A SENSE OF PLACE
Saturday 25 October 2008, at 2pm
London BFI Southbank NFT3

FOUR TORONTO FILMS
Nicky Hamlyn, UK, 2007, 16mm, b/w & colour, silent, 18 min
The suite of four short films explores ideas about framing, centred round the attempt to find a necessary correspondence between the facts of the camera apparatus; fixed, rectangular frame and aspect ratio, and the work’s subject matter. A related idea concerns the figuration within the films of the manner in which the camera creates its own pro-filmic. To this end, there is a more or less recurring theme of frames within frames. Three of the four sections were filmed in, or within a stones throw of, the house in Toronto where I stayed while completing the work as an artist in residence at LIFT workshops (sidewalk, window, back lane). The fourth section was made at Koshlong Lake, near Haliburton, about 100 miles northeast of Toronto. (Nicky Hamlyn)

21 ALLEYS
Robert Todd, USA, 2007, 16mm, colour, soumd, 9 min
Since 1989, Boston-based filmmaker Robert Todd has been quietly developing one of the most distinctive bodies of work in the American film scene. Todd’s beautifully shot films draw together documentary and experimental elements; they don’t hew to a single, clearly defined style, but nevertheless show a consistency of poetic vision, spirit, and purpose. Through suspended moments of reflection and anticipation, Todd’s films explore the difficult-to-define emotions engendered by the stresses of civilization. (Cinemateque Ontario)

LAST DAYS IN A LONELY PLACE
Phil Solomon, USA, 2007, video, b/w, sound, 22 min
Farewell my friends, Farewell my dear ones, If I was rude, Forgive my weakness, Goodbye my friends, Goodbye to evening parties, Remember me, In the spring, To work for your bread, Soon you must leave, Remember your families, And work for your children, I don’t need much, and the older I become, I realize, My friendships, Will carry me over any course of distance, any cause of sorrow, My friends that last, Will dance one more time with me. I don’t need words, This, I need. (Polly Jean Harvey, Before Departure)

LOSSLESS #2
Rebecca Baron & Douglas Goodwin, USA, 2008, video, b/w, sound, 3 min
Access to experimental films has been limited by the scarcity of prints and often by filmmakers’ careful regulation of viewing conditions and formats. Though for years bootleg tapes, DVDs, and even unauthorized prints have circulated, many experimental films are now receiving much higher circulation through high-quality bit torrents available to anyone with an interest who knows how to find them in the world they share with Britney Spears videos, pornography, amateur video diaries, and first-run movies on the Internet. Lossless by Rebecca Baron and Douglas Goodwin, is a series of works that looks at the dematerialization of film into bits, exposing the residual effects of the process that makes file sharing possible. They used several methods to alter these works, either interrupting the data streaming by removing basic information holding together the digital format or comparing 35mm to DVD and examining the difference between each frame. The project considers the impact of the digital age on filmmaking and film watching, the materiality and demateriality of film as an artistic medium, as well as the social aspects of how the online community functions and the audience for such obscure films. (Carpenter Centre for the Visual Arts, Harvard University)

TRILOGY: KETTLE’S YARD
Jayne Parker, UK, 2008, video, b/w & colour, sound, 25 min
Linear Construction, Woman with Arms Crossed, and Arc form Trilogy: Kettle’s Yard, three films sited at Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge, and featuring cellist Anton Lukoszevieze. These films are documents of musical performance: respectively ‘Récitation’ (1980) by Georges Aperghis; ‘Sensitivo, per arco solo, n. 7 da 7 Fogli’ (1959) by Sylvano Bussotti; and ‘Raimondas Rumsas’ (2002) by Laurence Crane. They include art objects from the Kettle’s Yard collection, opening up metaphorical space and meaning. Each piece holds a special interest: In ‘Récitation’ the cellist is required to tap the strings with his left hand while speaking phonemes based around the word ‘violoncelle’. Of ‘Sensitivo’ Anton writes, ‘The score of ‘Sensitivo’ is a graphic score for any solo stringed instrument. It was composed to allow a situation where the instrumentalist encounters and creates the graphic score with a combination of improvised gestures and concrete sounds from the notation. In my realization I use the bow to a certain extent as if it were a pen or brush in the hand of an imaginary graphic artist, scanning the contours of drawn and scribbled lines …’ Anton plays sitting in front of Rodin’s bronze of Eve, which Rodin sometimes referred to as ‘Woman with Arms Crossed’. ‘Raimondas Rumsas’ was written specially for Anton to play with his Bach-Bogen, a curved bow capable of playing up to four strings at once. (Jayne Parker)

THE MIRACLE OF DON CRISTOBAL
Lawrence Jordan, USA, 2008, 16mm, colour, sound, 12 min
For a long time I have wanted to construct a melodrama (animated) from the funky engravings of the 19th century which illustrated ‘young peoples’ adventure stories. Eventually, through a great deal of selection, such a film fell into place. I have attempted to present the high emotional overlay of very mundane events in this ‘alchemical melodrama’. To that end, Puccini combines with blatant sounds of police sirens and old door buzzers on the soundtrack, while ‘real’ and nightmare images compete for screen time. (Lawrence Jordan)

Back to top