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DAVID LARCHER: MARE’S TRAIL One of the forgotten masterpieces of British avant-garde cinema. David Larcher\u2019s epic film was assembled from quasi-autobiographical footage, shot over several years, that was processed, manipulated and edited into a dense, durational viewing experience. Generously employing assorted optical and aural trickery, Mare\u2019s Tail<\/em> unravels into a 2\u00bd hour anarcho-mystical voyage of psychedelic revelation.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom one flick of the mare\u2019s tail came an unending stream of images out of which was crystallised the milky way.\u201d (David Larcher)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Though made independently of the London Film-Makers\u2019 Co-operative, the visual ingenuity and ambitious scope of Mare\u2019s Tail<\/em> made it a key contribution to the UK\u2019s nascent experimental film scene. Containing footage that dates back to Larcher\u2019s time as an RCA student in the mid-1960s, the film was completed some years later with funds provided by producer\/patron Alan Power. It received its world premiere at the 1969 Edinburgh Film Festival and was the opening film for the IRAT Cinema at the Robert Street New Arts Lab.<\/p>\n David Larcher, Mare’s Tail, 1969, 16mm, colour, sound, 143 min<\/strong><\/p>\n This rare 16mm screening is organised by LUX and Close Up to mark the publication of Shoot Shoot Shoot: The First Decade of the London Film-Makers\u2019 Co-operative 1966-76<\/em><\/a>, a compendium of texts, interviews, images and documents from the era. <\/p>\nPROGRAMME NOTES<\/a> DAVID LARCHER: MARE’S TRAIL MARE’S TAIL “Mare\u2019s Tail<\/em> is an epic flight into inner space. It is a 2 and 3\/4 hour visual accumulation in colour, the filmmaker\u2019s personal odyssey, which becomes the odyssey of each of us. It is a man\u2019s life transposed into a visual realm, a realm of spirits and demons, which unravel as mystical totalities until reality fragments. Every movement begins a journey. There are spots before your eyes, as when you look at the sun that flames and burns. We look at distant moving forms and flash through them. We drift through suns; a piece of earth phases over the moon. A face, your face, his face, a face that looks and splits into shapes that form new shapes that we rediscover as tiny monolithic monuments. A profile as a full face. The moon again, the flesh, the child, the room and the waves become part of a hieroglyphic language \u2026<\/p>\n Mare\u2019s Tail<\/em> is an important film because it expresses life. It follows Paul Klee\u2019s idea that a visually expressive piece adds \u2018more spirit to the seen\u2019 and also \u2018makes secret visions visible\u2019. Like other serious films and works of art, it keeps on seeking and seeing, as the filmmaker does, as the artist does. It follows the transience of life and nature, studying things closely, moving into vast space, coming in close again. The course it follows is profoundly real and profoundly personal: Larcher\u2019s trip becomes our trip to experience. It cannot be watched impatiently, with expectation; it is no good looking for generalization, condensation, complication or implication.”<\/p>\n
\nSunday 15 January 2017, at 7pm
\nLondon Close-Up Film Centre<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Sunday 15 January 2017, at 7pm
\n<\/strong>London Close-Up Film Centre<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>David Larcher, 1969, 16mm, colour, sound, 143 min<\/strong><\/p>\n