Secret Cinema

Underground New York

2009-12-06T19:30:00.002Z

UNDERGROUND NEW YORK
New York Gershwin Hotel
Sunday 6 December 2009

In the 1960s, filmmakers investigated new forms of production in dialogue with radical shifts in art, music, performance and popular culture. Following the example of the Beats, the counterculture was alive with protest, freedom of expression and the breaking of taboos, and from the Film-Makers’ Coop to Andy Warhol’s Factory, portable 16mm cameras were bringing a whole new way of seeing to the cinema screen. These heady days of “underground film” were captured by Gideon Bachmann in a spirited broadcast for German television. Rarely seen today, it is one of the few surviving documents to show aspects of New York’s independent film community during this exhilarating period.

Underground New York (Gideon Bachmann, 1967)

Sunday 6 December 2009, at 7:30pm
UNDERGROUND NEW YORK (PROTEST WOFÜR)
Gideon Bachmann, 1967, black & white, sound, 51 minutes

WITNESS Shirley Clarke, Allen Ginsberg, Susan Sontag and Tuli Kupferberg protest for peace protest before being shipped off to the Department of Correction.
VISIT the Film-Makers’ Distribution Center in the company of Jonas Mekas and Michelangelo Antonioni.
WATCH as Bruce Conner dances in a diner, and Maurice Amar stages a happening for the camera.
GO ON LOCATION with Adolfas Mekas in New Jersey, George Kuchar in the Bronx and Carl Linder in his bedroom.
BEHOLD the intermedia church of USCO, and SEE Andy Warhol faking it for television.

Underground New York (Gideon Bachmann, 1967)

The screening will be introduced by Mark Webber, the Gershwin’s outgoing artist in residence, who is currently researching an oral history of avant-garde cinema from the 1950s through the 1970s. Some of those interviewed for this project will be present.

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The Gershwin Hotel
7 East 27th Street, New York City, NY 10016, USA
MAP OF AREA

Nearest Train: 28 St (R, W, 6) or 23 St (F, V)

FREE ADMISSION
Arrive 7:30pm. Screening 8pm.

www.gershwinhotel.com

We Dig Repetition: Peter Roehr

2009-11-24T19:30:00.001Z

WE DIG REPETITION: PETER ROEHR
New York Light Industry
Tuesday 24 November 2009

“I 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.” (Peter Roehr, 1964)

Film-Montagen I (Peter Roehr, 1965)

Tuesday 24 November 2009, at 7:30pm
WE DIG REPETITION: PETER ROEHR

You might think that Andy Warhol took pleasure in endless repetition, but he’s 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 Städel Museum and Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt.

“I feel identical with what I do. In the ‘montages’ I realize, in an unrestricted manner, everything that is important to me. I believe, I am free.” (Peter Roehr, 1965)

Curated by Mark Webber for Light Industry. With thanks to the Gershwin Hotel.

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Light Industry
220 36th Street (5th Floor), Brooklyn, NY 11232, USA
MAP OF AREA

Nearest Train: 36 Street (D, M, N, R)

Tickets: $7
Email: information@lightindustry.org

www.lightindustry.org

London Film Festival 2009

2009-10-24T12:00:00.005Z

LONDON FILM FESTIVAL: ARTISTS’ FILM & VIDEO
London BFI Southbank
24-25 October 2009

The London Film Festival’s annual weekend dedicated to artists’ film and video will take place on 24-25 October 2009.

The programme presents a varied selection of international works ranging from the contemporary ethnography of Mirza/Butler to Jim Trainor’s witty, naïve animation of ancient civilisations. Gustav Deutsch introduces FILM IST. a girl & a gun, a battle of the sexes told through footage from early cinema, and a special event featuring new prints of films by Hollis Frampton complements the recent publication of his collected writings.

Established filmmakers Lewis Klahr, Mara Mattuschka and Matthias Müller are shown alongside younger artists Paul Abbott, Jana Debus, and Laida Lertxundi, who are screening in the festival for the first time. Continuous installations by Laure Prouvost and Victor Alimpiev will be presented in the BFI Southbank Studio.

Curated by Mark Webber for The Times BFI 53rd London Film Festival.

PLEASE NOTE: More tickets for “sold out” screenings will be released in the days leading up to the weekend & limited numbers are usually available on the door immediately before each programme.

Monolog (Laure Prouvost, 2009)

Saturday 24 October 2009, from 12-7pm, Studio, FREE
MONOLOG

MONOLOG
Laure Prouvost | UK-France 2009 | 12 min (continuous loop)
A new work made for the Festival turns its attention to the viewer and the room itself. ‘Come inside, I’m going to explain a few things. Just about you and the space we’re in. It’s quite warm in here, you should take off your jacket …’

(nostalgia) (Hollis Frampton, 1971)

Saturday 24 October 2009, at 2pm, NFT3
& Thursday 29 October 2009, at 6:30pm, NFT3
HOLLIS FRAMPTON: HAPAX LEGOMENA

Hollis Frampton, a key figure of the American avant-garde, was an artist and theoretician whose practice closely resonates with contemporary discourse. The series of seven films known as Hapax Legomena is, alongside Zorns Lemma, one of his most distinguished achievements, and will be presented in its entirety on new preservation prints. Predating Magellan, the ambitious ‘metahistory’ of film left unfinished by his early death in 1984, Hapax Legomena traces Frampton’s own creative progression from photographer to filmmaker. It dissects sound/image relationships, incorporates early explorations of video and television, and looks forward to digital media and electronic processes. Though notoriously rigorous, Frampton’s films are infused with poetic tendencies and erudite wit, sustaining a dialogue with the materials of their making, and the viewer’s active participation in their reception.

‘Hapax legomena are, literally, ‘things said once’ … The title brackets a cycle of seven films, which make up a single work composed of detachable parts … The work is an oblique autobiography, seen in stereoscopic focus with the phylogeny of film art as I have had to recapitulate it during my own fitful development as a filmmaker.’ (Hollis Frampton)

(NOSTALGIA)
Hollis Frampton | USA 1971 | 36 min
As a sequence of photographs is presented and slowly burned, a narrator recounts displaced anecdotes related to their production, shifting the relationship between words and images.

POETIC JUSTICE
Hollis Frampton | USA 1972 | 31 min
A ‘film for the mind’ in which the script is displayed page by page for the viewer to read and imagine.

CRITICAL MASS
Hollis Frampton | USA 1971 | 16 min
Frampton’s radical editing technique disrupts and amplifies the already impassioned argument of a quarrelling couple.

Ordinary Matter (Hollis Frampton, 1972)

TRAVELLING MATTE
Hollis Frampton | USA 1971 | 34 min
‘The pivot upon which the whole of Hapax Legomena turns’ uses early video technology to interrogate the image.

ORDINARY MATTER
Hollis Frampton | USA 1972 | 36 min
This ‘headlong dive’ from the Brooklyn Bridge to Stonehenge is a burst of exhilarated consciousness.

REMOTE CONTROL
Hollis Frampton | USA 1972 | 29 min
‘A ‘baroque’ summary of film’s historic internal conflicts, chiefly those between narrative and metric/plastic montage; and between illusionist and graphic space.’

SPECIAL EFFECTS
Hollis Frampton | USA 1972 | 11 min
Stripping away content leaves only the frame. ‘People this given space, if you will, with images of your own devising.’

Total running time approximately 210 min (including intermission)

Hapax Legomena has been preserved through a major cooperative effort funded by the National Film Preservation Foundation and undertaken by Anthology Film Archives, MoMA, the New York University Moving Image Archiving and Preservation Program, and project conservator Bill Brand.

Passage Briare (Friedl vom Gröller, 2009)

Saturday 24 October 2009, at 7pm, NFT3
HUMAN NATURE

PASSAGE BRIARE
Friedl vom Gröller | Austria 2009 | 3 min
A meeting of friends in a Paris backstreet, and an unexpected revelation.

HOTEL ROCCALBA
Josef Dabernig | Austria 2008 | 10 min
In a subtle choreography, the occupants of a small Alpine hotel pass a lazy afternoon. Not much happens, but all may not be as it appears.

GREGOR ALEXIS
Jana Debus | Germany 2009 | 20 min
The filmmaker’s schizophrenic brother recounts personal experiences, slipping between first and third person. The locations chosen for this portrait – a desolate apartment and a wasteland littered with abandoned machinery – are indicative of the condition of someone potentially as vulnerable as the insects that collect on his windowsill.

THE DISCOVERY
Ken Jacobs | USA 2008 | 4 min
Tom’s dextrous parlour game attracts unwanted attention. A stolen moment, frozen in time, now re-animated for all to see.

THE PRESENTATION THEME
Jim Trainor | USA 2008 | 14 min
As primitive Magic Marker drawings illustrate the myths and rituals of the ancient Moche civilisation, a disparaging narrator describes the tormented trials of a hapless creature amongst goblets of blood, fanged men and a sacrificial priestess.

BURNING PALACE
Mara Mattuska, Chris Haring | Austria 2009 | 32 min
This new collaboration between Mattuschka and Vienna’s Liquid Loft takes us behind the velvet curtains of the Burning Palace, whose peculiar inhabitants have an itch they just can’t scratch.

Total running time approximately 90 min

My Absolution (Victor Alimpiev, 2008)

Sunday 25 October 2009, from 12-7pm, Studio, FREE
MY ABSOLUTION

MY ABSOLUTION
Victor Alimpiev | Russia-Netherlands 2008 | 8 min (continuous loop)
Victor Alimpiev’s work imbues the simplest gestures with mystery and consequence. An actress performs a sequence of enigmatic actions towards the nape of a second woman’s neck in a performance that creates an almost sculptural tension which is never quite released.

Me Broni Ba (Akosua Adoma Owusu, 2008)

Sunday 25 October 2009, at 2pm, NFT3
THE EXCEPTION AND THE RULE

ME BRONI BA (MY WHITE BABY)
Akosua Adoma Owusu | USA-Ghana 2008 | 22 min
Driven by the pulsing sounds of Afrobeat and American soul, this spirited study of Ghanaian hair salons questions representations of beauty and ethnicity. While teams of women weave elaborate styles, children practice braiding on the blonde hair of white baby dolls, surplus stock exported from the West.

MY TEARS ARE DRY
Laida Lertxundi | USA-Spain 2009 | 4 min
A song of heartache, an afternoon’s repose and the eternal promise of the blue California sky.

THE EXCEPTION AND THE RULE
Karen Mirza, Brad Butler | UK-Pakistan-India 2009 | 38 min
Shot primarily in Karachi, The Exception and the Rule employs a variety of strategies in negotiating consciously political themes. Avoiding traditional documentary modes, the film frames everyday activities within a period of civil unrest, incorporating performances to camera, public interventions and observation. This complex work supplements Mirza/Butler’s Artangel project ‘The Museum of Non Participation’.

Total running time approximately 75 min

FILM IST. a girl & a gun (Gustav Deutsch, 2009)

Sunday 25 October 2009, at 4pm, NFT3
& Thursday 29 October 2009, at 4pm, NFT2
FILM IST. a girl & a gun

FILM IST. a girl & a gun
Gustav Deutsch | Austria 2009 | 97 min

Taking its cue from DW Griffith via J-L Godard, the latest instalment of the FILM IST series is a five-act drama in which reclaimed footage is interwoven with aphorisms from ancient Greek philosophy. Beginning with the birth of the universe, it develops into a meditation on the timeless themes of sex and death, exploring creation, desire and destruction by appropriating scenes from narrative features, war reportage, nature studies and pornography. The Earth takes shape from molten lava, and man and woman embark upon their erotic quest. For this mesmerising epic, Deutsch applies techniques of montage, sound and colour to resources drawn from both conventional film archives and specialist collections such as the Kinsey Institute and Imperial War Museum. Excavating cinema history to tease new meanings from diverse and forgotten film material, he proposes new perspectives on the cycle of humanity. The film’s integral score by long-term collaborators Christian Fennesz, Burkhardt Stangl and Martin Siewert incorporates music by David Grubbs, Soap&Skin and others.

