JONAS MEKAS PRESENTS FLUX PARTY
Friday 17 October 2008, 11:15pm til late
London Rio Cinema

Legendary artist-filmmaker Jonas Mekas presents Flux Party featuring the Fluxfilm Anthology as assembled by George Maciunas, rare Fluxus audio and surprise performances. Drinks and Fluxcakes will be served.

Fluxus was a provocative and humorous art movement that produced objects, performances and events which challenged the boundaries between traditional art and everyday life. Early Fluxus pieces included feeding a bale of hay to a piano, a painting to be stepped on, or the sound of dripping water.

The Fluxfilm Anthology, showing here in its most comprehensive version to date, includes Zen for Film (clear film for collecting dust), Four (Yoko Ono’s infamous film of bare bottoms), Smoking (cigarette smoke shot with a high speed camera) and other films of comical street performances, counting games, x-ray movies and interference patterns. The Fluxfilms embodied the minimal aesthetic, playfulness and poetic dimensions of Fluxus and transposed its performative aspects into the cinema.

This informal late night event is a unique chance to see films by artists such as George Brecht, John Cale, Dick Higgins, Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, Paul Sharits, Chieko Shiomi, Ben Vautier, Wolf Vostell and Robert Watts presented on the big screen of the Rio Cinema, East London’s splendid art deco picture palace. Jonas Mekas will be present to discuss Fluxus and his friend and fellow Lithuanian émigré, the late George Maciunas.

Seminal figures of the New York downtown art scene since the beginning of the 1960s, Jonas Mekas (b.1922) and George Maciunas (1931-78) were connected through many different projects. Mekas was a central force of the avant-garde film scene and presented early screenings at Maciunas’ AG Gallery. Maciunas coordinated Fluxus as an international community of artists, whose contributors also included Joseph Beuys, Henry Flynt, Takehisa Kosugi, John Lennon and La Monte Young.

Maciunas was also fundamental in the emergence of SoHo as an artistic centre in New York. As early as 1966, he began to purchase dilapidated industrial buildings and convert them into cooperative real estate, starting the trend for loft style living. Jonas Mekas was one of the first to participate in the Fluxhouse venture, acquiring space for both his own home and the Filmmakers’ Cinematheque / Anthology Film Archives.

Last year, Mekas returned to Lithuania to inaugurate the Jonas Mekas Visual Arts Center in Vilnius, presenting his own Fluxus collection to the public for the first time in a joint Mekas / Maciunas exhibition. The centre is planning an extensive film archive and a Fluxus Research Institute. In 2009, Mekas will act as the Ambassador of Vilnius during its year as the European Capital of Culture.

Curated by Anne-Sophie Dinant and Mark Webber. Presented by the South London Gallery. With thanks to Benn Northover, Serpentine Gallery, Re:Voir and the Rio Cinema.

FLUXFILM ANTHOLOGY
The most complete known version of the Fluxfilm Anthology.

Fluxfilm No. 1:  Zen For Film, Nam June Paik, 1964, 20 min
“Clear film, accumulating in time dust and scratches.”

Fluxfilm No. 2: Invocation of Canyons and Boulders, Dick Higgins, 1966, 3 min version.
“Mouth, eating motions.”

Fluxfilm No. 3: End After 9, George Maciunas, 1966, 1 min
“Word & number gag, no camera.”

Fluxfilm No. 4: Disappearing Music For Face, Chieko Shiomi, 1966, 10 min
“Transition from smile to no-smile, shot at 2000fr/sec. Camera shows only a CU of the mouth area.” Camera: Peter Moore

Fluxfilm No. 5: Blink, John Cavanaugh, 1966, 5 min
“Flicker: White and black alternating frames.”

Fluxfilm No. 6: 9 Minutes, James Riddle, 1966, 9 min
“Time counter, in seconds and minutes.”

Fluxfilm No. 7: 10 Feet, George Maciunas, 1966, 13 sec
“Prestype on clear film measuring tape, 10ft. length. No camera. At the end of every foot of film numbers appear, 1, 2, etc to 10.”

