Date: 28 October 2007 | Season: London Film Festival 2007 | Tags: London Film Festival
THE PERCIPIENT IMAGE
Sunday 28 October 2007, at 4pm
London BFI Southbank NFT3
Charlotte Pryce, Discoveries on the Forest Floor 1-3, USA, 2007, 4 min
‘Three miniature, illuminated, hagiographic studies of plants observed and imagined, hand-processed and optically printed.’ (Charlotte Pryce)
Allen D. Glass II, The Sky Walks Me Home, USA-China, 2005, 24 min
A journey through China, visiting northern provinces, Inner Mongolia, Tibet and Beijing. The filmmaker travelled alone, photographing the landscape and inhabitants of this extraordinary region with a keen and compassionate eye.
Timoleon Wilkins, The Crossing, USA, 2007, 6 min
Crowns of light and subtle gradations of colour are refracted through extreme close-ups of natural phenomena. Moments of sentience, an elevation of consciousness.
Minyong Jang, The Breath, Korea, 2007, 10 min
‘A respiratory exchange between me and a bamboo forest.’ (Minyong Jang)
Robert Beavers, Pitcher of Colored Light, USA, 2007, 24 min
Following the completion of his 17-film cycle ‘My Hand Outstretched’, Beavers travelled to New England to photograph the solitude of his mother’s house. Employing a more intimate approach to filming, he created this tender portrait which contrasts a dark interior with the vibrancy of an abundant garden. As seasons pass, the camera searches through shadows, conveying the slowed pace of life in old age.
PROGRAMME NOTES
THE PERCIPIENT IMAGE
Sunday 28 October 2007, at 4pm
London BFI Southbank NFT3
DISCOVERIES ON THE FOREST FLOOR 1-3
Charlotte Pryce, USA, 2007, 16mm, colour, silent, 4 min
‘Three miniature, illuminated, hagiographic studies of plants observed and imagined, hand-processed and optically printed.’ (Charlotte Pryce)
THE SKY WALKS ME HOME
Allen D. Glass II, USA-China, 2005, 16mm, colour, silent, 24 min
Humankind in the unfamiliar landscape, composing itself rhythmically and even lovingly into poetry. Nature as mammal music. The Life Dance. Foreign smells. And silences that are, of course, their own music. (Dorothea Grossman)
THE CROSSING
Timoleon Wilkins, USA, 2007, 16mm, colour, silent, 6 min
This film was born on two lazy afternoons – a product of my child’s eye fascination with the (always black) magic of viewfinder perception vs end product (the film). At the time I was deeply affected by Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Crossing, the second in his ‘border trilogy’ coming-of-age sagas set during the last vestiges of the truly wild west (Mexico-US border region circa 1930-40). The central character of this eerily perfect novel is a beautiful and adept teenage idealist who journeys on horseback into Mexico with the goal of returning a captured wolf to its native land. McCarthy’s seamless alternation between adventurism and spiritual naturalism is my inspiration. The resulting images of my ‘crossing’ are abstract by varying degrees. I later edited the film during a period of the most intense depression and self-doubt I have ever experienced: The resulting film-rhythms are punctuated by retinal afterimage and the odd alternation between the soft/tentative and the harsh/concrete. There is a visual allusion to crossing a river, and so this may also be interpreted as a contemplation of death’s journey. In actuality, it is the most highly worked-over of all my films, a departure that seems to be an appropriate nod to middle age and the peeling away of old concerns – my own, belated ‘coming of age’ story. (Timoleon Wilkins)
THE BREATH
Minyong Jang, Korea, 2007, 16mm, colour, silent, 10 min
An immersion in a bamboo grove, displaying all of Jang’s characteristic technical skill and capacity for abstemious observation. The Breath is a process of tension and release. The camera alternately distills and frees its attentions, cycling from tautly-held focus to diffuse, verdant colour fields. It’s light-as-air, following the breeze to track and rack down stalks, up stems, through leaves – ultimately following the rhythm of the filmmaker’s own respiration, merging Jang’s vital nature with its photosynthetic object. (Jeremy Rigsby, Media City)
PITCHER OF COLORED LIGHT
Robert Beavers, USA, 2007, 16mm, colour, silent, 24 min
I have filmed my mother’s house and her garden. The shadows play an essential part in the mixture of loneliness and peace that exists here. The seasons move from the garden into the house, projecting rich diagonals in the early morning or late afternoon. Each shadow is a subtle balance of stillness and movement; it shows the vital instability of space. Its special quality opens a passage to the subjective; a voice within the film speaks to memory. The walls are screens through which I pass to the inhabited privacy. We experience a place through the perspective of where we came from and hear someone else’s voice through our own acoustic. The sense of place is never separate from the moment. (Robert Beavers)
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