Mount Shasta (Oliver Husain, 2008)

Sunday 25 October 2009, at 7pm, NFT3
WHIRL OF CONFUSION

AND THE SUN FLOWERS
Mary Helena Clark | USA 2008 | 5 min
‘Notes from the distant future and forgotten past. An ethereal flower and disembodied voice guide you through the spaces in between.’ (Mary Helena Clark)

SHOT FILM
Greg Pope | UK-Norway 2009 | 4 min
Taking the expression ‘to shoot a film’ at face value, this 35mm reel has been blasted with a shotgun.

CONTRE-JOUR
Matthias Müller, Christoph Giradet | Germany 2009 | 11 min
My Eyes! My Eyes! Flickering out from the screen and direct to your retina, Contre-jour is not for the optic neurotic. Take a deep breath and try to relax as Müller and Girardet conduct their examination.

FILM FOR INVISIBLE INK CASE NO. 142: ABBREVIATION FOR DEAD WINTER (DIMINISHED BY 1,794)
David Gatten | USA 2008 | 13 min
‘A single piece of paper, a second stab at suture, a story three times over, a frame for every mile. Words by Charles Darwin.’ (David Gatten)

WOLF’S FROTH / AMONGST OTHER THINGS
Paul Abbott | UK 2009 | 15 min
By chance or circumstance, wolf’s froth’s covert syntax refuses to be unpicked. Entangling anxious domesticity with the spectre of aggression, it conjures a mood of underlying discomfort and intrigue.

FALSE AGING
Lewis Klahr | USA 2008 | 15 min
Klahr’s surreal collage journeys through lost horizons of comic book Americana and is brought back down to earth by Drella’s dream. And nobody called, and nobody came.

MOUNT SHASTA
Oliver Husain | Canada 2008 | 8 min
What is ostensibly a proposal for a film script is acted out, without artifice, in a bare loft space as Mantler plays a plaintive lament. A puppet show like none other that will leave you bemused, befuddled and bewildered.

Total running time approximately 80 min

…

Advance booking highly recommended
Standard ticket price is £9.00

Book online at www.bfi.org.uk/lff
Telephone Box Office: 020 7928 3232
Book in person at BFI Southbank

For full booking info see www.bfi.org.uk/lff

Gregory J. Markopoulos LLGFF

2009-03-28T16:30:00.004Z

GREGORY J. MARKOPOULOS
London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival
28 & 30 March 2009

The London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival presents two programmes of rarely screened films by Gregory J. Markopoulos. Curated by Mark Webber, with thanks to Temenos Verein.

Twice A Man (Gregory J. Markopoulos, 1963)

Saturday 28 March 2009, at 4:30pm, NFT3
MARKOPOULOS 1: TWICE A MAN

TWICE A MAN
Gregory J. Markopoulos, USA, 1963, 49 mins
Twice A Man is a fragmented re-imagining of the Greek myth of Hippolytus, who was killed after rejecting the advances of his stepmother. Markopoulos’ vision transposes the legend to 1960s New York and has its main character abandon his mother for an elder man. Employing sensuous use of colour, the film radicalised narrative construction with its mosaic of ‘thought images’ that shift tenses and compress time. One of the touchstones of independent filmmaking, Twice A Man was made in the same remarkable milieu as Scorpio Rising and Flaming Creatures by a filmmaker named ‘the American avant-garde cinema’s supreme erotic poet’ by its key critic P. Adams Sitney.
Dedicated to Clara Hoover. Based on the story of Hippolytos. Music by Pyotr Tchaikovsky: excerpt from Manfred Symphony, op. 58. Assistant director: Charles Levine. Cast: Paul Kilb (Paul), Olympia Dukakis (the young mother), Violet Roditi (the aged mother), Albert Torgessen (the artist-physician). Voice: Olympia Dukakis. Filmed in New York City, Staten Island and Bear Mountain Park.
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MING GREEN
Gregory J. Markopoulos, USA, 1966, 7 mins
Ming Green is an extraordinary self-portrait conveyed through the multiple layered superimpositions of the filmmaker’s sparsely furnished room.
Dedicated to Stan Brakhage. Music by Richard Wagner: Traumen from Wesendonck Lieder (Wesendonck Song Cycle). Filmed in New York City.

Eros, O Basileus (Gregory J. Markopoulos, 1967)

Monday 30 March 2009, at 8:45pm, NFT3
MARKOPOULOS 2: EROS, O BASILEUS

EROS, O BASILEUS
Gregory J. Markopoulos, USA, 1967, 45 mins
Markopoulos’ invocation of Eros merges classical and contemporary imagery by placing the male god of love in an artists’ loft. The sole protagonist, predominantly naked, appears in a series of tableaux surrounded by icons of creativity, including paintings, books and filmmaking equipment. This sculptural study of the human form is energised by flash frames, stylised fades, and Strauss’ tone-poem ‘Ein Heldenleben’. Eros is portrayed by the young filmmaker Robert Beavers, who had recently moved to New York after seeing films by Markopoulos and other New American Cinema pioneers. Both soon left America for Europe, where they remained together until Markopoulos’ death in 1992.
Dedicated to Ben Weber. Music by Richard Strauss: excerpts from Ein Heldenleben. Cast: Robert Beavers (Eros). Filmed in New York City.
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THROUGH A LENS BRIGHTLY: MARK TURBYFILL
Gregory J. Markopoulos, USA, 1967, 15 mins
The life of painter, dancer and poet Mark Turbyfill, seen here in his 70th year, is evoked through traditional portraiture and personal objects.
Dedicated to Tom Chomont. Cast: Mark Turbyfill. Filmed in Chicago.

...

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BFI Southbank
Belvedere Road, South Bank, London, SE1 8XT
Nearest Tube: Waterloo / Embankment
MAP OF AREA

Tickets: £8.60 / £6.25 concessions
BFI members pay £1 less

Box Office: 020 7928 3232

www.llgff.org.uk

Star Spangled To Death

2008-11-02T14:00:00.003Z

STAR SPANGLED TO DEATH
London Chisenhale Gallery
Sunday 2 November 2008, from 2pm to 10pm

A FREE screening of Star Spangled To Death, Ken Jacobs’ episodic indictment of American politics, religion, war, racism and stupidity, timed to coincide with the US election and the end of the Bush regime. Starring Jack Smith, Richard Nixon, Nelson Rockefeller, Minnie Mouse, Al Jolson and a cast of thousands.

Star Spangled To Death (Ken Jacobs, 1957-59/2004)

STAR SPANGLED TO DEATH
Ken Jacobs, USA, 1957-59/2004, 400 minutes (plus intermissions)

Jacobs' extraordinary epic combines whole found films, documentaries, newsreels, musicals and cartoons with improvised performances by the legendary Jack Smith and Jerry Sims. Together they picture a dangerously sold-out America where racial and religious prejudice, the monopolisation of wealth and an addiction to war are opposed by Beat generation irreverence.

STAR SPANGLED TO DEATH will be shown with several intermissions. Some refreshments available, or bring a packed lunch and a cushion!

Star Spangled To Death (Ken Jacobs, 1957-59/2004)

Presented by Whitechapel at Chisenhale, in collaboration with Mark Webber and tank.tv. A portfolio of 20 works by Ken Jacobs is now available in the tank.tv archive.

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Chisenhale
64 Chisenhale Rd, London, E3 5QZ
MAP OF AREA

Nearest Tube: Mile End / Bethnal Green
Buses: 8, 277, 425, 339, D6

FREE ADMISSION
Telephone: 020 8981 4518

www.chisenhale.org.uk
www.whitechapel.org

London Film Festival 2008

2008-10-25T12:00:00.002Z

LONDON FILM FESTIVAL: ARTISTS' FILM & VIDEO
London BFI Southbank
25-26 October 2008

The festival’s annual celebration of artists’ film and video will take place on 25-26 October 2008, presenting a diverse selection of international work in eight screenings that open a window onto a wide range of creativity.

This year’s selection includes special programmes devoted to the work of Nathaniel Dorsky, Alina Rudnitskaya, Ben Rivers and Michel Auder. Films by the radical French theorist Guy Debord will be shown in 35mm preservation prints. New approaches to documentary and ethnography recur throughout the weekend, which presents established and emerging artists in a curated survey of innovation in the moving image. Several makers will be present to discuss their work and two continuous installations will be shown in the BFI Southbank Studio.

Curated by Mark Webber for The Times BFI 52nd London Film Festival.

PLEASE NOTE: More tickets for "sold out" screenings may be released in the days leading up to the weekend & there are usually a few available on the door immediate before each programme.

Pneuma Monoxyd (Thomas Köner, 2007)

Saturday 25 October 2008, from 12-7pm, Studio, FREE
PNEUMA MONOXYD

PNEUMA MONOXYD
Thomas Köner | Germany-Serbia 2007 | 10 min (continuous loop)
Merging surveillance images of a German shopping street and a Balkan marketplace, Köner’s darkly abstract work, with its spatially evocative soundtrack, generates a muted sense of spectral dystopia.

Four Toronto Films (Nicky Hamlyn, 2007)

Saturday 25 October 2008, at 2pm, NFT3
A SENSE OF PLACE

FOUR TORONTO FILMS
Nicky Hamlyn | UK 2007 | 18 min
During a residency in the Canadian city, Hamlyn made this suite of films that explore a direct relationship between subject matter and camera apparatus. Three scrutinise aspects of the urban locale, the other an accelerated view of Koshlong Lake.

21 ALLEYS
Robert Todd | USA 2007 | 9 min
A residential street, seen through the passageways that separate its dwellings, is the focus of this understated study of gentrification in a Boston neighbourhood.

LOSSLESS #2
Rebecca Baron, Douglas Goodwin | USA 2008 | 3 min
Witness the dematerialization of an avant-garde standard as incomplete digital files, downloaded from file sharing networks, induce trouble in the image.

TRILOGY: KETTLE’S YARD
Jayne Parker | UK 2008 | 25 min
Linear Construction, Woman with Arms Crossed and Arc refer back to a quartet of films made with musician Anton Lukoszevieze almost a decade ago. This new anthology for solo cello was shot at Kettles Yard and incorporates items from the museum’s collection which open up metaphorical space and meaning.

THE MIRACLE OF DON CRISTOBAL
Lawrence Jordan | USA 2008 | 12 min
An alchemical melodrama composed of engravings from 19th century adventure stories. The illustrations are conjured into motion as improbable sounds collide with a Puccini aria.

Total running time approximately 90 min

Sur le passage de quelques personnes à travers une assez courte unité de temps
(Guy Debord, 1959)

Saturday 25 October 2008, at 4pm, NFT3
GUY DEBORD

‘The cinema, too, has to be destroyed.’ (Guy Debord)

An extremely rare opportunity to see new 35mm prints of films by French writer and theorist Guy Debord, best known for The Society of the Spectacle. Debord was a central figure of the Situationist International (SI), a nihilistic band of agitators whose harsh critiques of capitalist society, inspired by Marxism and Dada, were conveyed through publications, visual art and collective actions. Articulated primarily in the French language, Situationism was relatively ineffective in Britain and America in its time, and though numerous translations are now available, Debord’s radical films remain unseen. Far ahead of its time, his technique of ‘détournement’ assimilates still and moving image-scraps from features, newsreels, printed matter, advertisements and other detritus to satisfy the viewer’s ‘pathetic need’ for cinematic illusion. Propelled by a spoken, monotonous discourse, the images do not so much illustrate the text as underpin it, often maintaining a metaphorical relationship that may not at first be apparent. The two films showing here effectively bookend Debord’s involvement with the Situationists, whose politically subversive practice aspired to provoke a revolution of everyday life.

