Date: 24 November 2009 | Season: Miscellaneous
WE DIG REPETITION: PETER ROEHR
Tuesday 24 November 2009, at 7:30pm
New York Light Industry
âI alter material by organizing it unchanged. Each work is an organized area of unchanged elements. Neither successive or additive, there is no result or sum.â (Peter Roehr, 1964)
You might think that Andy Warhol took pleasure in endless repetition, but heâs got nothing on Peter Roehr, a German artist whose brief career produced hundreds of works using type, photography, collage, film and audiotape. Not content with applying mechanical reproduction techniques to art-making, Roehr instead chose to appropriate industrially produced materials. His many photo collages present austere grids of identically cropped images from magazines. Similarly, his film and sound montages are constructed from brief passages, frequently drawn from commercial advertising, repeated without variation, for an irregular number of reiterations. The result is an insistent, hypnotic demonstration of stoic seriality that takes time and time again.
Peter Roehr, Film-Montagen I-III, 1965, 16mm film, 23 minutes
Peter Roehr, Ton-Montagen I-II, 1965, audiotape, 60 minutes
Roehr died at the age of 23 in 1968. From November 2009 to March 2010, his work is surveyed in parallel exhibitions at the StĂ€del Museum and Museum fĂŒr Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt which commemorate the 60th anniversary since his birth.
âI feel identical with what I do. In the âmontagesâ I realize, in an unrestricted manner, everything that is important to me. I believe, I am free.â (Peter Roehr, 1965)
Introduction by Mark Webber. Screening repeated Friday 9 July 2010 at Artists Space, New York.
Date: 23 September 2010 | Season: Miscellaneous | Tags: 25fps
FOOD: TWO APPROACHES
Thursday 23 September 2009, at 4pm
Zagreb 25FPS Festival
The two films in this programme depict two very different styles of food preparation, each of which is specific to its environment. Though formally quite similar, the circumstances of their making are distinctly varied. Food follows a day in the life of a communal restaurant in New Yorkâs downtown art scene, whereas Le Cochon records the traditional slaughter of a pig in a remote French village. Both date from the early 1970s but while Matta-Clarkâs film could almost be a contemporary report from any cosmopolitan city, Le Cochon documents a phenomenon of rural life that can rarely be experienced by outsiders.
Jean Eustache & Jean-Pierre Barjol, Le Cochon (The Pig), France, 1970, 50 min
Gordon Matta-Clark, Food, USA, 1973, 47 min
Curated by Mark Webber for 25FPS.
PROGRAMME NOTES
FOOD: TWO APPROACHES
Thursday 23 September 2009, at 4pm
Zagreb 25FPS Festival
LE COCHON (THE PIG)
Jean Eustache & Jean-Pierre Barjol, France, 1970, 35mm, b/w, sound, 50 min
The pigâs life on screen is short lived â she is quickly despatched by a swift cut of the throat, but then it takes five men the best part of a day to prepare the meat. Most of them smoke constantly throughout the process, which is undertaken with an air of calm assuredness. There appears to be an economy in their artisanal activity â each has his role, and theyâve been doing it this way all their lives, as have their ancestors before them. The butchering takes place on a bed of straw in the yard. Nothing is wasted. The head is removed, and the blood and intestines are saved for traditional delicacies, the rest cut into joints. Inside the house, two men clean the intestines on the kitchen table before they are cut into equal lengths and used for sausages. It snows. Bread is delivered. In the evening everyone celebrates with wine and song. The farmers talk to each other as they go about their business but no subtitled prints are known to exist. According to co-producer Luc Moullet, their dialect is so strong and parochial that much of what they say is intelligible to native French speakers.
Jean Eustacheâs distinctive and uncompromising films are either documentary or semi-biographical fictions, frequently pertaining to aspects of provincial life. Often associated with the French New Wave, he made only two features, of which Le Maman et la Putain is the most well-known. He was born and raised in Pessac in the suburbs of Bordeaux in 1938, and committed suicide in 1981 after sustaining serious injuries in a car crash.
FOOD
Gordon Matta-Clark, USA, 1973, 16mm, b/w, sound, 47 min
Matta-Clarkâs film situates the process of food preparation in New Yorkâs Soho at the beginning of the areaâs gentrification. In the early 1970s, factory units in this former industrial zone were reappropriated as live/work lofts and art spaces in a process of inner city renewal which has since been repeated in many urban centres. Food is again at the centre of social exchange â this time in the form of a collective restaurant that served up home style cooking to all-comers but essentially functioned as a hub for a growing network of artists. Caroline Goodden was the owner and de-facto manager; Gordon Matta-Clark designed the space which occupied a corner storefront. His innovative (though not necessarily practical) design provided a central âstageâ for cooking and preparation, one of New Yorkâs first open kitchens. Its roster of chefs was drawn from artist groups such as the Trisha Brown and Grand Union dance companies, the Phillip Glass Ensemble and Mabou Mines theatre troupe. On Sundays, guest chefs including Yvonne Rainer, Robert Rauschenberg, Keith Sonnier and Donald Judd cooked their specialities. Over 100 people worked in the restaurant during the first six months. The film begins early morning at the fish market. Back at the restaurant, fish and duck gumbo is prepared and dairy products are delivered. During evening service, simple meals of salads or sea bass and cucumber are served as an accordionist entertains. After closing, the place is cleaned and bread is prepared for the following day. The camera floats freely through the action, stopping occasionally for comments from customers. Photographer Robert Frank was responsible for much of the filming and can occasionally be seen holding the microphone.
Gordon Matta-Clark made approximately 20 films, most of which document his performances or architectural interventions. He was born in New York in 1943 and died in 1978. In the decades since his death, he has been increasingly acclaimed as a key figure whose work presages many aspects of contemporary art practice.