Fluxfilm No. 8: 1000 Frames, George Maciunas, c.1966, 42 sec
“Numerals on clear film from 1 to 1000.”

Fluxfilm No. 9: Eyeblink, Yoko Ono, 1966, 1 min
“High speed camera, 200fr./sec. view of one eyeblink.” Camera: Peter Moore

Fluxfilm No. 10: ENTRANCE to EXIT, George Brecht, 1966, 7 min
“A smooth linear transition from white, through greys to black, produced in developing tank. The ‘door sign’ ENTRANCE fades in, white letters on the black background, stays for a few seconds, then slowly fades into white. Five-minute fade into black and the title EXIT, which stays for a few seconds then fades into white.”

Fluxfilm No. 11: Trace No. 22, Robert Watts, 1965, 1 min
“X-ray sequence of mouth and throat; eating, salivating, speaking.”

Fluxfilm No. 12: Trace No. 23, Robert Watts, 1966, 3 min
“Begins with a shot of a demarcation line on an asphalt tennis court. A hand points to the distant landscape, then numbers 408 and 409 appear on a female torso. The female then passes different decorated plastic hot dogs, banana shapes suggestively between her legs, through her arm pits, etc. Ends with an egg floating on water.”

Fluxfilm No. 13: Trace No. 24, Robert Watts, 1966, 3 min
“Begins with a picture of Marilyn Monroe, then shifts to a female body, shot from belly button down, which is wriggling under piles of cellophane.”

Fluxfilm No. 14: One, Yoko Ono, 1966, 5 min
“High speed camera 2000fr/sec. match striking fire.” Camera: Peter Moore.

Fluxfilm No. 15: Eye Blink, Yoko Ono, 1966, 1 min
“Same as No. 9, probably.” Camera: Peter Moore.

Fluxfilm No. 16: Four, Yoko Ono, 1967, 6 min
“Sequences of buttock movement as various performers walked. Filmed at constant distance.” With Susanna Campbell, Philip Corner, Anthony Cox, Bici Hendricks, Geoffrey Hendricks, Kyoko Ono, Yoko Ono, Ben Patterson, Jeff Perkins, Susan Polang, Jerry Sablo, Carolee Schneemann, James Tenney, Pieter Vanderbiek, Verne Williams. Camera: Jeff Perkins, Anthony Cox.

Fluxfilm No. 17: 5 O’Clock in the Morning, Pieter Vanderbiek, 1966, 5 min
“A handful of rocks and chestnuts falling, filmed with high speed camera.” Camera: Peter Moore.

Fluxfilm No. 18: Smoking, Joe Jones, 1966, 6 min
“Sequence of cigarette smoke shot with high speed camera, 2000fr/sec.” Camera: Peter Moore.

Fluxfilm No.19: Opus 74, version 2, Eric Andersen, 1966, 1 min
“Single frame exposures, color. Different image each frame, various items in the room, etc.”

Fluxfilm No. 20: ARTYPE, George Maciunas, 1966, 4 min
“Artype patterns, intended for loops.” Benday dot patterns. Dots, lines.  “Screens, wavy lines, parallel lines, etc. on clear film. No camera.”

Fluxfilm No. 22: Shout, Jeff Perkins, 1966, 3 min
“Close-ups of two faces, shouting at each other.” Starring Jeff Perkins and Anthony Cox. Camera: Yoko Ono.

Fluxfilm No. 23: Sun in Your Head, Wolf Vostell, 1963, 6 min
“Single Frame sequences of TV or film images, with periodic distortions of the image. The images are airplanes, women men interspersed with pictures of texts like: ‘silence, genius at work’ and ‘ich liebe dich.’ The end credit is ‘Television décollage, Cologne, 1963’.” Camera: Edo Jansen.

Fluxfilm No. 24: Readymade, Albert Fine, 1966, 45 sec
“Color test strip from developing tank.”