SUR LE PASSAGE DE QUELQUES PERSONNES À TRAVERS UNE ASSEZ COURTE UNITÉ DE TEMPS
Guy Debord | France 1959 | 18 min
In the dingy bars of St-Germain-des-Prés, Debord and his associates formed a bohemian underground for whom ‘oblivion was their ruling passion.’ This anti-documentary captures the SI close to its moment of inception, following their separation from the Lettristes two years prior.

IN GIRUM IMUS NOCTE ET CONSUMIMUR IGNI
Guy Debord | France 1978 | 105 min
‘I will make no concessions to the public in this film. I believe there are several good reasons for this decision, and I am going to state them.’ And state them he does. Debord’s final film is a denunciation of cinema and society at large, an unremitting diatribe against consumption. The SI is equated to a military operation (charge of the light brigade, no less) as its members are presented alongside images of the D-Day landings, Andreas Baader, Zorro, a comic strip Prince Valliant and quotes from Shakespeare, Ecclesiastes and Omar Khayyám. Debord takes no prisoners in this testament to his anarchistic vision.

Total running time approximately 125 min

Bitch Academy (Alina Rudnitskaya, 2008)

Saturday 25 October 2008, at 7pm, NFT3
ALINA RUDNITSKAYA

Alina Rudnitskaya’s 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.

AMAZONS
Alina Rudnitskaya | Russia 2003 | 20 min
A sensitive portrait of an unusual urban phenomenon: a troupe of independent and strong-minded girls who keep horses in the heart of St Petersburg. Amazons follows a new volunteer as she tries to find her place within the group dynamic.

BESAME MUCHO
Alina Rudnitskaya | Russia 2006 | 27 min
With music providing an escape from their duties as veterinarians, nurses and cleaners, the amateur chorus of a provincial town rehearse songs from Verdi’s ‘Aida’. Close bonds are formed, but in true diva style, relationships within the choir are frequently inharmonious.

BITCH ACADEMY
Alina Rudnitskaya | Russia 2008 | 29 min
An improbable symbol of modern Russia is displayed in this tragicomic verité on the aspirations of young women. In a progressive twist on assertiveness training, a middle-aged, paunchy Casanova (who surely loves his job) gives classes on how to seduce the male using role play, styling critiques and sexy dancing. The ultimate goal is to hitch a millionaire, and though there’s much humour in the situation, occasional tears and telling looks remind us that the insecurities of real lives are being laid bare.

Total running time approximately 80 min

Horizontal Boundaries (Pat O’Neill, 2008)

Saturday 27 October 2008, at 9pm, NFT3
WHEN LATITUDES BECOME FORM

IN THE KINGDOM OF SHADOWS
Francisca Duran | Canada 2006 | 6 min
Set in metal type, a passage from Maxim Gorky’s review of the Lumières melts into a pool of molten lead.

HOW TO CONDUCT A LOVE AFFAIR
David Gatten | USA 2007 | 8 min
‘An unexpected letter leads to an unanticipated encounter and an extravagant gift. Some windows open easily; other shadows remain locked rooms.’ (David Gatten)

THE PARABLE OF THE TULIP PAINTER AND THE FLY
Charlotte Pryce | USA 2008 | 4 min
A saturated cine-miniature inspired by Dutch 17th Century painting.

DEEP SIX
Sami van Ingen | Finland 2007 | 7 min
The film image of a loaded truck, careening free of its position in the frame, speeds along a mountain road towards an inevitable fate.

DE TIJD
Bart Vegter | Netherlands 2008 | 9 min
Computer animated abstraction in three dimensions. Slowly evolving geometric forms suggest sculptural figures and waning shadows.

HORIZONTAL BOUNDARIES
Pat O’Neill | USA 2008 | 23 min
O’Neill’s dizzying deployment of the 35mm frame-line is intensified by Carl Stone’s electronic score. A hard and rhythmic work, thick with superimposition, contrary motion and volatile contrasts, reminiscent of his pioneering abstract work of prior decades.

EASTER MORNING
Bruce Conner | USA 2008 | 10 min
Bruce Conner’s freewheeling camera chases morning light in a hypnotic blur of colour and multiple exposures. This final work by the artist and filmmaker rejuvinates his rarely seen 8mm film Easter Morning Raga (1966). With music by Terry Riley.

Total running time approximately 70 min

Kempinski (Neil Beloufa, 2007)

Sunday 28 October 2008, from 12-7pm, Studio, FREE
KEMPINSKI

KEMPINKSI
Neil Beloufa | Mali-France 2007 | 14 min (continuous loop)
Whilst challenging our stereotypical view of Africa, Kempinksi also blurs the lines between documentary, ethnography and science fiction. Asked to imagine the future but to speak in the present tense, the protagonists describe extraordinary and unexpected visions.

Sarabande (Nathaniel Dorsky, 2008)

Sunday 26 October 2008, at 2pm, NFT3
NATHANIEL DORSKY IN PERSON

In his search for a ‘polyvalent’ mode of filmmaking, Nathaniel Dorsky has developed a filmic language which is intrinsic and unique to the medium, and expressive of human emotion. Seeking wonder not only in nature but in the everyday interaction between people in the metropolitan environment, Dorsky observes the world around him. Free of narrative or theme, his films transcend daily reality and open a space for introspective thought. ‘Delicately shifting the weight and solidity of the images’, a deeper sense of being is manifest in the interplay between film grain and natural light. Dorsky returns to London to introduce two brand new films and Triste, the work that first intimated his sublime and distinctive ‘devotional cinema’. These lyric films are humble offerings which unassumingly blossom on the screen, illuminating a path for vision.

WINTER
Nathaniel Dorsky | USA 2007 | 19 min
‘San Francisco’s winter is a season unto itself. Fleeting, rain-soaked, verdant, a brief period of shadows and renewal.’ (Nathaniel Dorsky)

SARABANDE
Nathaniel Dorsky | USA 2008 | 15 min
‘Dark and stately is the warm, graceful tenderness of the sarabande.’ (Nathaniel Dorsky)

TRISTE
Nathaniel Dorsky | USA 1978-96 | 19 min
‘Triste is an indication of the level of cinema language that I have been working towards. By delicately shifting the weight and solidity of the images, and bringing together subject matter not ordinarily associated, a deeper sense of impermanence and mystery can open. The images are as much pure-energy objects as representation of verbal understanding and the screen itself is transformed into a ‘speaking’ character. The ‘sadness’ referred to in the title is more the struggle of the film itself to become a film as such, rather than some pervasive mood.’ (Nathaniel Dorsky)

Total running time approximately 70 min

The Feature (Michel Auder & Andrew Neel, 2008)

Sunday 26 October 2008, at 3:45pm, NFT3
Tuesday 28 October 2008, at 7pm, Studio
THE FEATURE

THE FEATURE
Michel Auder, Andrew Neel | USA 2008 | 177 min

In Michel Auder’s case, the truth is certainly stranger than fiction. One of the first to compulsively exploit the diaristic potential of the Sony Portapak, he was right there at the heart of the Warhol Factory and the Soho art explosion. This fictionalised biography draws on his vast archive of videotapes, connecting them by means of a distanced narration and new footage, shot by co-director Andrew Neel, in which Auder portrays his doppelganger, an arrogantly successful artist who may or may not have a life-threatening condition. Resisting nostalgia through wilful ambiguity, The Feature remains raw and brutally honest as Auder displays the best and worst of himself. Taking in his marriages to both Viva and Cindy Sherman, and affiliations with Larry Rivers, the Zanzibar group and the downtown art scene, this is necessarily a tale of epic proportions, chronicling an amazing journey through art and life whilst providing access to a wealth of fascinating personal footage.

Tjúba Tén (Brigid McCaffrey & Ben Russell, 2008)

Sunday 26 October 2008, at 7pm, NFT3
THE WORD FOR WORLD IS FOREST

SMALL MIRACLES
Julia Hechtman | USA 2006 | 5 min
Sci-fi hallucinations seem commonplace as Hechtman invokes mysterious natural phenomena: an extreme case of mind over matter.

KEMPINSKI
Neil Beloufa | Mali-France 2007 | 14 min
Speaking in the present tense, interviewees describe their idiosyncratic notions of the future. To the western viewer, the unlikely subjects, stylized settings and atmospheric lighting impart a strange disconnect between science fiction and anthropology.

TJÚBA TÉN (THE WET SEASON)
Brigid McCaffrey, Ben Russell | USA-Suriname 2008 | 47 min
‘An experimental ethnography composed of community-generated performances, re-enactments and extemporaneous recordings, this film functions doubly as an examination of a rapidly changing material culture in the present and as a historical document for the future. Whether the record is directed towards its subjects, its temporary residents (filmmakers), or its Western viewers is a question proposed via the combination of long takes, materialist approaches, selective subtitling, and a focus on various forms of cultural labour.’ (Ben Russell)

REMOTE INTIMACY
Sylvia Schedelbauer | Germany 2008 | 15 min
Cast adrift in the collective unconscious, Remote Imtimacy constructs an allegorical collage from found footage and biographical fragments, exploring cultural dislocation using the rhetoric of dreams.

Origin of the Species (Ben Rivers, 2008)

Sunday 26 October 2008, at 9pm, NFT3
BEN RIVERS AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD

An intrepid explorer, Ben Rivers toys with ethnographic tropes whilst roaming free from documentary truth. Encountering those who choose to live apart from society, his nonjudgmental approach presents ‘real life, or something close to it.’ The Edge of the World features several recent works with other films of his choice.

AH LIBERTY!
Ben Rivers | UK 2008 | 19 min
In the wilderness of a highland farm, a bunch of tearaways joyride, smash up, tinker and terrorize the way that only children can. Assimilating landscape and livestock, this poetic study contrasts the languid setting with the youngster’s restless energy.

RECORDANDO EL AYER
Alexandra Cuesta | USA 2007 | 9 min
Utilitarian objects, related to health and hygiene, rendered in unconventional ways. This unsettling film questions the way that we relate to our surroundings by exploring the ‘radical otherness’ of things.

ASTIKA
Ben Rivers | UK-Denmark 2007 | 8 min
Danish recluse Astika has allowed nature to run wild, overgrowing his own habitat to the point that he has no option but to move away. The film is a hazy arrangement in green and gold, all rich textures and lush foliage.

SINGING BISCUITS
Luther Price | USA 2007 | 4 min
A gospel cry rings out across the decades, disrupted in space and time, fading but resilient.

NEW SURPRISE FILM
Ben Rivers | UK 2008 | c.7 min
A little anticipation never did anyone any harm; you’ll have to be there to find out what it is.

ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES
Ben Rivers | UK 2008 | 17 min
‘A 70-year old man living in a remote part of Scotland has been obsessed with ‘trying to really understand’ Darwin’s book for many years. Alongside this passion, he’s been constantly working on small inventions for making his life easier. The film investigates someone profoundly interested in human beings, but who has decided to live separately from the majority of them.’ (Ben Rivers)

Total running time approximately 75 min

…

Advance booking recommended
Standard ticket price is £8.50

Book online at www.bfi.org.uk/lff
Telephone Box Office: 020 7928 3232
Book in person at BFI Southbank

For full booking info see www.bfi.org.uk/lff

Jonas Mekas presents FLUX PARTY

2008-10-17T23:15:00.002Z

JONAS MEKAS PRESENTS FLUX PARTY
London Rio Cinema
Friday 17 October 2008, from 11:15pm 'til late

Legendary artist-filmmaker Jonas Mekas presents FLUX PARTY featuring the complete FLUXUS film anthology as assembled by George Maciunas, rare Fluxus audio and surprises.