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Date: 23 October 2010 | Season: London Film Festival 2010 | Tags: London Film Festival
READING BETWEEN THE LINES
Saturday 23 October 2010, at 2pm
London BFI Southbank NFT3
Thomas Comerford, The Indian Boundary Line, USA, 2010, 42 min
Comerfordâs essay maps a historical demarcation which originally divided Native American land from that which was ceded to white settlers in 1812. Modern life has obscured the traces of this history in the Rogers Park district of Chicago. Juxtaposing past with present, footage shot along this formerly disputed territory is matched with readings from official documents, fiction and quotidian accounts.
John Smith, Flag Mountain, UK, 2010, 8 min
A view across the city of Nicosia, over the Green Line border, to an unusual spectacle on a hillside. Lives continue in its shadow, amongst the contrasting flags, anthems and calls to prayer.
Miranda Pennell, Why Colonel Bunny Was Killed, UK, 2010, 27 min
An exploration of turn of the century colonial life along the Durand Line, the frontier between Afghanistan and British India (now Pakistan). Remarkable period photographs are closely analysed as we listen to reports of exchanges between westerners, natives and mullahs written by missionary doctor TL Pennell.
Also Screening: Monday 25 October 2010, at 2pm, NFT3
PROGRAMME NOTES
READING BETWEEN THE LINES
Saturday 23 October 2010, at 2pm
London BFI Southbank NFT3
THE INDIAN BOUNDARY LINE
Thomas Comerford, USA, 2010, video, colour, sound, 42 min
Over the last eight years, Chicago musician and filmmaker Thomas Comerford has been at work on a series of quietly-observed films that contemplate the entwined social, political, and environmental histories of Chicago (Figures in the Landscape, 2002; Land Marked / Marquette, 2005). The Indian Boundary Line follows a road in Chicago, Rogers Avenue, that traces the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis boundary between the United States and âIndian Territoryâ. In doing so, it examines the collision between the vernacular landscape, with its storefronts, short-cut footpaths and picnic tables, and the symbolic one, replete with historical markers, statues, and fences. Through its observations and audio-visual juxtapositions, The Indian Boundary Line meditates on a span of land in Chicago about 12 miles long, but suggests how this land and its history are an index for the shifting inhabitants, relationships, boundaries and ideas of landscape â as well as the consequences â which have accompanied the transformation of the New World.
www.thomascomerford.net
FLAG MOUNTAIN
John Smith, UK, 2010, video, colour, sound, 8 min
In Nicosia, the divided capital of Cyprus, a display of nationalism is taken to its logical conclusion. Moving between macro and micro perspectives, Flag Mountain sets dramatic spectacle against everyday life as the inhabitants of both sides of the city go about their daily business. (John Smith)
www.johnsmithfilms.com
WHY COLONEL BUNNY WAS KILLED
Miranda Pennell, UK, 2010, video, b/w, sound, 27 min
Triggered by the writings of a medical missionary on the Afghan borderlands, a distant relative of the filmmaker, the film is constructed from still photographs of colonial life on the North West frontier of British India at the turn of the 20th century. Searching for clues to the realities behind images framed during a time of colonial conflict, the film plays sound against image to find contemporary parallels in Western portrayals of a distant place and people. (Miranda Pennell)
www.mirandapennell.com
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Date: 23 October 2010 | Season: London Film Festival 2010 | Tags: London Film Festival
SUBLIME PASSAGES
Saturday 23 October 2010, at 4pm
London BFI Southbank NFT3
Alexi Manis, Shutter, Canada, 2010, 8 min
Shutter suggests the uncanny atmosphere and changing light on the day of a total eclipse.
Timoleon Wilkins, Drifter, USA, 1996-2010, 24 min
Fragments of the filmmakerâs life, home and travels, recorded over a 14-year period. âThe glories of atmospheric light and colour, inward soul-drifting, and the literal sensation of drifting within and through each shot and cut.â (TW)
David Gatten, Shrimp Boat Log, USA, 2010, 6 min
â300 shots, 29 frames each, alternating between a notebook listing the names of shrimp boats that frequent the mouth of the Edisto River and images of these same boats.â (DG)
Rebecca Meyers, Blue Mantle, USA, 2010, 35 min
Blending 19th century American literature with factual accounts, illustrations and music by Debussy and Wagner, this oblique portrait of a shipwrecked coastline conveys the vastness and majesty of the ocean. A song to the sea, and a commemoration of those who have risked their lives off the treacherous Massachusetts shore.
Inger Lise Hansen, Travelling Fields, Norway, 2009, 9 min
In the third film of her âinverted perspectiveâ trilogy, Hansen turns her camera on the North West Russia, creating monumental and uncanny vistas from these barren wastelands.