Fluxfilm No. 25: The Evil Faerie, George Landow, 1966, 30 sec
“A man on the roof making flying gestures with his hands. Film is preceded by a picture of an object of ‘L’ shape shakingly moving. At the end of the film, image of ‘Kodak girl’ briefly appears.” With Steven M. Zinc.

Fluxfilm No. 26: Sears Catalogue 1-3, Paul Sharits, 1965, 28 sec
“Pages from Sears catalogue, single frame exp.”

Fluxfilm No. 27: Dots 1 & 2, Paul Sharits, 1965, 46 sec
“Single frame exposures of dot-screens.”

Fluxfilm No. 28: Wrist Trick, Paul Sharits, 1965, 28 sec
“Various gestures of hand held razorblade, single frame exposures.”

Fluxfilm No Number: Unrolling Event, Paul Sharits, 1965, 5 sec
“Toilet paper event, single frame exposures.”

Fluxfilm No. 29: Word Movie, Paul Sharits, 1965, 4 min
“Single frame exposures of words, color.”

Fluxfilm No. 30: Dance, Albert Fine, 1966, 2 min
“Face Smiling. Hammering a brick. CU of an ear (moving?). Face twitching. Dancing on one leg. Rolls, twitches on the floor. Boxes the wall.”

Fluxfilm No. 31: Police Car, John Cale, 1966, 1 min
“Underexposed sequence of blinking lights on a police car.”

Fluxfilm No. 36: Fluxfilm No. 36, Peter Kennedy & Mike Parr, 1970, 3 min
“Tips of feet walking at the edge of frame, all around the frame.”

Fluxfilm No. 37: Fluxfilm No. 37, Peter Kennedy & Mike Parr, 1970, 2 min
“Face going out of focus by layering sheets of plastic between camera and subject.”

Fluxfilm No. 38: Jen e vois rien Je n’entends rien Jen e dis rien, Ben Vautier, 1965, 5 min
“Seeing, Hearing, Saying Nothing. Ben stands with ears, eyes, mouth bandaged.”

Fluxfilm No. 39: La traverse du port de Nice á la nage, Ben Vautier, 1963, 2 min
“Swimming across Nice harbour fully clothed. Ben swims across a bay in Nice.”

Fluxfilm No. 40: Fair un effort, Ben Vautier, 1969, 2 min
“Lifting and holding up a chest of drawers.”

Fluxfilm No. 41: Regardez moi cela suffit, Ben Vautier. 1962, 3 min
“Sitting on a promenade in nice with a sign: Watch me, that’s all.

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PNEUMA MONOXYD
Saturday 25 October 2008, from12-7pm
London BFI Southbank Studio

PNEUMA MONOXYD
Thomas Köner, Germany-Serbia, 2007, video, colour, sound, 10 min
As surveillance becomes a fundamental of today’s society, Köner’s work focuses on its implications by monitoring observation and usurping its tools. With the intention of taking a step forward from here, the artist began to invent his own imaginary tool. The scenes in Pneuma Monoxyd are observed with such an imaginary tool. Its ability to unlock future, past and present unveils the moment as it is being pieced together, blurred and unstable. Premonition, memory and splinters of ‘here’ and ‘now’ become perceptible as part of the fabric of the observed time. A static gaze of a Balkan market unveils the present moment as a porous frontier and seems like a window looking out to the beyond. (Transmediale 2008)

Thomas Köner attended music college in Dortmund and studied electronic music at the CEM-Studio in Arnhem. Extending his explorations of sound and duration to images, he began to work on video installations, photography and net art. Alchemie (1992) was the first of a sequence of collaborations with film artist Jürgen Reble in which sound and image were integrally manipulated during live performance. Köner has also composed music to accompany historic silent films for the Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay, Paris. He has been awarded the New Media Prize at the Montreal International Festival New Cinema New Media (2000), the Golden Nica at the Prix Ars Electronica (2004) and the Tiger Cub Award, International Film Festival Rotterdam (2005). His installation Suburbs Of The Void received the Transmediale 2005 award in Berlin and was presented at La Biennale di Venezia, Teatro La Fenice, as a live performance that the same year. Köner participated in the Media Art Biennal Seoul in 2008, and is currently working on a suite of five permanent sound installations commissioned by the Musée Rimbaud in Charleville-Mézières. www.koner.de