Fluxus Anthology title by George Maciunas

Includes films by Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, Wolf Vostell, George Brecht, Dick Higgins, Robert Watts, John Cale, Chieko Shiomi, Paul Sharits and Ben Vautier. A special late night screening on the big screen of East London's splendid art deco picture palace.

Jonas Mekas will be in attendance to discuss Fluxus and his friend and fellow Lithuanian émigré George Maciunas. Drinks and Flux Cakes will be served.

Curated by Anne-Sophie Dinant and Mark Webber. Presented by the South London Gallery. With thanks to Benn Northover, Serpentine Gallery, Re:Voir and the Rio Cinema. Supported by the Lithuanian Ministry of Culture and Freedom Brewery.

Fluxfilm No. 16: Four (Yoko Ono, 1967)

Friday 17 October 2008, from 11:15pm 'til late
JONAS MEKAS PRESENTS FLUX PARTY

FLUXFILM ANTHOLOGY

The most complete known version of the Fluxfilm Anthology.

Fluxfilm No. 1: Zen For Film, Nam June Paik, 1964, 20 min.
“Clear film, accumulating in time dust and scratches.”

Fluxfilm No. 2: Invocation of Canyons and Boulders, Dick Higgins, 1966, 3 min version.
“Mouth, eating motions.”

Fluxfilm No. 3: End After 9, George Maciunas, 1966, 1 min.
“Word & number gag, no camera.”

Fluxfilm No. 4: Disappearing Music For Face, Chieko Shiomi, 1966, 10 min.
“Transition from smile to no-smile, shot at 2000fr/sec. Camera shows only a CU of the mouth area.” Camera: Peter Moore

Fluxfilm No. 5: Blink, John Cavanaugh, 1966, 5 min.
“Flicker: White and black alternating frames.”

Fluxfilm No. 6: 9 Minutes, James Riddle, 1966, 9 min.
“Time counter, in seconds and minutes.”

Fluxfilm No. 7: 10 Feet, George Maciunas, 1966, 13 sec.
“Prestype on clear film measuring tape, 10ft. length. No camera. At the end of every foot of film numbers appear, 1, 2, etc to 10.”

Fluxfilm No. 8: 1000 Frames, George Maciunas, c.1966, 42 sec.
“Numerals on clear film from 1 to 1000.”

Fluxfilm No. 9: Eyeblink, Yoko Ono, 1966, 1 min.
“High speed camera, 200fr./sec. view of one eyeblink.” Camera: Peter Moore

Fluxfilm No. 10: ENTRANCE to EXIT, George Brecht, 1966, 7 min.
“A smooth linear transition from white, through greys to black, produced in developing tank. The ‘door sign’ ENTRANCE fades in, white letters on the black background, stays for a few seconds, then slowly fades into white. Five-minute fade into black and the title EXIT, which stays for a few seconds then fades into white.”

Fluxfilm No. 22: Shout (Jeff Perkins, 1966)

Fluxfilm No. 11: Trace No. 22, Robert Watts, 1965, 1 min.
“X-ray sequence of mouth and throat; eating, salivating, speaking.”

Fluxfilm No. 12: Trace No. 23, Robert Watts, 1966, 3 min.
“Begins with a shot of a demarcation line on an asphalt tennis court. A hand points to the distant landscape, then numbers 408 and 409 appear on a female torso. The female then passes different decorated plastic hot dogs, banana shapes suggestively between her legs, through her arm pits, etc. Ends with an egg floating on water.”

Fluxfilm No. 13: Trace No. 24, Robert Watts, 1966, 3 min.
“Begins with a picture of Marilyn Monroe, then shifts to a female body, shot from belly button down, which is wriggling under piles of cellophane.”

Fluxfilm No. 14: One, Yoko Ono, 1966, 5 min.
“High speed camera 2000fr/sec. match striking fire.” Camera: Peter Moore.

Fluxfilm No. 15: Eye Blink, Yoko Ono, 1966, 1 min.
“Same as No. 9, probably.” Camera: Peter Moore.

Fluxfilm No. 16: Four, Yoko Ono, 1967, 6 min.
“Sequences of buttock movement as various performers walked. Filmed at constant distance.” With Susanna Campbell, Philip Corner, Anthony Cox, Bici Hendricks, Geoffrey Hendricks, Kyoko Ono, Yoko Ono, Ben Patterson, Jeff Perkins, Susan Polang, Jerry Sablo, Carolee Schneemann, James Tenney, Pieter Vanderbiek, Verne Williams. Camera: Jeff Perkins, Anthony Cox.

Fluxfilm No. 17: 5 O’Clock in the Morning, Pieter Vanderbiek, 1966, 5 min.
“A handful of rocks and chestnuts falling, filmed with high speed camera.” Camera: Peter Moore.

Fluxfilm No. 18: Smoking, Joe Jones, 1966, 6 min.
“Sequence of cigarette smoke shot with high speed camera, 2000fr/sec.” Camera: Peter Moore.

Fluxfilm No.19: Opus 74, version 2, Eric Andersen, 1966, 1 min.
“Single frame exposures, color. Different image each frame, various items in the room, etc.”

Fluxfilm No. 20: ARTYPE, George Maciunas, 1966, 4 min.
“Artype patterns, intended for loops.” Benday dot patterns. Dots, lines. “Screens, wavy lines, parallel lines, etc. on clear film. No camera.”

Fluxfilm No. 22: Shout, Jeff Perkins, 1966, 3 min.
“Close-ups of two faces, shouting at each other.” Starring Jeff Perkins and Anthony Cox. Camera: Yoko Ono.

Fluxfilm No. 23: Sun in Your Head, Wolf Vostell, 1963, 6 min.
“Single Frame sequences of TV or film images, with periodic distortions of the image. The images are airplanes, women men interspersed with pictures of texts like: ‘silence, genius at work’ and ‘ich liebe dich.’ The end credit is ‘Television décollage, Cologne, 1963’.” Camera: Edo Jansen.

Fluxfilm No. 24: Readymade, Albert Fine, 1966, 45 sec.
“Color test strip from developing tank.”

Fluxfilm No. 25: The Evil Faerie, George Landow, 1966, 30 sec.
“A man on the roof making flying gestures with his hands. Film is preceded by a picture of an object of ‘L’ shape shakingly moving. At the end of the film, image of ‘Kodak girl’ briefly appears.” With Steven M. Zinc.

Fluxfilm No. 26: Sears Catalogue 1-3 (Paul Sharits, 1965)

Fluxfilm No. 26: Sears Catalogue 1-3, Paul Sharits, 1965, 28 sec.
“Pages from Sears catalogue, single frame exp.”

Fluxfilm No. 27: Dots 1 & 2, Paul Sharits, 1965, 46 sec.
“Single frame exposures of dot-screens.”

Fluxfilm No. 28: Wrist Trick, Paul Sharits, 1965, 28 sec.
“Various gestures of hand held razorblade, single frame exposures.”

Fluxfilm No Number: Unrolling Event, Paul Sharits, 1965, 5 sec.
“Toilet paper event, single frame exposures.”

Fluxfilm No. 29: Word Movie, Paul Sharits, 1965, 4 min.
“Single frame exposures of words, color.”

Fluxfilm No. 30: Dance, Albert Fine, 1966, 2 min.
“Face Smiling. Hammering a brick. CU of an ear (moving?). Face twitching. Dancing on one leg. Rolls, twitches on the floor. Boxes the wall.”

Fluxfilm No. 31: Police Car, John Cale, 1966, 1 min.
“Underexposed sequence of blinking lights on a police car.”

Fluxfilm No. 36: Fluxfilm No. 36, Peter Kennedy & Mike Parr, 1970, 3 min.
“Tips of feet walking at the edge of frame, all around the frame.”

Fluxfilm No. 37: Fluxfilm No. 37, Peter Kennedy & Mike Parr, 1970, 2 min.
“Face going out of focus by layering sheets of plastic between camera and subject.”

Fluxfilm No. 38: Jen e vois rien Je n’entends rien Jen e dis rien, Ben Vautier, 1965, 5 min.
“Seeing, Hearing, Saying Nothing. Ben stands with ears, eyes, mouth bandaged.”

Fluxfilm No. 39: La traverse du port de Nice á la nage, Ben Vautier, 1963, 2 min
“Swimming across Nice harbour fully clothed. Ben swims across a bay in Nice.”

Fluxfilm No. 40: Fair un effort, Ben Vautier, 1969, 2 min.
“Lifting and holding up a chest of drawers.”

Fluxfilm No. 41: Regardez moi cela suffit, Ben Vautier. 1962, 3 min.
“Sitting on a promenade in nice with a sign: Watch me, that’s all.”

at

Rio Cinema
107 Kingsland High Street, Dalston, London, E8 2PB
MAP OF AREA

Nearest Train: Dalston Kingsland (London Overground)
Buses: 30, 38, 75, 149, 242, 243
Night Buses: N38, N149, N242, N243

Tickets: £6 (drinks included), booking recommended
Box Office: 020 7241 9410
www.riocinema.org.uk

www.southlondongallery.org

Ken Jacobs at tank.tv

2008-10-01T00:00:00.005Z

KEN JACOBS
Online at www.tank.tv
1 October - 30 November 2008

Ken Jacobs has been active as a filmmaker, performer and teacher for the past five decades. Rigorous and dedicated, his work is characterised by a keen eye for formal composition and a fierce political consciousness.

The exhibition at tank.tv presented a portfolio of 20 works covering 50 years of Ken Jacobs’ artistic production from 1957 to the present day, and is now available in the tank.tv archive.

Razzle Dazzle: The Lost World (Ken Jacobs, 2006)

As a central figure of the generation that defined independent filmmaking during the post-War era, Ken Jacobs contributed to the liberation of cinema from technical and ideological conventions. Beginning in the 1950s, he developed an ‘urban guerrilla cinema’ out of poverty and desperation, shooting improvised routines on city streets. The early works Star Spangled to Death, Little Stabs at Happiness and Blonde Cobra feature a nascent Jack Smith, years before the renegade artist produced his own films.

Having lived in New York all his life, the changing character of the city has been a strong presence throughout Jacobs’ work, from his manipulation of vintage street scenes in New York Ghetto Fishmarket 1903, through to the diaristic video Circling Zero: We See Absence, which observes the aftermath of the attack on the World Trade Center, a few blocks away from Jacobs’ home. The Sky Socialist was shot in a deserted neighbourhood (long since decommissioned) below the Brooklyn Bridge in the 1960s, and Perfect Film uses raw television news reports on the assassination of Malcolm X.

Star Spangled To Death (Ken Jacobs, 1957-59/2004)

Found or archival footage is a source for much of Jacobs’ work. In Star Spangled to Death, entire appropriated films contribute to an accumulative denunciation of American politics, religion, war and racism, whereas an analytical approach to reclaiming cinema’s past was originated in Tom, Tom the Pipers’ Son by re-filming selected details of a theatrical production dating from 1905. This same footage has lately been digitally excavated in Return to the Scene of the Crime.

The technique of unlocking aspects of film material that would otherwise pass unnoticed is the essence of the live Nervous System pieces that Jacobs has performed with two adapted projectors since the mid-1970s. Repetition and pulsing flicker teases frozen images into impossible depth and perpetual motion (demonstrated in New York Street Trolleys 1900), a process further developed by the Eternalism system of editing used in many recent videos. The previously ephemeral live performances Ontic Antics Starring Laurel and Hardy; By Molly! and Two Wrenching Departures are amongst the works that take on new life in their digital form.