Also Screening: Friday 22 October 2010, at 4:15pm, NFT3
PROGRAMME NOTES
SUBLIME PASSAGES
Saturday 23 October 2010, at 4pm
London BFI Southbank NFT3
SHUTTER
Alexi Manis, Canada, 2010, 16mm, colour, sound, 8 min
Shutter tracks the rising sun, the lengthening shadows and the darkening day of a total solar eclipse. Shutter is a formal exploration of the phenomenon of the sun eclipsing objects in the natural world. Inspired by footage of friend and amateur astronomer Andreas Gadaâs 16mm recording of the 1980 total solar eclipse, this work captures the beauty, complexity and terror of the shifting light that precedes and accompanies an eclipse. Shadow, focal variance and illumination of earth-bound nature conspire along the course to the incomparable moment of totality. (Alexi Manis)
DRIFTER
Timoleon Wilkins, USA 1996-2010, 16mm, colour, silent, 24 min
Drifter is the title; itâs essentially a collection (memoir) of footage dating back from 1996 to the present. The title, the theme, is drifting; mentally / physically. People whoâve drifted into and out of my life, and the visual themes (clouds, snow, highways, trains, oceans) that (finally) tie all my various Bolex-Kodachrome escapades together. Soft movement across the screen. My own wanderlust is in there as well. (Timoleon Wilkins)
SHRIMP BOAT LOG
David Gatten, USA, 2010, 16mm, b/w & colour, silent, 6 min
Shrimp Boat Log, the first reel of the ongoing Continuous Quantities series, contains 300 shots, 29 frames each, alternating between a notebook listing the names of shrimp boats that frequent the mouth of the Edisto River and images of these same boats. I started keeping track of these boats in 1994 when I first began visiting Seabrook Island, South Carolina, for family vacations. Iâve returned to this spot many times since, making a series of underwater, cameraless films there (the What the Water Said series), and always continuing to watch for the shrimp boats. I filmed these images during the summer and fall of 2006 and cut them â using Leonardoâs Notebooks as guide â over the next several years. (David Gatten)
www.davidgattenfilm.com
BLUE MANTLE
Rebecca Meyers, USA, 2010, 16mm, colour, sound, 35 min
blue mantle was shot along the Massachusetts coast, on Cape Cod and Cape Ann and around the South Shore. Images include paintings by Winslow Homer and illustrations from Harperâs Weekly accounts of disasters and rescues at sea. The main musical sources are Debussyâs âLa merâ, Wagnerâs âThe Flying Dutchmanâ and âLowlands,â a sea shanty. Texts range from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to Thoreau to Melville to various other 19th-century (and earlier) writings. The only cinematic representations supplementing my own footage are Edisonâs 1900 A Storm at Sea and a model-size Eidophusikon (a pre-cinematic 18th-century theatrical spectacle described in its day as âmoving pictures, representing phenomena of natureâ). The 40 miles of sea between Chatham and Provincetown came to be called an ocean graveyard due to the thousands of wrecks that occurred there during a time when sea-going vessels were the primary means for âbringing man nearer unto manâ (Longfellow). Today, among the not-invisible memorials and markers in Gloucester and along the cape of maritime histories, one can also find the remains of The Frances, a ship sunk in a December gale in 1872 and still visible at low tide at a popular Truro beach (most people walking by assume it is some kind of strange rock formation). US Life Saving Service men dragged the boat from the bay across the Cape to the outer beach and rescued all aboard. The captain died several days later from the effects of exposure and is buried in Truro. There are hundreds of stories like this one and many more with much more tragic outcomes. Cape Cod was also the site of two major developments in transatlantic communication: the termination point of âle Directâ, a 3200-mile submarine telegraph cable laid between France and Massachusetts in 1869, and the location of the first US wireless transmitting station established by inventor Guglielmo Marconi at the turn of the 20th century. Such historic moments of human progress striving to overcome natureâs vastness stir the imagination. (Rebecca Meyers)
TRAVELLING FIELDS
Inger Lise Hansen, Norway, 2009, 35mm, colour, sound, 9 min
Shot in Northern Russia, Travelling Fields is the third film in Inger Lise Hansenâs inverted perspective trilogy, following Proximity (2006) and Parallax (2009). The films focus on a particular phenomenon occurring through a change of perspective and animated camera movements, as a way of redefining a place and its geography. In these films sections of the landscape are documented by moving the camera one frame at the time, along a track. As each of the earlier films focus on one particular location, Travelling Fields offers a more complex viewing as it moves between different topographies and locations in the Kola Peninsula.
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Date: 23 October 2010 | Season: London Film Festival 2010 | Tags: London Film Festival
EVERY TIME I SEE YOUR PICTURE I CRY
Saturday 23 October 2010, at 7pm
London BFI Southbank NFT3
EVERY TIME I SEE YOUR PICTURE I CRY: A Live Performance by Daniel Barrow
Daniel Barrow has developed an intimate mode of âmanual animationâ using the antiquated technology of an overhead projector. From a position amongst the audience, he recites live narration while manipulating layers of transparencies in continuous motion. Accentuated by interference patterns and sleight-of-hand trickery, Barrowâs hand-drawn images contrive an absorbing tale of comic book grotesques. EVERY TIME I SEE YOUR PICTURE I CRY is a bizarre confessional detailing the grand but hopeless scheme of an estranged garbage collector and failed art student. Unloved and rejected by society, the protagonist begins a universal art project in the form of a telephone directory of âprofound and intimate insightsâ to chronicle the lives of those around him. As he snoops through the windows and waste bins of fellow citizens, his survey is rendered futile by a maniacal killer who follows in his wake, picking off subjects one by one. Invoking introspection, pathos and dark humour, this award winning performance piece is accompanied by an unassuming Beach Boys-inflected score recorded by Amy Linton of The Aislers Set.
Daniel Barrow, Every Time I See Your Picture I Cry, Canada, 2008, 60 min
PROGRAMME NOTES
EVERY TIME I SEE YOUR PICTURE I CRY
Saturday 23 October 2010, at 7pm
London BFI Southbank NFT3
EVERY TIME I SEE YOUR PICTURE I CRY
Daniel Barrow, Canada, 2008, live performance, 60 min
Awarded the 2008 Images Prize at its premiere, Daniel Barrowâs âmanual animationâ combines overhead projection with video, music, and live narration to tell the story of a garbage man with a vision to create an independent phone book chronicling the lives of each person in his city. In the late hours of the night, he sifts through garbage, collecting personal information and then traces pictures of each citizen through the windows of their homes as they sleep. What he doesnât yet realize is that a deranged killer is trailing him, murdering each citizen he includes in his book, thus rendering his cataloguing efforts obsolete. The garbage man is a failed artist who fears becoming subject to the grip of something overwhelming. This animation traces his attempts to slow down and creatively reflect, in a process of coming to terms with his own self-loathing and fear.