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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)

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WHEN LATITUDES BECOME FORM
Saturday 25 October 2008, at 9pm
London BFI Southbank NFT3

IN THE KINGDOM OF SHADOWS
Francisca Duran, Canada 2006, video, b/w, sound, 6 min
In the Kingdom of Shadows documents a paragraph being typeset on an early twentieth-century Ludlow Linecaster. The text is taken from Maxim Gorky’s 1896 review of the Lumière Brothers’ film L’Arrivée d’un train en gare de la Ciotat (1895). As the words melt into a pool of lead, the alchemical magic of printing is linked to that of cinema. Commissioned by the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto (LIFT) for their 25th anniversary program, ‘Film is Dead! Long Live Film!’ (Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre)

HOW TO CONDUCT A LOVE AFFAIR
David Gatten, USA, 2007, 16mm, b/w & colour, silent, 8 min
An unexpected letter leads to an unanticipated encounter and an extravagant gift. Some windows open easily; other shadows remain locked rooms. Advice is sometimes easy to give, but often hard to follow. Have a cup of tea dear. I’ll trade you a stitch from the past in return for a leaf from the future. This is a Valentine and this is a fragment: for the one who mends my rips; from the next instalment of the Byrd project Secret History of the Dividing Line, a True Account in Nine Parts. (David Gatten)
www.davidgattenfilm.com

THE PARABLE OF THE TULIP PAINTER AND THE FLY
Charlotte Pryce, USA, 2008, 16mm, colour, silent, 4 min
Inspired by Dutch paintings from the 17th century – as indeed are all my films – it features a tulip, the painting of a tulip and a fly. An intoxicating flower; a metaphorical insect; a longing reach across the centuries. The film is a philosophical search drenched in luminous colours and sparkling light, shot on colour reversal, entirely hand-processed and re-printed on the optical printer. (Charlotte Pryce)

DEEP SIX
Sami van Ingen, Finland, 2007, 35mm, colour, sound, 7 min
Deep Six has three starting points: a little narrative re-edited from a Hollywood B-movie (The Rage, 1998), an attempt to use the colour photocopy as a cinematic aesthetic and an exploration of the frame line as a dynamic visual element. The pictoral narrative in the work, a timber lorry racing on a mountain road, acts as a metaphor for change and of loss. In a wider sense the narrative also represents all traditional narrative structures, with the three compulsory parts: the Exposition, Rising Action and Climax. In Deep Six I strive to have the mechanical touch of my hand visible as a comment on the analogue nature of the medium – what we see depends on the condition of the lamp, the condition of the actual surface of the film print and of the projectionist’s ability to focus the film. The discrepancies in my images, made by contact printing, by hand, strips of photocopied overhead transparencies onto 35mm film, the strong frame line and sideways movement and the strong texture of the photocopied surface is an attempt to work the screen surface and the framing of the cinematic image. (Sami van Ingen)

DE TIJD
Bart Vegter, Netherlands, 2008, 35mm, colour, silent, 9 min
For almost thirty years now, Bart Vegter has been making abstract animations. His first four films were exquisitely minimal geometric compositions made using a variety of traditional animation techniques. The last fifteen years Bart Vegter has been making his films on the computer, writing his own software to explore the worlds of patterns hidden in complex mathematical algorithms. These patterns often evoke natural phenomena like the shapes of sand dunes or the weather. His most recent work De Tijd (Time) marks a return to a more geometrical world of forms. ‘A monochrome flat image changes slowly into a theatrical spectacle in which colour subtly melts and solidifies lines and conical forms. At the end, the colours lose their power and all that is left is the basic structure of the image, the skeleton.’ This is the second work by Vegter that uses Fourier transformation, this time in three dimensions. (Joost Rekveld)