Two Wrenching Departures (Ken Jacobs, 2006)

A contemporary of Stan Brakhage, Bruce Conner and Jonas Mekas, Ken Jacobs is one of the true innovators of the moving image, who continues his radical practice in the present. Though his images frequently depict bygone eras, the works are resolutely contemporary, displaying a vitality and ingenuity that is rarely matched.

Programme :-
The Whirled (1956-63), Star Spangled To Death (1957-59/2004), Little Stabs At Happiness (1958-63), Blonde Cobra (1959-63), The Sky Socialist (1964-65), Tom, Tom, The Piper's Son (1969-71), The Doctor's Dream (1978), Perfect Film (1985), Flo Rounds A Corner (1999), New York Street Trolleys 1900 (1999), Circling Zero: We See Absence (2002), Krypton Is Doomed (2005), Let There Be Whistleblowers (2005), Ontic Antics Starring Laurel And Hardy; Bye, Molly! (2005), The Surging Sea Of Humanity (2006), Capitalism: Child Labor (2006), New York Ghetto Fishmarket 1903 (2006), Two Wrenching Departures (2006), Razzle Dazzle: The Lost World (2006), Return To The Scene Of The Crime (2008)

Curated by Mark Webber.

After 30 November 2008, the exhibition will continue to be available in the tank.tv archive.

Ontic Antics with Laurel and Hardy; Bye, Molly! (Ken Jacobs, 2005)

ASK KEN

For the duration of the online show, tank.tv offers a unique opportunity for discussion with Ken Jacobs in an extended Q+A session. Email your questions to the artist at ken@tank.tv A regularly updated transcript of the dialogue will be online at www.tank.tv/askken

EVENTS

Friday 19 September 2008, at 7pm, Tate Modern, London
Return to the Scene of Crime (2008, 92 min)
An antique film print is probed, exploded and reconstituted in the digital domain with radical ingenuity and infectious wit. Screening as part of a weekend of tank.tv events at Tate.

Thursday 16 October 2008, at 9pm, BFI Southbank, London
& Sunday 19 October 2008, at 5pm, ICA Cinema, London
Momma’s Man (2008, 94 min). A feature film by Azazel Jacobs, starring and shot in the loft of his parents, Ken and Flo Jacobs. www.mommasman.com Screening in The Times BFI 52nd London Film Festival.

October/November, CAS Zuidas, Amsterdam
Capitalism: Child Labor (2006, 14 min), an animated deconstruction of a Victorian stereo photograph, will be regularly presented on the CASZ Contemporary Art Screen Zuidas on the Zuidplein in Amsterdam.

Sunday 2 November 2008, from 2pm-10pm, Chisenhale Gallery, London
Star Spangled to Death (1957-59/2004, 375 min). Celebrate the end of the Bush regime with a free screening of Ken Jacobs' episodic indictment of American politics, religion, war, racism and stupidity. Starring Jack Smith, Richard Nixon, Nelson Rockefeller, Al Jolson and a cast of thousands. Refreshments available. Presented by Whitechapel at the Chisenhale.

Saturday 29 November 2008, at 10:15pm, BFI IMAX, London
Ken Jacobs Nervous Magic Lantern live performance in collaboration with Eric La Casa, using pre-cinematic techniques to conjure abstract 3D forms on the immense IMAX screen. Part of the Kill Your Timid Notion tour (also performing in Bristol and Liverpool).

Sunday 30 November 2008, at 12:30pm, BFI Southbank, London
Ken Jacobs in Conversation. Kill Your Timid Notion presents a discussion with the artist to follow on from the previous night’s performance.

Tank Magazine, 10th Anniversary Issue (on sale now)
Ken Jacobs discusses Star Spangled to Death with Mark Webber, and contributes “Failed State” an article on contemporary American politics.

www.tank.tv

Return To The Scene Of The Crime

2008-09-19T19:00:00.000Z

RETURN TO THE SCENE OF THE CRIME
London Tate Modern
19 September 2008

"The heartwarming story of a boy who didn’t know it’s wrong to steal. Running off with the pig seemed like a good idea at the time."

Return to the Scene of the Crime (Ken Jacobs, 2008)

Friday 19 September 2008, at 7pm
RETURN TO THE SCENE OF THE CRIME

In a contemporary riff on one of his landmark works, Ken Jacobs uses new technology to both interrogate and arouse a theatrical tableau, shot in 1905, based on Hogarth’s Southwark Fair. The antique film print is probed, exploded and reconstituted in the digital domain with radical ingenuity and infectious wit. This extraordinary new work teaches us how to see.

Ken Jacobs, Return to the Scene of the Crime, 2008, 92 min

Please Note: This work uses flickering imagery and is not suitable for those susceptible to photo-sensitive epilepsy.

Drinks and cakes will be served after the screening.
For full details of the tank.tv weekend at Tate Modern see Tank at Tate.

An online exhibition at www.tank.tv from 1 October to 30 November 2008 will feature a selection of 20 complete or excerpted works by Ken Jacobs, dating from 1956 to the present. Curated by Mark Webber for tank.tv and Tate Modern.

at

Starr Auditorium
Tate Modern, Bankside, London, SE1 9TG
Nearest Tube: Southwark / London Bridge / Blackfriars
MAP OF AREA

Tickets: £5 / £4 concessions, booking recommended
Box Office: 020 7887 8888
www.tate.org.uk

Temenos 2008

2008-06-27T22:00:00.001Z

TEMENOS 2008
Lyssaraia, Arcadia, Greece
27-29 June 2008

The premiere of Orders III, IV and V of Gregory J. Markopoulos' final and culminating film, ENIAIOS, will take place at the Temenos site, near Lyssaraia in Arcadia on 27-29 June 2008.

Temenos 2004

Orders I and II of ENIAIOS were unveiled at the same site in 2004 to an awed and enthusiastic audience who traveled from Europe and North America especially for the event. Gregory J. Markopoulos (1928–1992) was one of the few filmmakers to form every aspect of his films from production through to presentation. His concept of the Temenos grew out of a need to create a viewing space uniquely in harmony with the film image as a philosophical and psychological revelation. It also grew out of the wish to create a deeply personal and rewarding cinematic experience for the spectators of ENIAIOS, his final 80 hour film.

Markopoulos was convinced that his choice of the remote location near Lyssaraia is an essential element in preparing for the viewing of ENIAIOS. The spectators’ journey, whether from Athens or from abroad, to Loutra and the Temenos site, focuses his or her anticipation of the more extraordinary journey that takes place in front of the projected image over the three evenings. The serene pace of ENIAIOS allows for a gradual development to carry the viewer to a distinct perception of his or her own emotions in dialogue with the filmmaker’s concentrated, fleeting images. The projection event creates what Markopoulos called "the intuition space."

Temenos site in the 1980s

In addition to the journey, the natural beauty of the actual site is integral to the experience. Beginning with the setting of the sun, each screening is seen for three hours, from circa 10pm till 1am under the movements of the heavens. It is an offering. Therefore, the Temenos screenings are presented without charging admission. Each of the Orders is an autonomous part of ENIAIOS: it is not necessary to have seen Orders I and II in 2004 to appreciate the power of III, IV and V this year.

A small buffet will be served in the main square of Lyssaraia on June 26th, the evening before the first screening.

Lodgings must be confirmed in advance (by May 10th) either for the limited number of hotel rooms in the area or for the campsite near the screening area. Requests for reservations should be made by email to mail@the-temenos.org. You will be answered with a definitive offer for lodgings and other details.

The premiere of ENIAIOS III-V is dedicated to Markopoulos' vision. The three evenings at the Temenos site provide a unique opportunity to view his work in a pristine atmosphere and with a freedom of seeing.

Markopoulos and Beavers, 1980s

Follow these links to reports on the Temenos 2004 screenings :-
Artforum
Film Comment
Athens News

For further information visit the Temenos website. To receive email updates on Temenos 2008, subscribe to the Temenos Google Group.

Tony Conrad

2008-06-13T19:00:00.010Z

TONY CONRAD
London Tate Modern
13-15 June 2008

Tony Conrad is a pivotal figure in contemporary culture. His multi-faceted contributions since the 1960s have influenced and redefined music, filmmaking, minimalism, performance, video and conceptual art.

2004 performance of Ten Years Alive on the Infinite Plain (1972)

Known for his groundbreaking film The Flicker, his involvement in the Theatre of Eternal Music and the evolution of the Velvet Underground, and collaborations with a host of luminaries including Jack Smith, John Cale, Mike Kelley and Henry Flynt, Conrad is a radical artist who challenges our understanding of art history.

This special weekend event at Tate Modern will feature a major new performance for the Turbine Hall and screenings of his extraordinary film and video work.

Tony Conrad curated by Stuart Comer, Alice Koegel and Mark Webber.

The Flicker (Tony Conrad, 1966)

Friday 13 June 2008, at 7pm
FLICKER AND PROCESS FILMS

Minimal cinema with maximal effect. Few films provide the intense, stroboscopic viewing experience of The Flicker, a non-objective film composed only of opaque and clear frames, and a pulsing electronic soundtrack. Conrad’s cinematic debut still astounds audiences four decades after its creation, and will be screened together with other works exploring audio-visual harmonics and the radical production processes of cooked and electrocuted films.

Tony Conrad, The Flicker, 1966, 30 min
Tony Conrad, Curried 7302, 1973, 2 min
Tony Conrad, 7302 Creole, 1973, 1 min
Tony Conrad, 4-X Attack, 1973, 2 min
Tony Conrad, Film Feedback, 1974, 14 min
Tony Conrad, The Eye of Count Flickerstein, 1967/75, 7 min
Tony Conrad, Articulation of Boolean Algebra for Film Opticals, 1975, 10 min excerpt
Beverly & Tony Conrad, Straight and Narrow, 1970, 10 min

The screening, introduced by Tony Conrad, will be followed by a drinks reception to celebrate the publication of Beyond the Dream Syndicate: Tony Conrad and the Arts after Cage by Branden W. Joseph (Zone Books/MIT).

In Line (Tony Conrad, 1986)

Saturday 14 June 2008, at 7pm
TONY TAKES ON VIDEO: WHO'S WATCHING WHO?

Tony Conrad investigates the conditions of video production and presentation in a series of tapes which deconstruct or re-appropriate the techniques of TV. Exploiting the reflexive nature of the medium, he critiques the electronic image and notions of history, theory and authority with an irreverent sense of humour. Postmodernism was never this much fun!

Tony Conrad, Concord Ultimatum, 1977, 10 min excerpt
Tony Conrad, Redressing Down, 1988, 18 min
Tony Conrad, Ipso Facto, 1985, 7 min
Tony Conrad, Lookers, 1984, 4 min excerpt
Tony Conrad, Egypt 2025, 1986, 13 min
Tony Conrad, No Europe, 1990, 13 min
Tony Conrad, Accordion, 1981, 5 min
Tony Conrad, In Line, 1986, 7 min

The artist will introduce this programme of rarely seen works.

Tony Conrad, 2003 performance at De Stijl / Freedom From Festival

Saturday 14 June 2008, at 10pm
UNPROJECTABLE: PROJECTION AND PERSPECTIVE

UNPROJECTABLE: PROJECTION AND PERSPECTIVE, a major new live performance by Tony Conrad, is specially conceived for the latent sound and immense scale of the Turbine Hall. Emerging from an installation inspired by the hum of the former power station’s one remaining generator, Conrad’s sonic and visual feast will incorporate an amplified string quartet, electric drill and motors, phonograph arms, film projection and shadows which loom high above the audience.

This is a FREE event as part of UBS Openings: Saturday Live.

Please Note: This event is FREE but advance booking is recommended by telephone 020 7887 8888, email ticketing@tate.org.uk or online.