www.danielbarrow.com
Every Time I See Your Picture I Cry. Yeah, that title makes me a little nauseated, too. And I would be lying if I said that wasnât one of the many feelings that came to the surface in the midst of Daniel Barrowâs show last night; funny, though, how nausea can feel so satisfying when paired with a helluva lot of other emotions. Barrowâs tour de force is notable in the way it combines many things: live narration, video, music, drawings and an overhead projector. Yes, a real, live overhead projector, unseen since your eighth grade biology class, on which Barrow layers and manipulates multiple transparencies. It is not the mere novelty of the tool that makes Barrowâs work worth it, but rather his complete and utter mastery of a machine more commonly considered a bygone clunker than a medium for high art. During a Q&A after the performance, he described a nun-cum-professor at his art school who had been giving the same, refined lectures for nigh on 50 years, conducted via slide and overhead projectors. Barrow was inspired to riff on her method as a parody, but soon found that the medium sincerely appealed to the âcontrol freakâ and isolationist in him (âI donât like to work with crews, or other people, really,â he admitted). The projector is the vehicle for Barrowâs harrowing, dreamscape-like tale of an erstwhile garbage man, art school dropout and social outcast. He spends his nights picking through residentsâ detritus and peeking through their windows; heâs inspired, in his own earnest and perverse way, to create a special kind of phone book based on these findings. Each citizen will get a page of info and illustration; itâs an âart project for everyone,â our garbage man intones. For reasons that remain hazy but may include childhood trauma and psychic revenge, it is slowly revealed that a serial killer stalks our stalker, the malicious and psychotic foil to his harmless voyeurism. But by the time this oddball is thrown into the mix, the audience is too thoroughly entrenchedin Barrowâs elegant, elegiac projector world to put up any sort of fight. Every Time I See Your Picture has a plot, but it is cushioned and obscured by the very narration around it, which is at once a diary entry, a cautionary tale and a philosophical tangent. A lot of it makes very little sense; some, in that illogical way personal confessions have, makes a frightening amount. Above all, though, this performance is ultimately enjoyed in the craft of the man and his machine. If the animation potential of an overhead projector has never entered your brain, see this and prepare for revelation. Barrow is fluid and holds perfect time; his narration matches the sweeping movements of transparencies placed and replaced, and the original score by Amy Linton buoys you up and into the garbage manâs musty-sherbet-toned world. I sat three rows behind Barrow (whose projection outpost is ensconced in the middle of the auditorium), and can heartily recommend this position. You watch the master make the product. It is a bizarre live experience, unlike any Iâve seen, unlikely to be forgotten any time soon. (Caitlin McCarthy, Willamette Week)
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Date: 23 October 2010 | Season: London Film Festival 2010 | Tags: London Film Festival
HIT THE ROAD
Saturday 23 October 2010, at 9pm
London BFI Southbank NFT3
Duncan Campbell, Make It New John, UK, 2009, 50 min
The story of the DeLorean car and its notorious entrepreneurâs Northern Ireland venture, assembled from found and reconstructed footage. During a momentous period in the provinceâs history, the manufacture of this futuristic vehicle was beset by its own troubles â governmental pacts, an inexperienced workforce and allegations of misconduct. This insightful film, with its Pinteresque finale concerning the plight of the workers, raises questions on documentary form and the representation of historical events.
Thom Andersen, Get Out of the Car, USA, 2010, 34 min
Andersenâs latest homage to Los Angeles takes time to stop and consider the temporary architecture of roadside billboards, community murals and hand-painted signs. A movie about the ephemeral sights of the city, with a rocking soundtrack of local music and the confused interjections of passers-by.
Also Screening: Tuesday 26 October 2010, at 2pm, NFT3
PROGRAMME NOTES
HIT THE ROAD
Saturday 23 October 2010, at 9pm
London BFI Southbank NFT3
MAKE IT NEW JOHN
Duncan Campbell, UK, 2009, video, colour, sound, 50 min
Make it New John tells the story of the DeLorean car, its creator John DeLorean, and the workers of the Belfast-based car plant who built it. The film deftly contrasts the DeLorean dream with its spectacular downfall during a critical period in Northern Irelandâs history, and the canonisation of the car â the DMC12 â as a symbol of the American myth of mobility. The son of an immigrant Romanian foundry worker, John DeLoreanâs natural talent for engineering took him to the top of Chevrolet, General Motorsâ most important division. Leaving this behind he persuaded the British Government to back his new venture â building a factory in Dunmurry in Belfast to produce a new sports car. Almost immediately beset by financial difficulties and allegations of embezzlement, DeLoreanâs attempts to keep the factory open became increasingly desperate and corrupt, eventually leading to his arrest by the FBI. The factory â which employed 2000 workers â closed in 1982, having produced just over 9000 cars. As with the earlier works Bernadette (2008) and Falls Burns Malone Fiddles (2003), in Make it New John Campbell fuses a documentary aesthetic with fictive moments, using existing news archives and documentary footage from the 1980s as well as new 16mm material which imagines conversations between DeLorean factory workers. Campbell questions the documentary genre and reflects here on broader existential themes and narrative drives.
GET OUT OF THE CAR
Thom Andersen, USA, 2010, 16mm, colour, sound, 34 min
Get Out of the Car could be characterized as a nostalgic film. It is a celebration of artisanal culture and termite art (in Manny Farberâs sense, but more precisely in the sense Dave Marsh gives the phrase in his book âLouie Louieâ). But I would claim itâs not a useless and reactionary feeling of nostalgia, but rather a militant nostalgia. Change the past, it needs it. Remember the words of Walter Benjamin I quote in the film: even the dead will not be safe. Restore what can be restored, like the Watts Towers. Rebuild what must be rebuilt. Re-abolish capital punishment. Remember the injustices done to Chinese, Japanese, blacks, gays, Mexicans, Chicanos, and make it right. Put Richard Berry, Maxwell Davis, Hunter Hancock, Art Laboe, and Big Jay McNeely in the Rockâ ânâ Roll Hall of Fame. Bring back South Central Farm. Only when these struggles are fought and won can we begin to create the future. (Thom Andersen)
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Date: 24 October 2010 | Season: London Film Festival 2010 | Tags: London Film Festival
THREE FILMS BY NATHANIEL DORSKY
Sunday 24 October 2010, at 2pm
London BFI Southbank NFT3
Nathaniel Dorsky finds moments of profound beauty among the shadows, reflections and luminosity of city life and the natural world. His open form of filmmaking creates a space for the viewerâs contemplation amidst the subtle and astonishing images which radiate from the screen. This programme presents two new films together with a recent preservation of a formative early work.