HORIZONTAL BOUNDARIES
Pat O’Neill, USA, 2008, 35mm, colour, sound, 23 min
Horizontal Boundaries is a film that looks at certain aspects of the geography of California as the ground for cinematic disruption and restatement. The ‘boundaries’ in question turn out to be frame lines, the divisions between two images, one above the other on a strip of 35mm film. The projector gate is adjustable up or down in order to produce a single uninterrupted image: in this film the frame line is integrated into the compositional language of the piece. It is not a static repositioning, but rather a dynamic one, moving more or less randomly, causing image combinations to be generated unpredictably. The result is a tapestry of exquisite contradiction. Irish traditional songs ‘Carranroe’ and ‘Out on the Ocean’, performed by George Lockwood, fiddle. A portion of a composition ‘Nak Won’, by Carl Stone. Language on the track was edited from two 1955 radio shows, ‘Dragnet’ featuring Jack Webb. Other original sound sources, and mix, by George Lockwood. (Pat O’Neill)

EASTER MORNING
Bruce Conner, USA, 2008, video, colour, sound, 10 min
This is Bruce Conner’s last completed film. It is derived from the 8mm footage of Easter Morning Raga (1966). Conner originally showed Easter Morning Raga projecting at variable frame rates and with loops, some prints were made but the film was never released for circulation. Easter Morning revisits the earlier material resetting it to a version of Terry Riley’s landmark minimalist composition ‘In C’ (1964) recorded by the Shanghai Film Orchestra in 1989. The use of traditional Chinese instruments in this unusual recording gives the music a shift in timbre that is revelatory, beautifully matching the radiance and open heartedness of this mind manifesting optical poem. (Mark McElhatten, New York Film Festival Views From the Avant-Garde)

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NATHANIEL DORSKY
Sunday 26 October 2008, at 2pm
London BFI Southbank NFT3

Those familiar with Dorsky’s four-decade œuvre will appreciate that while his work stems from reality, it also partakes in a deeper, more wondrous realm – one that transcends words and physicality with remarkable grace. One of the most gifted 16mm filmmakers of our time, Dorsky is known for camera work that is precise and insightful, guiding us with a vision of the world that is electrified by its possibilities. His films are both silent and projected at silent speed, allowing for what he terms an unimpeded experience of ‘the flickering threshold of cinema’s illusion.’ His films offer visual symmetries, searing colour, and a sense of pure, unequivocal delight at celestial movement (Sarabande) and an earth-bound existence (Winter). (Andréa Picard, Toronto International Film Festival)

WINTER
Nathaniel Dorsky, USA, 2007, 16mm, colour, silent, 19 min
San Francisco’s winter is a season unto itself. Fleeting, rain-soaked, verdant, a brief period of shadows and renewal. (Nathaniel Dorsky)

SARABANDE
Nathaniel Dorsky, USA, 2008, 16mm, colour, silent, 15 min
Dark and stately is the warm, graceful tenderness of the sarabande. (Nathaniel Dorsky)

TRISTE
Nathaniel Dorsky, USA, 1978-96, 16mm, colour, silent, 19 min
Triste is an indication of the level of cinema language that I have been working towards. By delicately shifting the weight and solidity of the images, and bringing together subject matter not ordinarily associated, a deeper sense of impermanence and mystery can open. The images are as much pure-energy objects as representation of verbal understanding and the screen itself is transformed into a ‘speaking’ character. The ‘sadness’ referred to in the title is more the struggle of the film itself to become a film as such, rather than some pervasive mood. (Nathaniel Dorsky)

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THE FEATURE
Sunday 26 October 2008, at 3:45pm
London BFI Southbank NFT3

THE FEATURE
Michel Auder & Andrew Neel, USA, 2008, video, colour, sound, 177 min
Watching The Feature, vidéaste Michel Auder’s return to filmmaking (on HD video; co-directed by Andrew Neel, grandson of the late artist Alice Neel, Auder’s longtime friend and frequent subject), which premiered in the Forum at this year’s Berlinale, a sense of length becomes almost painfully pronounced, and not just because the film is long, which it is at 2 hours and 54 minutes (after the public screening, Auder announced it should be called ‘The Trailer’, and that the real film for him – the first cut – lasts more than eight hours). The overriding sense of summation that fidgets through the fictionalized auto-portrait likewise induces a squirmy viewing, though surprisingly, that’s a product of its strength, of its flashes of raw humanity cloaked in a narcissism too grand and too self-aware to be real.