DreaMinimalist (Marie Losier, 2008)

Sunday 15 June 2008, at 3pm
TONY CONRAD IN CONVERSATION + DREAMINIMALIST

Tony Conrad will discuss his radical breakthroughs in film, video, music and performance with Branden W Joseph, Associate Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at Columbia University, and author of Beyond the Dream Syndicate: Tony Conrad and the Arts after Cage (Zone Books/MIT).

The discussion will include a screening of DreamMinimalist (Marie Losier, 2008, 25 min), the latest in Marie Losier's ongoing series of film portraits of avant-garde directors (Mike and George Kuchar, Guy Maddin, Richard Foreman). The film offers an insightful and hilarious encounter with Conrad as he sings, dances and remembers his youth and his association with Jack Smith.

at

Tate Modern
Bankside, London, SE1 9TG
Nearest Tube: Southwark / London Bridge / Blackfriars
MAP OF AREA

Screenings & Discussion Tickets: £5 / £4 concessions
Performance Tickets: FREE, booking recommended (see above)
Box Office: 020 7887 8888
www.tate.org.uk

Gregory J. Markopoulos

2008-03-07T19:00:00.009Z

GREGORY J. MARKOPOULOS
London Tate Modern
7 & 8 March 2008

Gregory J. Markopoulos (1928–1992) was a key figure in the evolution of the New American Cinema of the 1960s, an archetypal personal filmmaker who counted Jack Smith, Kenneth Anger, Stan Brakhage and Maya Deren amongst his contemporaries. His ravishing films are a complex combination of masterful camerawork and editing with a strong vision rooted in myth and poetry.

After relocating from New York to Europe in 1967, he planned the construction of an archive and projection space in Greece – The Temenos – a setting that would be in harmony with his extraordinary films. This pair of Tate Modern screenings anticipates the Temenos 2008 open air premieres of Markopoulos’ ENIAIOS III-V to be held in Lyssaraia on 27-29 June 2008, presented by the filmmaker Robert Beavers.

Gregory J. Markopoulos directs Jack Smith

Friday 7 March 2008, at 7pm
MARKOPOULOS: PORTRAITS OF ARTISTS

Markopoulos made many extraordinary film portraits, which often incorporate an activity or object that has personal significance to the subject. This programme presents a selection of poetic and sensuous portraits of cultural and art world luminaries such as Gilbert & George, Alberto Moravia, Giorgio de Chirico and Rudolph Nureyev.

“The films preserve the myriad flights of isolated, spectrally splintered and itinerant spirit, lost in yearning, in search of intuitive wholeness while negotiating mazes of desire, seeking sanctuary in the reflection of countless identities. The works hold a shimmering mirror up to the contradictory compulsions of an era, set to register, for a few instants, shocks of recognition.” (Kirk Winslow, Millennium Film Journal)

Gregory Markopoulos, Through a Lens Brightly: Mark Turbyfill, 1967, 12 min (Mark Turbyfill)
Gregory Markopoulos, ENIAIOS (Order III, Reel 1) (Gibraltar), undated, 15 min
(Gilbert & George)
Gregory Markopoulos, ENIAIOS (Order IV, Reel 6) (The Olympian), 1969, 23 min (Alberto Moravia)
Gregory Markopoulos, Political Portraits, 1969, 15 min excerpt
(Ulrich Herzog, Marcia Haydee, Rudolph Nureyev, Giorgio di Chirico, Hulda Zumsteg)
Gregory Markopoulos, ENIAIOS (Order II, Reel 2), undated, 23 min
(Hans-Jakob Siber, Franco Quadri, Giorgio Frapoli, Klaus Schönherr and family)

The Illiac Passion (Gregory J. Markopoulos, 1967)

Saturday 8 March 2008, at 7pm
MARKOPOULOS: THE ILLIAC PASSION

Throughout his life, Markopoulos remained closely connected to his heritage and ultimately saw the Greek landscape as the ideal setting for viewing his films. The Illiac Passion, one of his most highly acclaimed films, is a visionary interpretation of ‘Prometheus Bound’ starring mythical beings from the 1960s underground. The soundtrack of this contemporary re-imagining of the classical realm features a reading of Thoreau’s translation of the Aeschylus text and excerpts from Bartok.

Gregory Markopoulos, The Illiac Passion, 1967, 92 min

“The Illiac Passion, which features chiaroscuro passages reminiscent of Anger's Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome of 1954, and incorporates 25 characters, is loosely based on Aeschylus' ‘Prometheus Bound’. For a viewer seeing this extravagant ode to creation some thirty years after its making, the film's most plangent moments involve Markopoulos' affectionate casting of friends as mythical figures – Andy Warhol's Poseidon pumping on an Exercycle above a sea of plastic, Taylor Mead's Demon leaping, grimacing, and streaming vermilion fringes, and Jack Smith's bohemian Orpheus, spending a quiet afternoon at home with Eurydice.” (Kristin M. Jones, Artforum)

at

Starr Auditorium
Tate Modern, Bankside, London, SE1 9TG
Nearest Tube: Southwark / London Bridge / Blackfriars
MAP OF AREA

Tickets: £5 / £4 concessions, booking recommended
Box Office: 020 7887 8888
www.tate.org.uk

Hollis Frampton: Magellan

2007-11-11T12:00:00.000Z

HOLLIS FRAMPTON: MAGELLAN
London National Maritime Museums
Sundays 11 & 18 November 2007, at 12:00pm

A screening, over two consecutive Sundays, of Hollis Frampton’s monumental film sequence MAGELLAN, which uses Ferdinand Magellan’s circumnavigatory voyage as a metaphor for a meditation on the history and language of cinema, and the phenomena of perception.

Hollis Frampton portrait by Marion Faller, 1975

“A series of shaped observations that include portraits, cadaver footage, re-stagings of Lumière films, visits to slaughterhouses, double exposures, a field of peaceful dairy cattle, allusions to Muybridge, electronic imagery, industrial pictures, a state fair – a kind of capsule version of the twentieth century that might have been placed on the Voyager spacecraft as it soared out of the solar system to worlds unknown.” (Robert Haller, Anthology Film Archives, New York)

In composing his metahistory of cinema, Frampton often refers to other films and filmic modes, quotes liberally from early cinema (specifically the paper print collection of the Library of Congress) and explores countless possibilities for montage and the relationship between sound and image.

Originally intended as a 36-hour sequence in which individual titles would be shown on specific days in a calendar of one year and four days, it was left unfinished when Frampton died in 1984. The surviving 8 hours of material, comprising of almost 30 individual films, will be screened together for the first time in the UK.

The schedule of 4 x 2-hour programmes, structured by Michael Zryd (who will introduce the first programme), is based on the 1978 version of Frampton’s “Magellan Calendar” and the last work-in-progress screenings presented by the artist at the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York) in January 1980.

The Red Gate (Hollis Frampton, 1976)

Hollis Frampton, one of the key filmmakers of his generation, was also a noted photographer and theorist, whose remarkable writing was published frequently in Artforum and October.

“Frampton is generally understood, in his words, as an artist ‘of the modernist persuasion,’ not only for his aesthetics, but for his close personal association with such figures as Ezra Pound, Carl Andre, Frank Stella, and Stan Brakhage. Certainly, Frampton conceived of Magellan as a utopian artwork in the monumental tradition of James Joyce and Sergei Eisenstein. In a grant application, he hoped to realize the project as ‘the notion of an hypothetically totally inclusive work of film art as epistemological model for the conscious human universe’.” (Michael Zryd, York University, Toronto)

Straits of Magellan: Drafts and Fragments (Hollis Frampton, 1974)

HOLLIS FRAMPTON’S MAGELLAN

Sunday 11 November 2007

12-2pm THE BIRTH OF MAGELLAN (introduced by Michael Zryd)
Cadenza I and XIV (1977-80), Mindfall I (1977-80), Matrix (1977-79), Palindrome (1969), Mindfall VII (1977-80), Noctiluca (1974)

3-5pm THE STRAITS OF MAGELLAN I
Public Domain (1972), Straits of Magellan: Drafts and Fragments (1974), Ingeimm Vibis Ipsa Pvella Fecit (1975), Summer Solstice (1974), Pas de Trois (1975)

Sunday 18 November 2007

12-2pm THE STRAITS OF MAGELLAN II
Autumnal Equinox (1974), Winter Solstice (1974), Straits of Magellan: Drafts and Fragments (1974), The Red Gate (1976), The Green Gate (1976)

3-5pm THE DEATH OF MAGELLAN
Apparatus Sum (1972), Otherwise Unexplained Fires (1976), Quaternion (1976), Yellow Springs (1972), For Georgia O'Keefe (1976), More Than Meets The Eye (1976), Not The First Time (1976), Tiger Balm (1972), Procession (1976), Gloria! (1979)

The screening of MAGELLAN at the National Maritime Museum is curated by Mark Webber. Presented in association with LUX.

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National Maritime Museum
Park Row, Greenwich, London, SE10 9NF
Nearest Trains: Cutty Sark DLR / Greenwich BR / Maze Hill BR
MAP OF AREA

Tickets: £5 per day
Box Office: 020 8312 8560
Email: bookings@nmm.ac.uk

www.nmm.ac.uk

Images courtesy Anthology Film Archives. © Estate of Hollis Frampton.

Systems of Nature

2007-11-07T18:30:00.000Z

CHRIS WELSBY: SYSTEMS OF NATURE
London BFI Southbank
7-10 November 2007

This series of programmes begins with a retrospective of single screen 16mm films by Chris Welsby, a British artist whose work explores the representation of nature, the passing of time and the forces of the weather in relation to the filming process.

"In my work the mechanics of film and video interact with the landscape in such a way that elemental processes – such as changes in light, the rise and fall of tide or changes in wind direction – are given the space and time to participate in the process of representation." (Chris Welsby)

The Chris Welsby presentations are complemented by two programmes of recent film, video and digital media, which extend and expand upon Welsby’s subjects and processes, concerned as they are with a variety of landscapes and the ‘natural world’ in relation to technology. These processes take a number of forms and techniques such as time-lapse in the work of Emily Richardson and Jeanne Liotta through to more recent experiments such as Semiconductor’s digital constructions of imaginary weather systems and Susan Collins’ real-time pixel fragmentation of the landscape. A conversation event with Chris Welsby, Catherine Elwes and William Fowler will concentrate on seascapes in the moving image.

Chris Welsby has been exhibiting work since 1969. He is renowned as a landscape artist and pioneer of moving image installations. These screenings accompany the exhibition “Systems of Nature” at the Lethaby Gallery, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design (6 November – 13 December 2007), which presents two of Welsby’s most recent installations for the first time in the UK.

Curated by Steven Ball, Mark Webber and Maxa Zoller for the British Artists’ Film and Video Study Collection at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design.

Drift (Chris Welsby, 1994)

Wednesday 7 November 2007, at 6:30pm, NFT2
IN CONVERSATION, AT SEA

Seascapes have a long history in filmmaking and continue to fascinate moving image artists. Chris Welsby has made a number of works that contemplate the ocean and the inability of the camera, the frame and the viewer to appreciate its enormity; including At Sea (installed at the Lethaby Gallery) and Drift (screened later tonight).

This conversation between Chris Welsby, Catherine Elwes (artist, writer and Reader in Moving Image Art, Camberwell College of Arts) and William Fowler (Curator of Artists’ Moving Image, BFI National Archive) will reflect on the phenomenon of the moving image seascape from early ‘Rough Seas’ films through to contemporary practice.

Sky Light (Chris Welsby, 1988)

Wednesday 7 November 2007, at 8:45pm, NFT2
CHRIS WELSBY: SYSTEMS OF NATURE

Chris Welsby’s films are dialogues between the filmmaker and the natural elements: the wind controls the movements of the camera in Tree and the film speed in Anemometer. Later films address environmental concerns, such as the threat of radiation as a Geiger counter provides Sky Light’s post-Chernobyl soundtrack. Shifting from environmental structuralism to a more observational mode, the final film Drift has the viewer literally drifting off into a world beyond gravity, into an abstract space between sky and sea.

