The Poor Stockinger

Date: 10 October 2012 | Season: London Film Festival 2012 | Tags:

THE POOR STOCKINGER, THE LUDDITE CROPPER AND THE DELUDED FOLLOWERS OF JOANNA SOUTHCOTT
Wednesday 10 October 2012, at 6pm
London ICA Cinema 1

Luke Fowler, The Poor Stockinger, the Luddite Cropper and the Deluded Followers of Joanna Southcott, UK, 2012, 61 min
The new work by Luke Fowler, a current nominee for the Turner Prize, explores the role played by left wing intellectuals in the working class communities of post-war Yorkshire. At night schools organised by the Workers’ Educational Association, adults with no other access to further education were taught by progressive thinkers such as Raymond Williams, Richard Hoggart and E.P. Thompson, from whose treatise The Making of the English Working Class the film takes its long-winded title. As in previous studies of R.D. Laing and Cornelius Cardew, Fowler makes effective use of archival and contemporary materials. The result is far from a conventional documentary: in place of objective commentary, the soundtrack features the lilting voice of artist Cerith Wyn Evans reading Thompson’s class reports (pointed and often droll). For the present-day images of municipal buildings, West Riding towns and surrounding landscapes, Fowler shot in collaboration with American independent filmmaker Peter Hutton. (Mark Webber)

The screening on 10 October will feature an extended introduction by Dr Tom Steele.

Also Screening: Sunday 21 October 2012, at 4pm, BFI Southbank NFT 3

PROGRAMME NOTES

Breaking the Frame

Date: 10 October 2012 | Season: London Film Festival 2012 | Tags:

BREAKING THE FRAME
Wednesday 10 October 2012, at 8pm
London ICA Cinema 1

Marielle Nitoslawska, Breaking the Frame, Canada, 2012, 100 min
Breaking the Frame is the first feature-length documentary on Carolee Schneemann, an artist whose pioneering work has transformed discourses on the body, sexuality and gender. In cinema history, she is primarily known for Fuses, an honestly explicit film of lovemaking from a feminine viewpoint shot between 1964-67. For decades, Schneemann has similarly challenged taboos in other media, making paintings, performances, video, collage and installations in which personal experiences are absolutely entwined with formal considerations: ‘Form is emotion. I work towards metaphors of sensation, a dramatization of loss and recovery.’ Her kinetic performance style, developed while a key member of the Judson Dance Theater, produced pieces such as Meat Joy, Up To And Including Her Limits and Interior Scroll, now regarded as seminal works of live art. In this mesmerising film, which forgoes chronological biography, the artist generously shares her memories and extraordinary personal archive. Mark Webber.

Also Screening: Friday 19 October 2012, at 9pm, BFI Southbank NFT 3

PROGRAMME NOTES

Occupy the Cinema

Date: 11 October 2012 | Season: London Film Festival 2012 | Tags:

OCCUPY THE CINEMA
Thursday 11 October 2012, at 8pm
London ICA Cinema 1

Ben Russell & Guillaume Cailleau, Austerity Measures, Greece, 2012, 9 min
Athens at crisis point: a colour-separation portrait of the Exarchia neighbourhood during the anti-austerity protests.

Ken Jacobs, Seeking the Monkey King, USA, 2011, 40 min
Amid the hypnotic, flickering motion of a metallic terrain, vitriolic onscreen texts rail against American culpability, from the Revolution to Iraq to the present administration. Each statement casts an arrow, and J.G. Thirlwell’s monstrously cinematic score drives them home.

Brad Butler & Karen Mirza, Deep State, UK, 2012, 44 min
‘An audacious, semi-fantastical secret history of the counterforces of popular protest and clandestine control, this struggle is told through archive material, contemporary footage and future speculation.’
A direct development of the filmmakers’ visit to Cairo prior to the Tahrir Square uprising, Deep State was commissioned by Film & Video Umbrella, and made in collaboration with author China Miéville.