Then again, what is real in this self-described ‘fictional biography?’ As the character of Michel Auder, our ruminative art star auto-portraitist, poking out from behind a rather ridiculous tondo of fruit and flowers, tells us, his image is to be judged ultimately by the culture that receives it (and sadly, very prematurely by the hordes who fled the Forum’s press screening within the first 15 minutes). His 5,000 hours of obsessively recorded and compiled video could be cut, censored, edited, and re-edited in countless ways – as could this article – portraying him as ‘a total asshole, a monster or a great poet.’ So how does he come off in The Feature? Obscenely vain, for one, and also profoundly lonely, charming at times and smart, despite his frequently inelegant English, which is not redeemed by his faded French accent. The tropes he plays out are ones belonging to a self-serving artist whose persona clings to a reality infused with the fictions of a fairytale. An unwonted fairytale, perhaps, but one that includes a fair dose of glamour, privilege and a certain renown – all of which combat rather voraciously against the mediocrity of a blanched, everyday existence. Even his intentionally unkempt haircut demonstrates this willing fight. And he knows it.

Auder is a handsome 63-year-old French man, who has been living in the US since the early ’70s. His wild life has been almost pathologically self-recorded since the late ’60s when he traded in his still camera and made his first feature film, Keeping Busy (1969). As a novice fashion photographer, the leap into filmmaking with the Zanzibar clan was not a colossal one. Auder borrowed Philippe Garrel’s 35mm camera, took Silvina Boissonnas’ generous production money and hit the road with Viva ‘Superstar’ and Louis Waldon, who had recently arrived in Paris with Nico, after having shot Warhol’s notorious Blue Movie (1969). Keeping Busy documents Viva and Waldon languidly not getting busy in various luxurious hotel rooms in Rome, recounting their Blue Movie escapades to an unknown Italian woman. Fact and fiction coalesced during production, and the film bears witness to Viva and Auder falling in love, the first of many personal experiences to be recorded by the artist. While the film exists as an exemplar of the Warhol-Zanzibar correspondence, Auder was more of a constellation figure, not really interested in pursuing a filmmaking career, though his path, one could argue, was just as ardent as and bears a number of similarities to that of Garrel, the sole (other) Zanzibar member still making feature films today. Auder obsessively makes video the way Garrel obsessively remakes Nico, and the two are former heroin addicts who have consistently made their addiction subjects of their work.

The discovery and purchase of the first-ever available Sony Portapak video camera was a major turning point in Auder’s life; since then, he has since chronicled his experiences and that of his friends with astonishing regularity, candour, and a seemingly boundary-less intimacy. The footage, much of which consists of or contributes in a recycled, resurrected or re-cut manner to his individual video works – some are available through Electronic Arts Intermix (and they are all listed at michelauder.com) – spares no one, especially not himself. Quite a bit different from conceptual video art, Auder’s works eschew phenomenological conceits; rather, they stem from the Warholian school of filmmaking, and have a rough-hewn home movie aesthetic and a thread of expiation coursing through them, at least from what is seen of the footage in The Feature. It’s no wonder that Jonas Mekas, the master poet of diaristic filmmaking, turns up for dinner and sings a little song. The two NYC émigrés seem close, part of the same circle of friends; one imagines that over the past 40 years they’ve likely both turned up at the same event or party with camera in hand. One assumes that the mediums and approaches, until recently, would have been quite different, one opting for a Super-8 lyricism based on engagement, the other for a digital form of art brut based on observation. Now they are both workingin video, and the tone has veered toward the nostalgic, toward an ending heretofore inconceivable. Watching recent Mekas films and The Feature, one is bound to ask why the present makes the past seem so urgent?