Nathaniel Dorsky, Compline, USA, 2009, 19 min
âCOMPLINE is a night devotion or prayer, the last of the canonical hours, the final act in a cycle. It is the last film I will be able to shoot in Kodachrome; a loving duet with and a fond farewell to this noble emulsion.â (ND)
Nathaniel Dorsky, Aubade, USA, 2010, 12 min
âAn aubade is a morning song or poem evoking the first rays of the sun at daybreak. In some sense, it is a new beginning for me.â (ND)
Nathaniel Dorsky, Hours for Jerome, USA, 1966-70/82, 45 min
âAn arrangement of images, energies, and illuminations from daily life. These fragments of light revolve around the four seasons and are very much a part of the youthful energy and poignant joy of my mid-20s. In medieval European Catholicism, a âBook of Hoursâ was a series of prayers presented eight times every 24 hours. Each âhourâ had its own qualities, from pre-dawn till very late at night, and these qualities also changed through the progressing seasons of the year.â (ND)
Hours for Jerome has been preserved by Pacific Film Archive with support from the National Film Preservation Foundation.
PROGRAMME NOTES
THREE FILMS BY NATHANIEL DORSKY
Sunday 24 October 2010, at 2pm
London BFI Southbank NFT3
COMPLINE
Nathaniel Dorsky, USA, 2009, 16mm, colour, silent, 19 min
Compline is a night devotion or prayer, the last of the canonical hours, the final act in a cycle. This is also the last film I will be able to shoot in Kodachrome, a film stock I have used since I was 10 years old. It is a loving duet with and a fond farewell to this noble emulsion (Nathaniel Dorsky)
AUBADE
Nathaniel Dorsky, USA, 2010, 16mm, colour, silent, 12 min
An aubade is a morning song or poem evoking the first rays of the sun at daybreak. Often, it includes the atmosphere of lovers parting. This film is my first venture into shooting in colour negative after having spent a lifetime shooting Kodachrome. In some sense, it is a new beginning for me. (Nathaniel Dorsky)
HOURS FOR JEROME, PARTS 1 & 2
Nathaniel Dorsky, USA 1966-70/82, 16mm, colour, silent, 45 min (restoration print)
This footage was shot from 1966 to 1970 and edited over a two-year period ending in July 1982. Hours For Jerome is an arrangement of images, energies, and illuminations from daily life. These fragments of light revolve around the four seasons and are very much a part of the youthful energy and poignant joy of my mid-twenties. Part One is spring through summer; Part Two is fall and winter. The title of the film refers to a âBook of Hoursâ which, in medieval European Catholicism, was a series of prayers presented eight times every 24 hours. Each âhourâ had its own qualities from pre-dawn till very late at night and these qualities also changed through the progressing seasons of the year. They were traditionally illustrated by luminous miniature paintings, and were often titled âHours for âŠâ. Saint Jerome was a favourite subject of these illuminations and he is often depicted at his studies accompanied by a lion. The Jerome in Hours for Jerome is a close friend and filmmaker who is seen at his work or studies, often with his cats. He is first seen reading the newspaper, then putting sugar in his coffee, contemplating a book of Mozartâs letters in a rain and lightening storm, swimming, and writing a letter in blue; and in Part Two picking an apple, editing film, standing under a tree, reading, watching television during a snow storm, and driving a car at twilight. So the title is a somewhat humorous reference to the medieval form, as this film is also a series of illuminations from different times of day and night progressing through the seasons. There is also the pun that so much of the film has to do with various kinds of time. (Nathaniel Dorsky)
Hours for Jerome has been preserved by Pacific Film Archive with support from the National Film Preservation Foundation.
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Date: 24 October 2010 | Season: London Film Festival 2010 | Tags: London Film Festival
LEWIS KLAHR PRESENTS PROLIX SATORI
Sunday 24 October 2010, at 4pm
London BFI Southbank NFT3
Collage artist Lewis Klahr introduces PROLIX SATORI, an ongoing series which appropriates images from comics, magazines and catalogues. A filmmaker since the 1980s, his signature style is saturated in mid-century Americana but addresses universal experience and is resolutely contemporary. Retaining distinctive handcrafted qualities across a recent shift to digital, Klahr choreographs comic book characters in fractured landscapes of patterns, textures and architectural details. Going beyond abstraction and nostalgic clichĂ©, he builds high melodrama from modest means, conjuring elliptical narratives that evoke complex moods and emotions. Within PROLIX SATORI, a new project of âcoupletsâ elicits different atmospheres through repetitions of soundtracks or imagery. An emotive mix of classical, easy listening and iconic pop music carries viewers through tales of lost love and wistful reverie. This screening is a chance to be immersed in the idiosyncratic world of a widely acclaimed artist making his first UK appearance.
Lewis Klahr, False Aging, USA, 2008, 15 min
Lewis Klahr, Nimbus Smile, USA, 2009, 8 min
Lewis Klahr, Nimbus Seeds, USA, 2009, 8 min
Lewis Klahr, Cumulonimbus, USA, 2010, 10 min
Lewis Klahr, Sugar Slim Says, USA, 2010, 7 min
Lewis Klahr, Wednesday Morning Two A.M., USA, 2009, 7 min
Lewis Klahr, Lethe, USA, 2009, 23 min
Also Screening: Thursday 21 October 2010, at 4:15pm, NFT3
Lewis Klahr will present a screening of his early films at Tate Modern on Monday 25 October.
