{"id":1361,"date":"2006-10-29T21:00:01","date_gmt":"2006-10-29T21:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/?p=1361"},"modified":"2018-01-25T14:55:57","modified_gmt":"2018-01-25T14:55:57","slug":"shine-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/2006\/10\/29\/shine-on\/","title":{"rendered":"Shine On"},"content":{"rendered":"

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SHINE ON
\nSunday 29 October 2006, at 9pm
\nLondon National Film Theatre NFT3<\/strong><\/p>\n

Luther Price, Same Day Nice Biscotts, USA, 2005, 6 min
\n<\/strong>A bleak but touching incantation composed from 13 identical prints of an early 70s documentary on elderly Afro-Americans. Time has taken its toll on the raw material too: now faded and worn, it is steeped in pathos.<\/p>\n

Ken Jacobs, Krypton is Doomed, USA, 2005, 34 min
\n<\/strong>The original Superman radio play from 1940 accompanies the mind-bending \u2018Nervous Magic Lantern,\u2019 a filmless projection system that twists light into a perpetually throbbing mass of impossible depth. Presented by the film-maker as a metaphor for the onset of WWII, the apocalyptic narrative could be read as allegory for the present, a world of instability with the potential of environmental collapse.<\/p>\n

Courtney Hoskins, The Counter Girl Trilogy, USA, 2006, 6 min
\n<\/strong>In an inventive response to the cosmetics industry, Hoskins has created imagery from some unusual materials discovered while working as a sales assistant on a make-up counter.<\/p>\n

Dietmar Brehm, Blah Blah Blah, Austria, 2006, 13 min
\n<\/strong>Hotwiring history, the film-maker excavates his image bank of 16mm footage to reveal an archaeology of clandestine pursuits that hovers between ennui and agitation. Brehm\u2019s week beats your year.<\/p>\n

Barbara Sternberg, Surfacing, Canada, 2005, 10 min
\n<\/strong>An exodus of ghostly footsteps pass through the frame beneath layers of scratched emulsion, suggesting the transience of being and a state of emergence beyond the everyday.<\/p>\n

Michael Robinson, And We All Shine On, USA, 2006, 7 min
\n<\/strong>\u2018An ill wind is transmitting through the lonely night, its signals spreading myth and deception along its murky path. Conjuring a vision of a post-apocalyptic paradise, this unworldly broadcast reveals its hidden demons via layered landscapes and karaoke, singing the dangers of mediated spirituality.\u2019<\/p>\nPROGRAMME NOTES<\/a>

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SHINE ON
\n<\/strong>Sunday 29 October 2006, at 9pm
\nLondon National Film Theatre NFT3<\/p>\n

SAME DAY NICE BISCOTTS
\nLuther Price, USA, 2005, 16mm, colour, sound, 6 min
\n<\/strong>A mournful dissolving jewel set in bruised magenta sends out votive glints of dying light. A lone bird chirps and branches cover our eyes. Working from a stack of abandoned multiple film prints (nearly identical and close to thirteen in number), Luther Price makes reiterative loops that underline futility, echo hope, and mark every camera movement with the vain promise of fresh outcome and inevitable predestination. (Mark McElhatten)<\/p>\n

KRYPTON IS DOOMED
\nKen Jacobs, USA, 2005, video, colour, sound, 34 min
\n<\/strong>In his 5th floor walk-up on the Lower East Side, Jack Smith was determined to complete the beautification of his kitchen cabinet. AIDS was pressing. His friends pitched in, accepting slave status. Jack demanded this and Jack demanded that but because he wanted it perfect (as he had wanted his films to be perfect), and because perfection proved elusive, the remodeling finally had to be abandoned. Each friend going his or her own sad way. We are living under the imminent threat of GODS. The Republican ploy of allying with the religious right for votes is proving shortsighted (grasping individuals tend to be shortsighted) and, as in Iraq, our own religious crazies are now avid for fulfillment. Of prophecy. You\u2019ve got to hand it to those who resist, for the sake of the grass and the animals and the children, and for the preservation of the occasional work of art among the Faberg\u00e9 eggs, and who knows but that they will succeed against all odds and swerve their respective societies away from sure doom. We like to think so, and it\u2019s easy to, after a lot of movies and the fact that all the living are beneficiaries of the ones who made it through \u2013 through normal attrition, that is, all those Papas and especially Mamas that did succeed in sending forward their young. In the late 1930s two Jewish teenagers came up with the story of a couple that sent their infant child on a lone trip of escape through space from an exploding planet. We all know the story: the boy would survive on Earth but would have to keep his identity secret. Were Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel dreaming out loud? Was Krypton the Old World heading into WWII and was the child escaping the fate of the Jews of Europe? The Jews then, all of us now. Jack\u2019s friends failed to convince him to make a will. \u201dWhy bother?\u201d he asked. \u201dTo protect your work in the future.\u201d \u201dThe future?\u201d Jack replied, \u201cThe future will be worse.\u201d (Ken Jacobs)<\/p>\n