The Feature feigns many things, and attempts almost heroically to transcend its own truth (which is, after all, likely a form of non-truth), including the nostalgia inherent in its summative structure. Its pseudo-fiction saves the film from itself in a perverse kind of way. Looking back over one’s life, seeing it as ‘feature length,’ with all the good parts amounting to just shy of three hours is a harsh reality to confront. Yet, if it’s all made up, one escapes, however briefly, the eventuality that we all face. The idea of death, specifically Auder’s death, is introduced early on and functions as a framing device through which the first person ‘fictional narrative’ unfolds. Following a direct address preface, which is equal parts corny, parodic, and playful in its staginess (and must be a jab at contemporary video art), the film opens with Auder standing in disbelief with his doctor who has just relayed some terrible news, the worst possible. Auder has a terminal brain tumour and will soon die if he does not undergo ‘poison’ treatment. Since his plight is irreversible, our macho protagonist refuses medical treatment (who can blame him?) and embarks on a journey of self-evaluation via his tapes.

Through them, the life and times of Michel Auder emerge, told in third person: his move to NYC; his marriage to Viva and their infamous time at the Chelsea Hotel; the birth of their daughter, Alexandra; the dissolution of their marriage; Auder’s ongoing substance abuse; his frustrations with the art world and his attachment to video; the beginning and end of his marriage to Cindy Sherman; his daughter’s graduation, etc., etc. … It becomes near impossible to not fall prey to sentiment – the material is raw, moving, and sometimes unsettling. Despite the privacy, or painfulness of certain situations, the camera was never put away; it was made to bear witness. Auder’s dependency on his video camera is fascinating, given that he was a pioneer video raconteur
(now there are countless websites devoted to this very idea), though also maddening, as, for example, when he speaks in what now are clichés about his heroin use. (‘I’m going to get this monkey off my back,’ he intones.) Clearly an audience awaits; a certain authenticity is lost through conscious construction. Auder never slips too far or too deeply, and is never out of grasp. He repeatedly talks himself through his fuck ups, knowing he’ll make it through, that he can forever prolong life – his and others’ – with his video camera. It alone seems to placate his moments of neuroses.

Armed with his protective shield, Auder has buffered himself through the years. ‘My life is based on my video works,’ he explains. Those around him have not been so lucky. Viva, a consummate exhibitionist, grows fed up with having her every move documented, their already cramped space made all the more claustrophobic by Auder’s incessant filming. And even though he’s acutely aware that Cindy Sherman abhors being on camera, to the point where she’s made a career out of disguise and disfigurement – one which he cannot, alas, compete with – he practically stalks her with his lens. Her darting eyes betray a palpable discomfort, while he ‘O’Dares’ to torment her further. But, as Proust famously said, ‘Only through art can we emerge from ourselves and know what another person sees.’

It may seem a ludicrous leap, but Proust was the ultimate chronicler of his time, melding fact and fiction, sometimes beyond discernment. He proffered an auto-historia (as much as it is an auto-hysteria) funnelled through the human condition, which, let’s face it, will never be cured, like Auder’s growing tumour (which may or may not be real). In The Feature, Auder tells us that the ‘documentary footage seems to be real, and is real, but is not real.’ Not real, never was real, or no longer is real? Proust again: ‘Time, which changes people, does not alter the image we have retained of them.’ Auder has certainly retained a number of images over the years; they are lo fi, swimmy, degraded, veering green and despite their decay, seem to exhibit something of the genuine spirit of those he recorded. His voyeurism runs deep, perhaps a result of his watching – the quality or calibre of his watching. His goal, he says, ‘is to translate the appearance of my time according to my appreciation of it.’ Every bit of reality can give birth to fantasy, to story, to a new reality. This is how we triumph. Or, simply, this is how we get by. But for Auder, capturing everything he sees on video is clearly vocational.