Chris Welsby, Anemometer, 1974, 10 mins
Chris Welsby, Tree, 1974, 5 mins
Chris Welsby, Colour Separation, 1975, 3 mins
Chris Welsby, Stream Line, 1976, 8 mins
Chris Welsby, Sky Light, 1988, 26 mins
Chris Welsby, Drift, 1994, 17 mins

Chris Welsby will introduce the screening and be available for questions.

Redshift (Emily Richardson, 2001)

Friday 9 November 2007, at 8:40pm, NFT2
THE NATURE OF OUR LOOKING

Moving from ocean to sky and back to the land, these six films respond to nature in less programmatic ways. Peter Hutton’s 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.

Peter Hutton, Looking At The Sea, 2001, 15 mins
David Gatten, What The Water Said 4-6, 2006, 17 mins
Lucy Reynolds, Lake, 2007, 12 mins
Emily Richardson, Redshift, 2001, 4 mins
Jeanne Liotta, Observando El Cielo, 2007, 17 mins
Michael Robinson, You Don't Bring Me Flowers, 2005, 8 mins

The Sound of Microclimates (Semiconductor, 2004)

Saturday 10 November 2007, at 8:40pm, NFT2
THE NATURE OF SYSTEMS

Technological systems create, fragment and transform landscapes: a long video monitor stream, digitally mutated coastlines and strange urban microclimates introduce fascinating artificial worlds, blurring the boundaries between natural and constructed landscapes. Starting with documentation of Chris Meigh-Andrews’ video installation Stream Line and passing through a variety of spellbinding single-screen film and video environments, the programme also incorporates a presentation of Susan Collins’ most recent internet transmitted real-time reconstruction of Loch Faskally in Perthshire.

Chris Meigh-Andrews, Stream Line (Documentation), 1991, 6 mins
Davide Quagliola & Chiara Horn, Bit-Scapes 135.1_08, 2006, 3 mins
Semiconductor, The Sound of Microclimates, 2004, 8 mins
Thomas Köner, Suburbs of the Void, 2004, 14 mins
Daniel Crooks, Train No.8, 2005, 6 mins
Davide Quagliola & Chiara Horn, Bit-Scapes 135.2_03, 2006, 3 mins
Rachel Reupke, Untitled, 2006, 2 x 90 secs
Rose Lowder, Voiliers et Coquelicots, 2002, 3 mins
Davide Quagliola & Chiara Horn, Bit-Scapes 135.7_13, 2006, 3 mins
Alix Poscharsky, As We All Know, 2006, 8 mins
Susan Collins, Glenlandia, 2006, continuous

at

BFI Southbank
Belvedere Road, South Bank, London, SE1 8XT
Nearest Tube: Waterloo / Embankment
MAP OF AREA

Tickets: £8.60 / £6.25 concessions
Joint Ticket for Wed 7 Nov: £12.50 / £9.25 concessions
BFI members pay £1 less

Box Office: 020 7928 3232

www.bfi.org.uk

...

The exhibition Systems of Nature is at the Lethaby Gallery, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, Southampton Row, London from 6 November – 13 December 2007. Admission Free. Nearest Tube: Holborn.

Chris Welsby

2007-11-06T18:00:00.000Z

SYSTEMS OF NATURE: RECENT INSTALLATIONS BY CHRIS WELSBY
London Lethaby Gallery
6 November - 13 December 2007

The exhibition Systems of Nature at the Lethaby Gallery presents two recent installations by Chris Welsby, a British artist who uses moving image technology to explore the representation of nature, the passing of time and the forces of the weather in relation to the filming process.

Lost Lake #2 (Chris Welsby, 2005)

Welsby became known as one of the key figures of British artists’ film through celebrated works such as River Yar (1972, in collaboration with William Raban) and Seven Days (1974). In his early films he applied techniques such as using the power of the wind to control camera movement (Wind Vane 1972) and to alter shutter speed (Anemometer 1974). More recently, digital technology has enabled Welsby to create increasingly complex installation work.

In Lost Lake #2 (2005) an image of a lake is projected from above onto a raised surface. At times it appears as a motionless mirror image. As the surface of the lake becomes agitated, ripples move faster and the compression of the digital image pixellates the natural diffraction effect of the water.

"Nature, as represented by the lake, is not seen to be separate from the technology that produces it. The viewer is invited to contemplate a model in which nature and technology are seen to be one and the same thing, inextricably bound together in a playful dance of colour and light." (Chris Welsby)

Disruption of water’s natural course is also at the core of the second work, At Sea (2003), in which four large screens present an apparently naturalistic representation of a seascape. Sustained viewing reveals the image to be four different shots arranged to create a projected panorama. The immersive character of this installation evokes a real sense of looking out at sea, but also points to the perceptual limits we encounter when we try and ‘see’ the enormity of the ocean.

"While half seen objects hover on the threshold of visibility, viewers are invited to consider their own role in the construction of a fiction, a seascape that only exists in the moment of the projection event." (Chris Welsby)

At Sea (Chris Welsby, 2003)

At 6pm on Thursday 8 November 2007, the history and practice of multi-screen projection in artists’ film and video will be explored in discussion with Chris Welsby and William Raban. The event will include a rare presentation of Raban and Welsby’s twin-screen film River Yar (1972).

The exhibition is also complemented by Systems of Nature screenings at BFI Southbank from 7-10 November 2007, featuring Chris Welsby’s films, an in-conversation event and two programmes of works by contemporary artists which explore similar concerns and techniques.

Chris Welsby was born in Exeter in 1948 and has lived in Canada since 1989, where he is currently a Professor of Fine Art at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. Systems of Nature is Welsby’s first solo exhibition in Britain since 1995.

The exhibition and related events are curated by Steven Ball, Mark Webber and Maxa Zoller for the British Artists’ Film and Video Study Collection at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design.

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Lethaby Gallery
Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design
Southampton Row, London, WC1B 4AP
Nearest Tube: Holborn
MAP OF AREA

Admission Free

Private View: Tuesday 6 November 2007, from 6-8pm
Exhibition on view from 6 November - 13 December 2007
Opening Hours: Mon-Fri 10am-8pm, Sat 10am-4pm

www.studycollection.org.uk

Light Reading: David Gatten

2007-11-05T19:00:00.000Z

LIGHT READING: David Gatten
London Light Reading
Monday 5 November 2007, at 7pm

Light Reading Series 7: DAVID GATTEN
SECRET HISTORY OF THE DIVIDING LINE, A TRUE ACCOUNT IN NINE PARTS

American film artist David Gatten will show and discuss the first four completed films from his series Secret History of the Dividing Line. Presented in association with The Times BFI 51st London Film Festival.

The Great Art of Knowing (David Gatten, 2004)

"At a time when avant-garde filmmaking leans more toward sensations and form than intellect and analysis, David Gatten's 16mm cycle "Secret History of the Dividing Line" attempts a rare feat: an investigation of the borders between word and image influenced equally by Stan Brakhage and Ludwig Wittgenstein (both veterans of related pursuits). The results are formidable, Gatten's project samples from the massive library of colonial Virginia gentleman William Byrd II, with occasional dips into his daughter Evelyn's journals, producing artfully composed typographies that suss out an invisible web of connections and epiphanies. But Gatten also expresses the indigestible bulk of history's verbiage through a mobile concrete poetry: Not all his quotes allow for reading; some words flutter past too quickly to serve as more than compositional elements, while others appear in negative, close-up and grainy, like luminous alphabetic windows. Attempting to glimpse a lost world recorded through texts, Gatten offers the paper-thin screen between past and present as just one of his project's ultimately ineffable dividing lines." (Ed Halter, Village Voice)

David Gatten’s films have shown widely at international museums, cinematheques and festivals. In 2005, he was awarded a Fellowship from Guggenheim Foundation to continue the “Secret History of the Dividing Line” series, the first four films of which were presented in a special programme at the New York Film Festival. His recent works “Film For Invisible Ink, Case No. 71: Base-Plus-Fog" and "Today!" (an ongoing collaboration with Jessie Stead) will receive their UK premiere at the London Film Festival on 28 October 2007. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Art Institute of Chicago, and in private collections in the United States, Canada and Japan.

Light Reading is an on-going series of critical dialogues that engage artists, writers and curators in conversation around a selected artist’s body of work. To be included on the mailing list for future events, please contact courses@nowhere-lab.org

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Light Reading
3rd Floor, 316–318 Bethnal Green Road, London, E2 0AG
Nearest Tube / Train: Bethnal Green
MAP OF AREA

Tickets: £5 door / £4 advance
Telephone: 020 7372 3925
Email: courses@nowhere-lab.org
Booking is essential for this event, as places are limited.

www.nowhere-lab.org

The Great Art of Knowing (David Gatten, 2004)

DAVID GATTEN
Light Reading, Monday 5 November 2007

SECRET HISTORY OF THE DIVIDING LINE
David Gatten, 2002, 16mm, b/w, silent, 20 mins
"Hold your breath and count the hours since you were last together. Blow softly on a wet face and watch the smile form. Float your hand across the surface and find all the words you need. Unfold the splicer and separate your image from your dream; you will feel bound, as if tied down until you are fully awake. Only then will you know for sure: this may not be final but it is definite. The landscape you see can change only when you pass through it. Regard your new object: a union: silent, tiny and bright. Paired texts as dueling histories. A journey imagined and remembered. 57 mileage markers produce an equal number of prospects."

THE GREAT ART OF KNOWING
David Gatten, 2004, 16mm, b/w, silent, 37 mins
"On either side of a Life find a Library before and an Auction after: consider these figures as the sites for a collection created for the purposes of division and dispersal. The journey this time moves from the first light at dawn to the last rays of a sunset, reflected and refracted. Find yourself resting uneasily half way up the stairs: Something has left the body, yet the body remains: what has left is on its way Elsewhere but cannot help but look back: this look animates the world and makes possible this Theory of Flight in the form of a bibliography."

MOXON'S MECHANICK EXERCISES, OR, THE DOCTRINE OF HANDY-WORKS APPLIED TO THE ART OF PRINTING
David Gatten, 1999, 16mm, b/w, silent, 26 mins
"This handmade film, with its images generated almost entirely from cellophane tape, is a meditation on the development of the printing press and its role in the spread of Christianity throughout Europe, the relationship between words and images, the poetics of translation, the fine line between the legible and the illegible, and the passage of the soul through the material world."

THE ENJOYMENT OF READING, LOST & FOUND
David Gatten, 2001, 16mm, b/w, silent, 24 mins
"A closely watched candle and an invitation to the dance. William Byrd booms among his books while Evelyn keeps to a quiet window; the volunteer fire brigade sorts through the ashes and Isaac Goldberg tells it like it is. Who read what; when, and why?"

www.nowhere-lab.org

The Wire 25: Film

2007-10-30T20:00:00.001Z

THE WIRE 25: FILM
London Roxy Bar and Screen
30 October - 20 November 2007

THE WIRE 25: FILM presents three evenings of artists’ film and video at the Roxy. The series begins with a programme of avant-garde classics, followed by UK premieres of four recent works by younger artists. Part of The Wire 25, a month long season of music celebrating The Wire magazine's 25th birthday.

Curated by Mark Webber.
All screenings are free admission, arrive early to avoid disappointment.