PROGRAMME NOTES

Fragments of Kubelka

Date: 13 October 2012 | Season: London Film Festival 2012 | Tags: ,

FRAGMENTS OF KUBELKA
Saturday 13 October 2012, at 1pm
London ICA Cinema 1

Martina Kudlácek, Fragments of Kubelka, Austria, 2012, 232 min
In this extended portrait, Peter Kubelka speaks at length about his life, work and interests, drawing on a vast range of knowledge and experience. Active as a filmmaker since the 1950s, Kubelka’s acclaimed cinematic works are only one aspect of his dynamic personality. In his legendary public lectures, he holds forth on a variety of disciplines including film, music, archaeology and cooking. He has also played an important institutional role in establishing the Austrian Film Museum, and as co-founder of Anthology Film Archives, for whom he designed an ideal viewing theatre known as the Invisible Cinema. Martina Kudlácek (known for previous documentaries on Maya Deren and Marie Menken) immersed herself in Kubelka’s world for several years, researching historical footage, recording lectures, and perhaps most importantly, filming him at home surrounded by his eclectic collection of anthropological objects. In these precious sequences, Fragments of Kubelka provides extraordinary insight in conveying his philosophy on life and art.

PROGRAMME NOTES

Nathaniel Dorsky & Jerome Hiler

Date: 20 October 2012 | Season: London Film Festival 2012 | Tags:

NATHANIEL DORSKY & JEROME HILER
Saturday 20 October 2012, at 2pm
London BFI Southbank NFT 3

While others bemoan the end of celluloid, Nathaniel Dorsky – whose work has become an annual highlight of the festival over the past decade – continues apace, more productive now than ever. His carefully considered practice has this year created works of great beauty from a period of sorrow. This screening of two new films will be complemented by rarely exhibited work by his companion Jerome Hiler.

Nathaniel Dorsky, August and After, USA, 2012, 19 min
‘After a lifetime, two mutual friends, George Kuchar and Carla Liss, passed away during the same period of time.’ (ND)

Nathaniel Dorsky, April, USA, 2012, 26 min
‘Following a period of trauma and grief, the world around me once again declared itself in the form of one of the loveliest springs I can ever remember in San Francisco. April is intended as a companion piece for August and After, and is partly funded by a gift from Carla Liss.’ (ND)

Jerome Hiler, Words of Mercury, USA, 2011, 25 min
Jerome Hiler, who shares Dorsky’s heightened sense of wonder at the world around him, builds sensuous layers of superimposition at the moment of shooting. A most private filmmaker, whose primary craft is the less transient medium of stained glass, he has until recently only shown his work as camera originals, thus limiting their public visibility. His inclusion in the latest Whitney Biennial prompted this first digital transfer.

PROGRAMME NOTES

Two Architecture Studies

Date: 20 October 2012 | Season: London Film Festival 2012 | Tags:

TWO ARCHITECTURE STUDIES
Saturday 20 October 2012, at 4pm
London BFI Southbank NFT 3

Catalina Niculescu, Along the Lines, UK-Romania, 2011, 16 min
On a trip to her native Romania, the artist’s interest in architectural forms prompted a visual investigation into how decorative and structural motifs recur in buildings from the traditional to the modern.

Thom Andersen, Reconversão, Portugal, 2012, 65 min
Invited to film in Portugal on the occasion of the Vila do Conde festival’s 20th anniversary, Thom Andersen chose to document building projects by Eduardo Souto de Moura, whose work combines modernist aesthetics with traces of the architectural history of his sites. Incorporating local materials with contemporary building techniques, his clean concrete lines harmonise with natural elements and traditional stone walls. Influenced in equal measure by Mies van der Rohe and minimal sculptors such as Judd and Morris, Souta de Moura’s achievements include meticulous linear houses, the Porto subway network, and the monumental Braga Stadium, which rises out of the earth beside a mountain of imposing granite. This leisurely film features 17 such projects and culminates in a conversation between the filmmaker and the distinguished architect.

PROGRAMME NOTES

Rites of Passage

Date: 20 October 2012 | Season: London Film Festival 2012 | Tags:

RITES OF PASSAGE
Saturday 20 October 2012, at 9pm
London BFI Southbank NFT 3

Steve Reinke, Great Blood Sacrifice, USA, 2010, 4 min
‘Whatever is going on on top, there’s a precise machine at work below, and this machine is digging little grooves, and these grooves slowly join together and become the conduits by which all meaning is drained from the world.’ (SR)

Hayoun Kwon, Manque de preuves, South Korea-France, 2011, 10 min
To cleanse his village of demons, the chief of a Nigerian tribe plans to sacrifice his twin sons. One escapes and flees to Europe, where his application for asylum is dismissed through lack of material proof. Using his testimony as the basis, Kwon proposes an animated depiction of his account.