PROGRAMME NOTES
LEWIS KLAHR PRESENTS PROLIX SATORI
Sunday 24 October 2010, at 4pm
London BFI Southbank NFT3
This screening marks the UK premier of my new series Prolix Satori. I have often worked in series before â Daylight Moon (A Quartet), Tales of the Forgotten Future, Engram Sepals (Melodramas 1994-2000), The Two Minutes to Zero Trilogy â but never quite like this. The main difference is that Prolix Satori is both open ended and ongoing, with a variety of thematic focuses instead of a single, centralized one. As the series title suggests, it will include films that are very, very short (under a minute) and films that are feature length. Prolix Satori will also act as an umbrella for various sub-series: this program offers five films from The Couplets (Wednesday Morning Two A.M., Sugar Slim Says and all three Nimbus films). The Couplets will generally, but not exclusively, organize themselves around the pairing of various pop songs and, just as in the songsâ lyrics, the theme of romantic love. (Lewis Klahr)
FALSE AGING
Lewis Klahr, USA, 2008, video, colour, sound, 15 min
False Aging is a haunting, evocative, expertly crafted film by Lewis Klahr, using his signature style of animation made with cut-out figures, often from comic books and other nostalgic sources, and a great variety of small objects such as plastic ice cubes and trading stamps. The physical movement in the film, with individual cut-out figures moving in and out of the frame awkwardly, in a crude form of animation, effectively recreates the feeling of daydreaming, or the way one would mull through oneâs deepest, least expressible emotional jumbles just before falling asleep. The fact that the imagery is not directly interpretable, not clearly and readily translatable into easily explained symbolism, yet every image in every frame clearly is a swirling vortex of powerful associations, is what gives this (and Klahrâs other films) their peculiar and transcendent power and beauty: they take you on a journey into a strange, powerful and beautiful place, without telling you where you are going or what you will find there, and so they open up many doors into hidden pavilions of feeling, without locking you into an overly narrow and intellectualized explanation of what you are seeing. (David Finkelstein)
NIMBUS SMILE
Lewis Klahr, USA, 2009, video, colour, sound, 8 min
NIMBUS SEEDS
Lewis Klahr, USA, 2009, video, colour, sound, 8 min
CUMULONIMBUS
Lewis Klahr, USA, 2010, video, colour, sound, 10 min
In this grouping of three related videos on the subject of romantic triangles, Klahr expands his explorations of memory, love, repetition, narrative and loss in surprising new ways until the films build into complex emotional and artistic experiences. His approach to inter-film montage (the interconnected relationship of different films to each other) reaches its fullest expression with these new works. Three romantic entanglements play out in the three Nimbus videos, which extend Klahrâs interest in constructing almost legible narratives â but doing so in formalist terms that complicate and enhance the traditional pleasures of stories. The trilogyâs closer, Cumulonimbus, is a movingly mature account of grief with a puckish sting in its tail. (Chris Stults)
SUGAR SLIM SAYS
Lewis Klahr, USA, 2010, video, colour, sound, 7 min
Same address, different buildings. âPut the rope in the can.â Mark Anthony Thompson (aka Chocolate Genius) and I became friends because our sons were classmates. He played me his new album and I showed him some of my recent films and we got excited about collaborating. This is the result. He gave free reign to create a piece coupled with two tracks together: âLumpâ and âHold Me Like A Nurseâ. (Lewis Klahr)
WEDNESDAY MORNING TWO A.M.
Lewis Klahr, USA, 2009, video, colour, sound, 7 min
An intimate and poetic study of the darkness of love and the beauty of texture. Wednesday Morning Two A.M. combines figurative realism with pure abstraction to remind us of the value of the small and the handmade. (Tiger Award Jury Statement, International Film Festival Rotterdam)
LETHE
Lewis Klahr, USA, 2009, video, colour, sound, 23 min
One of Klahrâs longest films, and one of his most straightforward narrative melodramas, Lethe conjures up the full emotional spectrum and storytelling potential of a film by Vincente Minnelli or Douglas Sirk, even though the only sets and actors are cut-out pieces of paper brought to life by Klahrâs imagination and storytelling abilities. Without sacrificing his signature forms of poetic abstraction and uncanny imagery, Klahr tells a tale ripped out of a pulp novel. An older scientist devises a way to win the love of a beautiful younger woman, and the film deals with the psychic fallout that this relationship rains on the woman. (Chris Stults)
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Date: 24 October 2010 | Season: London Film Festival 2010 | Tags: London Film Festival
BREAK ON THROUGH
Sunday 24 October 2010, at 7pm
London BFI Southbank NFT3
Janie Geiser, Ghost Algebra, USA, 2009, 8 min
âUnder erratic skies, a solitary figure navigates a landscape of constructed nature and broken bones. She peers through a decaying aperture, waiting and watching: the fragility of the body is exposed for what it is: ephemeral, liquid, a battlefield of nervous dreams.â (JG)
Phil Solomon, Still Raining, Still Dreaming, USA, 2009, 15 min
Videogaming was never meant to be this way: uncanny and elegiac in tone, poignant and considered in practice. By betraying the violent subtext of his source material, Solomon has found genuine poetry in the desolate spaces of digitally constructed worlds.
David Gatten, So Sure of Nowhere Buying Times to Come, USA, 2010, 9 min
The windows of a small antique store in the Rocky Mountains displays carefully arranged curiosities â specific objects each with their attendant histories. Visible traces of past uses, previous lives, secrets and significance.
Samantha Rebello, Forms Are Not Self-Subsistent Substances, UK, 2010, 22 min
Words, concepts, things. Referencing Aristotle and illuminated manuscripts, Rebello asks âWhat is substance?â Romanesque stone carvings are measured against latter-day beasts, seeking parity between medieval perception and a present-day embodiment.
