{"id":772,"date":"2007-11-09T20:40:38","date_gmt":"2007-11-09T20:40:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/?p=772"},"modified":"2018-05-08T17:32:48","modified_gmt":"2018-05-08T16:32:48","slug":"the-nature-of-our-looking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/2007\/11\/09\/the-nature-of-our-looking\/","title":{"rendered":"The Nature of Our Looking"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

ngg_shortcode_0_placeholder<\/p>\n

THE NATURE OF OUR LOOKING
\nFriday 9 November 2007, at 8:40pm
\nLondon BFI Southbank NFT2<\/b><\/p>\n

Moving from ocean to sky and back to the land, these six films respond to nature in less programmatic ways. Peter Hutton\u2019s camera explores the coastal landscape and swirling waters of the Irish West Coast, whilst David Gatten immerses raw film stock in seawater, allowing the ocean to inscribe its presence in constantly shifting abstract patterns. Three films use time-lapse and long exposure to reveal the celestial mysteries of night time, and the final work gently lifts us from our reverie with an ecological warning.<\/p>\n

Peter Hutton, Looking At The Sea, 2001, 15 min
\nDavid Gatten, What The Water Said, Nos 4-6, 2006, 17 min
\nLucy Reynolds, Lake, 2007, 12 min
\nEmily Richardson, Redshift, 2001, 4 min
\nJeanne Liotta, Observando El Cielo, 2007, 17 min
\nMichael Robinson, You Don’t Bring Me Flowers, 2005, 8 min<\/b><\/p>\n

Curated by Steven Ball, Mark Webber and Maxa Zoller.<\/p>\n

PROGRAMME NOTES<\/a>

<\/code><\/p>\n

THE NATURE OF OUR LOOKING
\n<\/b>Friday 9 November 2007, at 8:40pm
\nLondon BFI Southbank NFT2<\/p>\n

LOOKING AT THE SEA
\n<\/b>Peter Hutton, USA, 2001, 16mm, b\/w, silent, 15 min
\n<\/b>Most people go to films to get some kind of hit, come kind of overwhelming experience, whether it\u2019s like an amusement park ride or an ideological, informational hit that gives you a critical insight into an issue or an idea. But for those few people who feel they need a reprieve occasionally, who want to cleanse the palate a bit, whether for spiritual or physiological regions, these films seem to be somewhat effective. (Peter Hutton, interviewed by Scott MacDonald in \u201cA Critical Cinema 3\u201d)<\/p>\n

WHAT THE WATER SAID NOS 4-6
\nDavid Gatten, USA, 2006, 16mm, colour, sound, 17 min
\n<\/b>What the water said is literally inscribed on the strips of unexposed celluloid that Gatten cast into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of South Carolina. Encased in crab traps, the fragmented filmstrips harbour mystical messages from the underwater world, a source of seemingly never-ending fascination. The sea, its salt, sand and rocks, and its gnawing creatures have created the film\u2019s inimitable textured patterns and sounds, while passages from Western literature\u2019s greatest sea odysseys \u2013 from \u201cThe Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe\u201d to \u201cMoby Dick\u201d \u2013 remind us of the sea\u2019s singular place in our imagination. (Toronto International Film Festival)
\nwww.davidgattenfilm.com<\/p>\n

LAKE (NOCTURNE)
\nLucy Reynolds, UK, 2007, 16mm, b\/w, silent, 12 min
\n<\/b>Lake (nocturne)<\/i> is a study of the interplay of artificial light with the changing patterns and movements in nature, exploring the illuminations and obfuscations that occur in landscape after dark. The shadowy forms of landscaped lake and parkland also resonate with past narratives of the pleasure garden, recalling the original meaning of nocturne<\/i> as a term for music composed to be performed at night-time, as accompaniment to the illuminated tableaux, spectacles and f\u00e9tes <\/i>of grand gardens, evoking a lost domain. (Lucy Reynolds)<\/p>\n

REDSHIFT
\nEmily Richardson, UK, 2001, 16mm, colour, sound, 4 min
\n<\/b>In astronomical terminology \u2018redshift\u2019 is a term used in calculating the distance of stars from the earth, hence determining their age. Redshift<\/i> attempts to show the huge geometry of the night sky and give an altered perspective of the landscape, using long exposures, fixed camera positions, long shots and time-lapse animation techniques to reveal aspects of the night that are invisible to the naked eye. It takes these formal concerns into an emotional realm and uses the figurative to express philosophical ideas about our relationship to the world. The film has a gentle intensity to it, and is composed of changes of light across the sea, sky and mountains. It shows movement where there is apparent stillness, whether in the formation of weather patterns, movement of stars, the illumination of a building by passing car headlights or boats darting back and forth across the sea’s horizon. The sound has been composed for the film by Benedict Drew, taking field recordings of the aurora borealis as a starting point, and using purely computer generated sound to create a soundtrack that reflects the unheard elements present in the Earth\u2019s atmosphere. (LUX)
\nwww.emilyrichardson.org.uk<\/a><\/p>\n

OBSERVANDO EL CIELO
\nJeanne Liotta, USA, 2007, 16mm, b\/w & colour, sound, 17 min
\n<\/b>I refer to my films of the night sky as \u201c16mm celestial field recordings\u201d to reinforce their non-fiction status \u2026 This work is not metaphor but document. Even that light which travelled so far and so long to reach us makes its mark directly upon the emulsion \u2026 The subject of my work is perception itself, though it is variously manifested through attention to landscape, pure abstraction, the body in space, cinema itself, or, in Observando El Cielo<\/i>, with systems such as Science. This extends into the found film and historical\/educational footage, as testimonials to the limits of our understanding at any given time. The world itself is something we find, over and over again, and interpret it each time in a different way. (Jeanne Liotta)
\nwww.jeanneliotta.net<\/a><\/p>\n

YOU DON\u2019T BRING ME FLOWERS
\nMichael Robinson, USA, 2005, 16mm, colour, sound, 8 min
\n<\/span><\/b>Viewed at its seams, a collection of National Geographic landscapes from the 1960s and 1970s conjures an obsolete romanticism currently peddled to propagate entitlement and individualism from sea to shining sea; the slideshow deforms into a bright white distress signal. (Michael Robinson)
\nwww.poisonberries.net<\/a><\/p>\n

Back to top<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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":[26],"tags":[92,27],"class_list":["post-772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chris-welsby","tag-chris-welsby","tag-systems-of-nature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772","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=772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markwebber.org.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}