Gabriel Abrantes, Birds, Portugal-Haiti, 2012, 17 min
Pagan folk myth is juxtaposed with ancient Greek comedy as three Haitian girls witness disparate forms of storytelling. An old man tells the tale of his wife’s transformation into a goat. In a local village, an elaborately costumed theatre group performs Aristophanes’ Birds in the original Attic language.

Ben Russell & Jim Drain, Ponce de León, USA, 2012, 26 min
‘Our Ponce de León is an immortal for whom time poses the greatest dilemma – it is a constant, a given, and his personal battle lies in trying to either arrest time entirely or to make the hands on his clock move ever faster. For Ponce de León, time is a problem of body, and only by escaping his container can he escape time itself.’ (BR)

Ben Russell, River Rites, USA-Suriname, 2011, 12 min
‘Trance dance and water implosion.’ A constantly moving camera passes through a complex choreography of bodies engaged in rituals of work and play along the Upper Suriname River.

PROGRAMME NOTES

Where the Magic Happens

Date: 21 October 2012 | Season: London Film Festival 2012 | Tags:

WHERE THE MAGIC HAPPENS
Sunday 21 October 2012, at 7pm
London BFI Southbank NFT 3

Peter Miller, Ten Minutiae, Germany, 2012, 5 min
A series of brief exercises in cinematographic magic.

Shumona Goel & Shai Heredia, I am Micro, India, 2011, 15 min
‘Shot in an abandoned optics factory and centred on the activities of a low budget film crew, I am Micro is an experimental essay about filmmaking, the medium of film, and the spirit of making independent cinema.’ (SG/SH)

Kevin Jerome Everson, Rita Larson’s Boy, USA, 2012, 11 min
In one of a trilogy of works based on personalities from the filmmaker’s parents’ hometown, actors audition for the role of sitcom character Rollo Larson. As they attempt to inhabit the character, subtle variations in delivery bring a hypnotic dimension to disconnected lines and repetitive actions.

Erin Espelie, True-Life Adventure, USA, 2012, 4 min
Espelie trains her camera on the myriad life forms that coexist within a small area around a mountain creek. ‘When nature writes the screenplays, she doesn’t abide by crescendos.’ (EE)

Nick Collins, Dark Garden, UK, 2011, 9 min
Contours of light define the flowers and plants of a winter garden, filmed against the black expanse of the night sky.

Robert Todd, Within, USA, 2012, 9 min
‘A film that sustains a complex condition: keeping the inner world alive as the camera looks ‘out’ upon the world.’ (RT)

David Gatten, By Pain and Rhyme and Arabesques of Foraging, USA, 2012, 8 min
An ‘experiment touching colours’ inspired by 17th Century scientist Robert Boyle, bringing together exquisite images shot over a 13-year period. Its title, from a sonnet by Jorie Graham, encapsulates the process and infers its poetic consequence.

Ben Rivers, The Creation As We Saw It, UK-Vanuatu, 2012, 14 min
Unexpectedly given the opportunity to travel anywhere in the world, Ben Rivers chose Vanuatu in the South Pacific. Amidst the villages and landscapes of this remote archipelago, he sought out the creation myths and folktales of a distant culture.

Erin Espelie will give a talk and screening at The Natural History Museum on Mon 22 Oct 2012, at 2:30pm.

PROGRAMME NOTES

Fly into the Mystery

Date: 21 October 2012 | Season: London Film Festival 2012 | Tags:

FLY INTO THE MYSTERY
Sunday 21 October 2012, at 9pm
London BFI Southbank NFT 3

Laida Lertxundi, A Lax Riddle Unit, Spain-USA, 2011, 6 min
‘In a Los Angeles interior, moving walls for loss. Practicing a song to a loved one. A film of the feminine structuring body.’ (LL)

Beatrice Gibson, Agatha, UK, 2012, 14 min
Strangers in a strange land. As the narrator recounts a dream by composer Cornelius Cardew, the viewer is transported from the hills of Snowdonia to a mental landscape where sci-fi commingles with sexual fantasy.

