être dans ses fleurs’. As a result of incubation in menstrual blood for several months, the original images on the emulsion undergo violent alterations. The shedding of the unfertilised womb depredates the fertilised blossoms and substitutes its own dark beauty. From the dissolution of the pro-filmic, the scale shifts abruptly and kaleidoscopically from the macro to the microcosmic and with it another representation of nature emerges. —Louise Bourque
RESURRECTION
Trish Van Huesen, USA, 2002, 16mm, colour, sound, 3 min
A hand processed Super-8 film, where individual frames have been scratched, painted and bleached in order to portray the emergence of consciousness. —Trish Van Huesen
DAYLIGHT MOON
Lewis Klahr, USA, 2002, 16mm, colour, sound, 14 min
There are things I could say about Daylight Moon but very few I want to before someone has seen it. But I will say this: of all the films I’ve made using collage to muck around in the past, this one gets the closest to what I’m after. —Lewis Klahr
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