Erin Espelie, Facts Told at Retail, After Henry James), USA, 2010, 9 min
âThe author of The Golden Bowl acts as the confessed agent, and the glass through which every image is reflected or filtered takes on a kind of consciousness.â (EE)
Lawrence Jordan, Cosmic Alchemy, USA, 2010, 24 min
A voyage in the celestial realm, out beyond consciousness, steered by a master of mystical transformation. Wondrous visions are charted on star maps from the Harmonia Macrocosmica to a spellbinding drone track by John Davis.
Also Screening: Tuesday 26 October 2010, at 4:15pm, NFT3
PROGRAMME NOTES
BREAK ON THROUGH
Sunday 24 October 2010, at 7pm
London BFI Southbank NFT3
GHOST ALGEBRA
Janie Geiser, USA, 2009, video, colour, sound, 8 min
Under erratic skies, a solitary figure navigates a landscape of constructed nature and broken bones. She peers through a decaying aperture, waiting and watching: the fragility of the body is exposed for what it is: ephemeral, liquid, a battlefield of nervous dreams. Using found and natural objects, rephotographed video, medical illustrations, and other collage elements, Ghost Algebra suggests one of the original meanings of the word âalgebraâ: the science of restoring what is missing, the reunion of broken parts. (Janie Geiser)
STILL RAINING, STILL DREAMING
Phil Solomon, USA, 2009, video, colour, sound, 15 min
Still Raining, Still Dreaming tracks filmâs âwind in the treesâ, those ostensibly open-air spontaneities of flickering shadows and leaves that a whole tradition of avant-garde artists (including Solomon) has tried to return to, and shows them as a Silicon Valley programmerâs machinations in a hollow, digital city from the post-apocalypse where the images again donât always register fast enough for the camera. Buildings bend and catch up as mirages. Leaves fall and children skate by, and any video-game player wonders, as usual, whether theyâre gone from the program altogether once theyâve left the screen. Solomon films only the urban after-effects of a natural world of seasonal and solar changes never seen. Itâs his best Grand Theft Auto film yet, as the portrait of a world going on over the graveyard of an abandoned civilization. (Johnny Lavant)
SO SURE OF NOWHERE BUYING TIMES TO COME
David Gatten, USA, 2010, 16mm, colour, silent, 9 min
Excerpts from Sir Thomas Browneâs 1658 text âHydriotaphia, Urne-Burial or, A Brief Discourse of the Sepulchrall Urnes Lately Found in Norfolkâ are superimposed with the stone faces of grave markers and burial urns. This image-text bookends a series of objects framed in the ancient glass window panes of a tiny shop, in a tiny snow covered town, on a mountain top in Colorado: a pocket watch, a postal scale, a small mirror, a stop watch, some stamps, a knife, some bandages, an hourglass. Time is short. Time is running out. The time left is all the time we have. (David Gatten)
FORMS ARE NOT SELF-SUBSISTENT SUBSTANCES
Samantha Rebello, UK, 2010, 16mm, colour, sound, 22 min
The film was borne of an interest in âmedievalâ perception through images and philosophy, the latter taken in particular from Aristotleâs âCategoriesâ and âMetaphysicsâ, which were highly influential within medieval scholarship. It uses certain passages and concepts from these works (also the origin of the title) on the themes of substance and being. It includes medieval imagery from the CathĂ©drale Saint Lazare, Autun â the stone carvings attributed to Gislebertus, depicting humans at the mercy of beasts and devils â and colour plates from a reproduction of the Bestiary âM.S. Bodley 764â. The sounds of âmedievalâ bells, recorded in Autun and at the Basilique Saint Denis are also important. There is an interest in themes of animality and flesh through the imagined medieval sensibility. The proximity to their own bodies heightened, paradoxically, by their aspirations toward purity of spirit through the denigration of the flesh. This imagery is juxtaposed against live âbeastsâ; animals filmed in such a way as to attain a sense of distance / strangeness akin to the medieval illuminations and carvings. The idea of âsubstanceâ is thrown into relief through playing with the possible ways of understanding the term through the words of Aristotle, or the tactile / haptic apprehension of the screen imagery, filmed mainly in close up. Stone, flesh, milk and blood are filmed as âbeingsâ in their own right, with thecloak of language removed on order to reveal a reality of âthingsâ ordinarily hidden from view. The tension between âmedievalâ perception and our own is explored. Due to their remove from us, the words of Aristotle or the Bestiary imagery ignite another way of perceiving within the film. Ordinary things become out of the ordinary, on the way towards the essential. (Samantha Rebello)
FACTS TOLD AT RETAIL (AFTER HENRY JAMES)
Erin Espelie, USA, 2010, video, colour, sound, 9 min
In his introduction to the 1909 edition of âThe Golden Bowlâ, Henry James wrote, âMy instinct appears repeatedly to have been that to arrive at the facts retailed ⊠by the given help of some other conscious and confessed agent is essentially to find the whole business.â In this film, James acts as the confessed agent, and the glass through which every image is reflected or filtered takes on a kind of consciousness. (Erin Espelie)
COSMIC ALCHEMY
Lawrence Jordan, USA, 2010, 16mm, colour, sound, 24 min
Cosmic Alchemy is thematically and visually consistent with his earlier films and yet, set to an evocative score by John Davis, Jordan has crossed into an unfamiliar and richly rewarding territory of metaphoric complexity. For the handful of folks unfamiliar with Lawrence Jordanâs work, Cosmic Alchemy will leave you desperately wanting more. For the rest, already quite familiar with his brilliance, this film will install a fresh appreciation for Jordanâs justifiable position among experimental cinemaâs ascended masters. (Jonathan Marlow)
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Date: 24 October 2010 | Season: London Film Festival 2010 | Tags: London Film Festival
PEOPLE GOING NOWHERE
Sunday 24 October 2010, at 9pm
London BFI Southbank NFT3
Richard Kerr, De Mouvement, Canada, 2009, 7 min
Kerrâs mind-bending trip through the wipes and dissolves of old feature films is an exhilarating demonstration of the power of cinema.