Lewis Klahr, Well Then There Now, USA, 2011, 11 min
Loosely interpreting a scenario by John Zorn, Klahr uses subconscious logic to weave strands of suspense from collaged images and fragments of voiceover.

Mary Helena Clark, The Plant, USA, 2012, 8 min
‘A film filled with clues and stray transmissions built on the bad geometry of point-of-view shots.’ (MHC)

Janie Geiser, Arbor, USA, 2012, 7 min
The layered imagery of Geiser’s uncanny animations suggest surreal worlds and spectral presences. ‘I was wide awake, in a dream.’

Beatrice Gibson, The Tiger’s Mind, UK, 2012, 20 min
Again referencing Cardew, Gibson’s new project The Tiger’s Mind takes his 1967 text score and applies it to the process of making a collaborative film, for which each contributor assumes the role of a character. The result is an abstract psychodrama and crime thriller set against the backdrop of a modernist house. Commissioned by The Showroom and CAC Bretigny.

PROGRAMME NOTES

Brief Glimpses of Beauty: The Films of Jonas Mekas (Part One)

Date: 6 December 2012 | Season: Jonas Mekas

BRIEF GLIMPSES OF BEAUTY: THE FILMS OF JONAS MEKAS (PART ONE)
6—16 December 2012
London BFI Southbank

Cinema history would be unimaginably different if not for the essential role played by Jonas Mekas. For over half a century, he has been a tireless advocate of independent film in his capacities as critic, curator, promoter, sponsor and archivist. Mekas is also one of cinema’s true poets, whose works chronicle his remarkable life and the extraordinary people around him. From his unique perspective as participant or close observer, he has documented the independent film community and the wider cultures of art, music, and literature through the late 20th century.

Born in Lithuania in 1922, Mekas fled his homeland during World War II. Having spent time in forced labour and displaced persons camps, Jonas and his brother Adolfas were transported to New York as United Nations refugees. Soon after their arrival in 1949, they became immersed in the city’s rich film culture, attending screenings at mainstream theatres and at the Museum of Modern Art and Amos Vogel’s Cinema 16.

Devoting himself to promoting film as a personal, artistic medium, Mekas was the driving force behind many initiatives that supported alternative forms of cinema. He founded Film Culture magazine in 1954, and wrote the impassioned ‘Movie Journal’ column for the Village Voice from 1958-76. In 1960, Mekas convened The New American Cinema Group, an alliance including Shirley Clarke, Emile de Antonio and others, to encourage independent filmmaking in opposition to the industry. Positioned as an equivalent to Free Cinema and the Nouvelle Vague, their rousing manifesto asserted: “We don’t want false, polished, slick films – we prefer them rough, unpolished, but alive; we don’t want rosy films – we want them the colour of blood.” He also established the Film-Makers’ Cooperative to distribute the rapidly expanding field of avant-garde cinema, and organised regular screenings at the Film-Makers’ Cinematheque. In 1970, he co-founded Anthology Film Archives as a centre for the preservation, study and exhibition of film as an art form.

Throughout this intense period of activity, Mekas was also filming. Early works Guns of the Trees and The Brig were symptomatic of the political unrest of the time, but he soon found his metier in the diary form. In the epic films Lost Lost Lost, Walden and He Stands in a Desert, meetings with luminaries such as John and Yoko, Carl Dreyer or Jackie Onassis receive equal treatment as family dinners or drinks with friends. By impulsively recording brief fragments of his daily life, Mekas fashioned an incredible archive of cultural history during a time of significant change, and a deeply personal account of what it is to be alive.

Our Jonas Mekas season begins with the early works. In January, we will follow the diaries to the present day, and screen films by his contemporaries in tribute to Anthology Film Archives’ extraordinary Essential Cinema collection.

Curated by Mark Webber. With thanks to Benn Northover, Serpentine Gallery and Centre Pompidou. The Jonas Mekas exhibition at Serpentine Gallery is open from 5 December 2012—20 January 2013.