THE COUNTER GIRL TRILOGY
\nCourtney Hoskins, USA, 2006, 16mm, colour, silent, 6 min
\n<\/strong>To make ends meet, I took a job as a makeup counter salesperson. At first, I found this employment to be very satisfying. I was able to smell perfumes all day and \u2018paint\u2019 faces with makeup. After all, the human face is a fascinating canvass. The most subtle change can have dramatic effects (for example, it is amazing what a small touch of purple on the eyelids can do for green eyes) ! One day, that bottle of perfume came crashing down on the tile floor. The stench of reality woke me from my drugged state. I was required to go through several training seminars given by the cosmetics corporate giant. Nestled comfortably in the Rocky Mountains, I sat in horror as the \u2018rep\u2019 went over our \u2018job duties\u2019. My job went from \u2018makeup artist\u2019 to \u2018scam artist\u2019 right before my eyes! I learned that the average woman in Western society uses twenty cosmetics products each morning. I learned that this \u2018average woman\u2019 will also spend money she doesn\u2019t have on cosmetics before spending it on anything else. Most disturbingly, I learned how to manipulate women by playing off of their insecurities. It\u2019s no wonder these companies are so powerful. I couldn\u2019t immediately quit my job, so I tried to make the best of it. One day, I happened upon three amazing shades of lip gloss that were hidden away in a drawer. Although they were for sale, they were not on the display wall. These particular lip glosses contain cholesterol, which in 1888, Fredrich Reinitzer discovered could be manipulated to exist as a new state of matter. He soon coined the word \u2018liquid crystal\u2019. I had been trying to purchase liquid crystal materials for my films for some time. I had only managed to find one or two different types. Because the materials are used in computer screens (and, as I learned, lip gloss), they are kept under wraps. I would never have guessed that such incredible materials would have fallen into my lap while working one of the worst jobs I have ever had. (Courtney Hoskins)<\/p>\n

BLAH BLAH BLAH
\nDietmar Brehm, Austria, 2006, 16mm, colour, sound, 13 min
\n<\/strong>An essay on restlessness: Blah Blah Blah<\/em> (based on a song by Iggy Pop: Dietmar Brehm \u201cnever really liked it\u201d, but likes it for that very reason) contains a large number of various kinds of shots in a montage which alternates between contemplative scenes and rapid cascades of images. Brehm uses sounds of rain and thunder, with which he is quite familiar, on the soundtrack. In addition a beat measures the rhythm, and its regularity is what makes the Blah Blah Blah<\/em> project \u2018measurable\u2019. Dietmar Brehm has devoted himself to filming his own footage at a higher speed. He uses images typical of a still life (whisky bottles, ashtrays, etc.) and refracts them ironically (a chair stands on two legs), combines them with footage used in earlier works, and arranges them in a row like fragmentary thoughts. The result is a consciousness film par excellence<\/em>. In Blah Blah Blah<\/em> Brehm examines his own film oeuvre, not for the purpose of seeing what he has achieved, but in the interests of casually increasing its intensity. Instead of intruding into the images, he merely touches upon them lightly this time. All hope for calm, such as with a shot of a statue in a park, is disappointed because, in Blah<\/em> Blah Blah<\/em>, Brehm has applied the principle of the mental foray to his own film, which he shoots with his camera, speeds up, turns around, and makes absorb itself: Blah Blah Blah<\/em> becomes \u2018Blah Blah Blah\u2019. Only those viewers who share the restlessness will recognize the inversion. (Bert Rebhandl)<\/p>\n

SURFACING
\nBarbara Sternberg, Canada, 2005, 16mm, colour, sound, 10 min
\n<\/strong>\u201cThe world is too much with us; late and soon,
\nGetting and spending, we lay waste our powers…\u201d
\n(William Wordsworth)
\nOur busy comings and goings, on the move, working at life, are pictured through layers of images and scratched emulsion. Movement through various planes struggles towards emergence. (Barbara Sternberg)
\n“The process of transformation [from caterpillar to butterfly] consists mostly of decay and then of this crisis, when emergence from what came before must be total and abrupt.\u201d (Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost)
\nwww.barbarasternberg.com<\/a><\/p>\n

AND WE ALL SHINE ON
\nMichael Robinson, USA, 2006, 16mm, colour, sound, 7 min
\n<\/strong>An ill wind is transmitting through the lonely night, its signals spreading myth and deception along its murky path. Conjuring a vision of a post-apocalyptic paradise, this unworldly broadcast reveals its hidden demons via layered landscapes and karaoke, singing the dangers of mediated spirituality. (Michael Robinson)
\nwww.poisonberries.net<\/a><\/p>\n

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Alina Rudnitskaya\u2019s humanistic approach to documentary filmmaking often brings out the humour in her chosen subjects. As an introduction to her work, this programme depicts three diverse groups of contemporary Russian women.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[9],"class_list":["post-1361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-london-film-festival-2006","tag-london-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1361\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}