Obviously, The Feature does not reconcile fact and fiction; instead, it blurs the definitions seemingly represented by the film’s two clearly demarcated registers: that of the archival footage and that of the new, theatrical material. In his guise as ‘Michel Auder,’ living a fulsome and extravagant life, replete with beautiful women and a rock-cut pool overlooking Los Angeles, the art world is revealed as a sham, and his character exhibits a repulsive narcissism. And yet, when caught in quiet moments, something poignant emerges – a glimmer of truth that rebels against the entire endeavour. Or maybe, that’s what makes The Feature. The contradiction between the preposterous persona and the cloistered works drains the distance the camera inherently creates. Auder confesses that whatever he’s remembered is in some way fictional. Despite all the transgressions (formal and philosophical), his humanity includes a faith that upsets the pathetic statement that begins this piece. It is in this distrust of fact and fiction that the film ultimately achieves. It takes a lot of patience to get there, but such is life.

(Andréa Picard, Cinema Scope)

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THE WORD FOR WORLD IS FOREST
Sunday 26 October 2008, at 7pm
London BFI Southbank NFT3

SMALL MIRACLES
Julia Hechtman, USA, 2006, video, colour, sound, 5 min
Small Miracles is a suite of eight video animations in which the artist conjures up and controls forces of nature. Ignoring rational constructs of what is possible, Hechtman creates imaginary works to ground science fiction in the everyday experience. Coupling feminism and natural phenomena, the videos are located in the liminal space between fantasy and the everyday. (Video Data Bank)
www.juliahechtman.com

KEMPINSKI
Neil Beloufa, Mali-France 2007, video, colour, sound, 14 min
Welcome to Kempinski. The people of this mystical and animist place introduce it to us. ‘Today we have a space station. We will soon launch space ships and a few satellites that will allow us to have much more information about the other stations and other stars.’ This science-fiction documentary has no script and its scenario is caused by a specific game rule. Interviewed people imagine the future and speak about it in the present tense. The attractive aspect of the video leads to exotic stereotypes and a fictitious reading of this true anticipation documentary. Kempinski is also a hotel company. The editing is melodic and hypnotic. Shot in Mopti, Mali. (Neil Beloufa)

TJÚBA TÉN (THE WET SEASON)
Brigid McCaffrey & Ben Russell, USA-Suriname, 2008, 16mm, colour, sound, 47 min
BEN: Nöö di mujëë o púu di soní/ Now she’s going to record this. Ée i kë lúku hën, i sa lúku hën / If you want to look at it, you can look at it. Ée já kë lúku hën, já sa lúku hën. / If you don’t want to look at it, you don’t have to look at it.
SAMELIA: Woó lúku hën. / We’ll look at it.
MONI: Joó lúku hën, hën umfa joó dú? / You will look at it, and then what will you do? Joó tá sábi hën? / You’ll understand it?
Tjúba Tén (The Wet Season) is an experimental ethnography recorded in the jungle village of Bendekondre, Suriname at the start of 2007. Composed of community-generated performances, re-enactments and extemporaneous recordings, this film functions doubly as an examination of a rapidly changing material culture in the present and as a historical document for the future. Whether the resultant record is directed towards its subjects, its temporary residents (filmmakers), or its Western viewers is a question proposed via the combination of long takes, materialist approaches, selective subtitling, and a focus on various instances of cultural labours. (Brigid McCaffrey & Ben Russell)
www.dimeshow.com

REMOTE INTIMACY
Sylvia Schedelbauer, Germany, 2008, video, colour, sound, 15 min
Remote Intimacy is a found-footage montage which combines many types of archival documentary footage (including home movies, educational films, and newsreels), with a pseudo-personal narrative, blending various individual recollections with appropriated literary texts. Beginning with an account of a recurring dream, the film is a poetic amplification of memory, and with its associative narrative structure I hope to open up a space for reflection on issues of cultural dislocation. (Sylvia Schedelbauer)
www.sylviaschedelbauer.com

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