Ben Rivers & Paul Harnden, May Tomorrow Shine The Brightest Of All Your Many Days As It Will Be Your Last, UK, 2009, 13 min
Female Japanese cadets patrol the woods and countryside where old men channel Futurist poets. Adjacent yes, but simultaneous?
Neil Beloufa, Brune Renault, France, 2009, 17 min
An abandoned car park is no substitute for the open road. Four characters find themselves in a looped fiction, replete with clichĂ©s, acting out cycles of heightened emotions. Like all teenagers, they think the world revolves around them â and in this film it almost does.
Victor Alimpiev, Vot, Russia, 2010, 5 min
As if suspended in limbo, or perhaps deep in rehearsal, five performers exchange glances, gestures and utter strange sounds.
Janie Geiser, Kindless Villain, USA, 2010, 4 min
Two boys seem trapped inside their own imaginations, dreaming of naval battles and Egyptian exotica.
Peter Tscherkassky, Coming Attractions, Austria, 2010, 24 min
With humour and materialist dynamics, Tscherkassky explores the direct relationship between actor, camera and audience. A meditation on the âcinema of attractionsâ; exploiting leftovers from the commercial industry to collide the intersecting forms of early film and the avant-garde.
Also Screening: Thursday 21 October 2010, at 2pm, NFT3
PROGRAMME NOTES
PEOPLE GOING NOWHERE
Sunday 24 October 2010, at 9pm
London BFI Southbank NFT3
DE MOUVEMENT
Richard Kerr, Canada, 2009, 35mm, b/w, sound, 7 min
As an extension of his Industrie / Industry project, Richard Kerr furthers his appropriation of feature film trailers, formally reconstructing their cinematic language. Monochromatic French film trailers from a bygone era provide the source material, and here the actions of the actors are secondary to the physical movement of celluloid.
A brilliant formalist montage of wipes creates an awareness of film motion and rhythm. (Andréa Picard)
MAY TOMORROW SHINE THE BRIGHTEST OF ALL YOUR MANY DAYS AS IT WILL BE YOUR LAST
Ben Rivers & Paul Harnden, UK, 2009, 16mm, b/w, sound, 13 min
Somewhere in the backwoods at the turn of Iâm not sure which century, a crack unit of female Japanese soldiers track a group of lost, ancient desperadoes. They dig holes, they read, their leader channels the ghost of Italian sound poets (as yet unborn?), all the while moving onward ⊠but who is searching for who and why? Hand-processed with a soundtrack cobbled together from Dictaphone recordings, old 78s,
hiss and scratches and whines. (Ben Rivers)
www.benrivers.com
BRUNE RENAULT
Neil Beloufa, France, 2009, video, colour, sound, 17 min
Brune Renault is a kind of looped fiction that happens in a car sliced in four parts resting on small wheels; basically a sculpture. Since we can open the car, we can make impossible camera shots, moving in and out of the object. The goal of the piece was to have this car cut in four parts to give the illusion of movement, which is a paradox. I wanted the sculpture to mutate into a functional object (real car), once viewers were starting to follow and âsuspend disbeliefâ for the fiction. And then, to lose the fiction and utilise videoâs function to mutate into a document about the usual contemporary art sculpture. The impossible camera shots showing the cuts of the cars had to be the disturbing element that betray the fiction, but then again the power of fiction is hard to break down. (Neil Beloufa)
VOT
Victor Alimpiev, Russia, 2010, video, colour, sound, 5 min
Alimpievâs videos focus directly on his characters while avoiding specific narrative â close-ups reveal intimate details and personal expressions; moments of awkwardness or tension becoming magnified. Repeated gestures, passing through the group as one, are imbued with new, fugitive meaning. Meticulously staged, the videos trace the simplest of movements heightened to form a collective ritual. Group identity is further emphasised not only by carefully controlled actions and sound, but also through a uniformity of pale tones and muted colours. (Ikon Gallery, Birmingham)
KINDLESS VILLAIN
Janie Geiser, USA, 2010, video, colour, sound, 4 min
In Kindless Villain, two boys wander through a stone fortress, while battles wage in the waters beyond. Seemingly alone in their island world, they succumb to fatigue and to boysâ games of power. Scratched phrases from an ancient recording of Hamlet surface, including a sad cry for vengeance. War is a childâs game, played quietly in this forgotten world. (Janie Geiser)
www.janiegeiser.com
COMING ATTRACTIONS
Peter Tscherkassky, Austria, 2010, 35mm, b/w, sound, 24 min
Coming Attractions and the construction of its images are woven around the idea that there is a deep, underlying relationship between early cinema and avant-garde film. Tom Gunning was among the first to describe and investigate this notion in a systematic and methodical manner in his well known and often quoted essay: âAn Unseen Energy Swallows Space: The Space in Early Film and Its Relation to American Avant-Garde Filmâ (in: John L. Fell [ed.], âFilm Before Griffithâ, Berkeley 1983). Coming Attractions additionally addresses Gunningâs concept of a âCinema of Attractionsâ. This term is used to describe a completely different relation between actor, camera and audience to be found in early cinema in general, as compared to the âmodern cinemaâ which developed after 1910, gradually leading to the narrative technique of D.W. Griffith. The notion of a âCinema of Attractionsâ touches upon the exhibitionistic character of early film, the undaunted show and tell of its creative possibilities, and its direct addressing of the audience. At some point it occurred to me that another residue of the cinema of attractions lies within the genre of advertising: here we also often encounter a uniquely direct relation between actor, camera and audience. The impetus for Coming Attractions was to bring the three together: commercials, early cinema, and avant-garde film. (Peter Tscherkassky)
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