YYAA (Wojciech Bruszewski, 1973)

Tuesday 30 October 2007, at 8pm
CINEMA FOR THE EYES AND EARS

The potential for combining image and sound has been explored since the invention of cinema. This primer of classic works of the international avant-garde demonstrates some of the possibilities specific to the film medium, from the flickering frames of Tony Conrad, Paul Sharits and John Latham to the intricate optics of Daina Krumins, Malcolm Le Grice, and others. Featuring soundtracks by Brian Eno, Rhys Chatham, John Cale and Terry Riley. All films will be shown on 16mm.

ARNULF RAINER Peter Kubelka, Austria, 1958, 8 minutes
YYAA Wojciech Bruszewski, Poland, 1973, 5 minutes
SPEAK John Latham, UK, 1968-69, 11 minutes
BERLIN HORSE Malcolm Le Grice, UK, 1970, 8 minutes
THE DIVINE MIRACLE Daina Krumins, USA, 1973, 5 minutes
AXIOMATIC GRANULARITY Paul Sharits, USA, 1972-73, 20 minutes
DRESDEN DYNAMO Lis Rhodes, UK, 1974, 5 minutes
STRAIGHT AND NARROW Tony & Beverly Conrad, USA, 1970, 11 minutes

Foggy Mountains Breakdown More Than Non-Foggy Mountains (Jessie Stead, 2006)

Tuesday 13 November 2007, at 8pm
THE ROAD TO WHO KNOWS WHERE

Two fragmented and dysfunctional road movies imagined as a series of episodic vignettes or misty memories. Jessie Stead’s Foggy Mountains Breakdown More Than Non-Foggy Mountains, a cryptic album of weird and wonderful versions of Flatt & Scrugg’s bluegrass standard won first prize at the Ann Arbor Film Festival. The Secret Apocalyptic Love Diaries of Enid Baxter Blader is a windswept folk-poem shot on a homemade video camera. Both cast a discreet nod of recognition to Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music.

THE SECRET APOCALYPTIC LOVE DIARIES Enid Baxter Blader, USA, 2006-07, 12 minutes
FOGGY MOUNTAINS BREAKDOWN MORE THAN NON-FOGGY MOUNTAINS Jessie Stead, USA, 2006, 59 minutes

Bogman Palmjaguar (Luke Fowler, 2007)

Tuesday 20 November 2007, at 8pm
EXTRAORDINARY LIVES

Luke Fowler’s Bogman Palmjaguar is a portrait of its namesake, a former patient of radical psychologist R.D. Laing who now lives a hermetic life in the Flow Country of the Scottish Highlands. Documenting the environment of the surrounding landscape as much as its human focus, the images are accompanied by Lee Patterson’s evocative field recordings. Genesis P-Orridge and Lady Jaye are the subjects of Marie Losier’s diary/documentary, which pursues the pandrongynous partners at home, visiting MoMA’s Dada exhibition, and on tour with Thee Majesty and Throbbing Gristle. This work-in-progress screening will take place in celebration of the life of Lady Jaye, who died suddenly on 9 October 2007.

BOGMAN PALMJAGUAR Luke Fowler, UK, 2007, 30 minutes
A BALLAD WITH GENESIS P-ORRIDGE AND LADY JAYE Marie Losier, USA, 2007, 37 minutes

at

The Roxy Bar and Screen
128-132 Borough High Street, London, SE1 1LB
Nearest Tube: Borough / London Bridge
MAP OF AREA

www.roxybarandscreen.com

Peter Hutton

2007-10-29T19:00:00.000Z

PETER HUTTON IN THE ELEMENTS
London Tate Modern
Monday 29 October 2007, at 7pm

Films by Peter Hutton appear more closely related to landscape painting and still photography than contemporary cinema. In their stately portrayal of urban and rural locations, they afford the viewer a rarefied and highly-focused mode of looking, a stillness seemingly at odds with everyday life. Over shots of extended duration, the world reveals itself before the camera, which often records only subtle changes of light and atmospheric conditions.

Landscape (for Manon) (Peter Hutton, 1986-87)

Peter Hutton began making films in 1970 and has work in the collections of the Whitney Museum, Centre Georges Pompidou, George Eastman House and the Austrian Film Museum. A former merchant seaman, he has been a professor of film at Bard College in the Hudson River Valley since 1985. His most recent film, At Sea, will screen in the London Film Festival on Sunday 28 October.

For this screening at Tate Modern, Peter Hutton will introduce works, made on land and sea, which relate to the elements of earth, air, fire and water.

Curated by Mark Webber.
Presented in association with The Times BFI 51st London Film Festival.

Images of Asian Music (Peter Hutton, 1973-74)

Monday October 2007, at 7pm
PETER HUTTON IN THE ELEMENTS

NEW YORK PORTRAIT, CHAPTER 2
Peter Hutton, 1980-81, b/w, silent, 16 min
The second part of an extended life’s portrait of New York. “Hutton’s black and white haikus are an exquisite distillation of the cinematic eye. The limitations imposed – no colour, no sound, no movement (except from a vehicle not directly propelled by the filmmaker), no direct cuts since the images are born and die in black – ironically entail an ultimate freedom of the imagination. If pleasure can disturb, Hutton’s ploys emerge in full focus. These materializing then evaporating images don’t ignite, but conjure strains of fleeting panoramas of detached bemusement. More than mere photography, Hutton’s contained-with-in-the-frame juxtapositions are filmic explorations of the benign and the tragic.” (Warren Sonbert)

BOSTON FIRE
Peter Hutton, 1979, b/w, silent, 8 min
“Boston Fire finds grandeur in smoke rising eloquently from a city blaze. Billowing puffs of darkness blend with fountains of water streaming in from off-screen to orchestrate a play of primal elements. The beautiful texture of the smoke coupled with the isolation from the source of the fire erases the destructive impact of the event. The camera, lost in the immense dark clouds, produces images for meditation removed from the causes or consequences of the scene. The tiny firemen, seen as distant silhouettes, gaze in awe, helpless before nature’s power.” (Leger Grindon, Millennium Film Journal)

IMAGES OF ASIAN MUSIC (A DIARY FROM LIFE 1973-74)
Peter Hutton, 1973-74, b/w, silent, 29 min
“Images of Asian Music represents footage compiled during 1973-74 when Peter Hutton was living in Thailand and working at sea as a merchant seaman. While the film is silent, the title was intended to evoke a comparison to the movement of classical Asian music. Images of Asian Music is a personal celebration of Asia formed by a sensitivity to filmic composition and to the perception of these images in a silent time created by the filmmaker.” (Whitney Museum of American Art)

LANDSCAPE (FOR MANON)
Peter Hutton, 1986-87, b/w, silent, 19 min
“Much of the imagery in Landscape (for Manon) is suggestive of Thomas Cole’s Catskill paintings – some of Hutton’s imagery was made in and around Kaaterskill Clove. In general, the film recalls those Cole paintings usually seen as forerunners of Luminism – ‘The Clove’, ‘Catskills’ (1827), for example, and ‘Catskill Creek’ (1845) – though the sensibility it reflects and the experience it provides is quite close to Fitz Hugh Lane, Martin Johnson Heade and John Frederick Kensett. Landscape (for Manon) is made up of twenty-two shots. The first and last shots frame the film as a tribute to Hutton’s young daughter, Manon: in the film’s delicate and arresting final shot, we see her face in close-up, double exposed with mottled light.” (Scott MacDonald, The Garden in the Machine)

IN TITAN'S GOBLET
Peter Hutton, 1991, b/w, silent, 10 min
In Titan’s Goblet refers to a landscape painting by Thomas Cole circa 1833. The film is intended as an homage to Cole, who is regarded as the father of the Hudson River School of painting. “Like Landscape (for Manon), In Titan’s Goblet depicts, in a series of often-stunning, silent, black and white, discrete images the Catskill Mountain area. In this case, however, a sequence of lovely images of what at first appears to be mist in the mountains is slowly revealed to be a distant fire of rubber tires that had burned out of control. That is, Hutton’s serene, evocative landscapes are, in this instance, qualified by an environmental problem – one that confronts our hunger for imagery of pristine nature.” (Scott MacDonald)

at

Starr Auditorium
Tate Modern, Bankside, London, SE1 9TG
Nearest Tube: Southwark / London Bridge / Blackfriars
MAP OF AREA

Tickets: £5 / £4 concessions, booking recommended
Box Office: 020 7887 8888
www.tate.org.uk

LFF: Avant-Garde Weekend

2007-10-27T12:00:00.000Z

LONDON FILM FESTIVAL: AVANT-GARDE WEEKEND
London BFI Southbank
27-28 October 2007

The Festival’s annual celebration of artists’ film and video returns with an international programme of diverse and inventive work, featuring poetic journeys, materialist explorations and ambiguous histories. Artists Carolee Schneemann and Marina Abramovic are featured in special programmes, and Peter Hutton will introduce his stunning new film At Sea. Many artists will be present to discuss their work and Experimenta will occupy the Studio for two days of continuous installations. The ‘avant-garde weekend’ continues to be a unique occasion for London audiences to experience innovative new visions from around the world.

Curated by Mark Webber for The Times BFI 51st London Film Festival.

Capitalism: Child Labor (Ken Jacobs, 2006)

Saturday 27 October 2007, from 12-7pm, Studio, FREE
CAPITALISM: CHILD LABOR

CAPITALISM: CHILD LABOR
Ken Jacobs / USA 2006 / 14 mins (continuous loop)
Ken Jacobs continues his interrogation of archival sources by deconstructing a single stereoscopic photograph from the Victorian era. The image of barefoot children in a textile mill is spun into a critique of capitalism and the workforce of child labour which sustained the industrial revolution. With a dizzying array of visual techniques, space is condensed, expanded, flipped and cropped, accompanied by Rick Reed’s compelling soundtrack.

Seeing Red (Su Friedrich, 2005)

Saturday 27 October 2007, at 2pm, NFT3
THE ‘I’ AND THE ‘WE’

SEEING RED
Su Friedrich / USA 2005 / 27 mins
A video confessional in which the artist expresses her frustration with the onset of middle age, frankly declaring personal anxieties. Interspersed with observational vignettes edited to Bach’s Goldberg Variations (played by Glenn Gould), Seeing Red is ultimately less an admission of crisis than a roar of defiance.

JE SUIS UNE BOMBE
Elodie Pong / Switzerland 2006 / 7 mins
Unprecedented and absolute: The image of a young woman ‘simultaneously strong and vulnerable, a potential powder keg.’

I JUST WANTED TO BE SOMEBODY
Jay Rosenblatt / USA 2006 / 10 mins
American pop singer Anita Bryant, the face of Florida orange juice, led a political crusade against the ‘evil forces’ of homosexuality in the 1970s. Local success was short lived, and a national boycott of Florida oranges was the first sign of her loss of public approval.

REGARDING THE PAIN OF SUSAN SONTAG (NOTES ON CAMP)
Steve Reinke / Canada 2006 / 4 mins
A journey from schoolyard to graveyard, with author Susan Sontag as philosophical guide.

PART TIME HEROES
Mara Mattuschka, Chris Haring / Austria 2007 / 33 mins
Mattuschka’s second adaptation of a piece by Vienna’s ingenious Liquid Loft (following Legal Errorist in 2004) exposes a trio of fractured characters. In the lonely hearts hotel of an unfamiliar zone, the amorphous heroes erratically construct and reveal their unconventional personas.

Total running time approximately 85 mins

Marguerite Duras/Alain Resnais (0.65, 0.85, 1.0 fps)
(David Dempewolf, 2007)

Saturday 27 October 2007, at 4pm, NFT3
PAST IMPERFECT

hysteria
Christina Battle / Canada 2006 / 4 mins
Through the manipulation of drawings of the Salem witch trials, using techniques which include peeling layers of emulsion from the filmstrip, oblique parallels are drawn with modern day hysteria.

DANGEROUS SUPPLEMENT
Soon-Mi Yoo / USA-Korea 2006 / 14 mins
‘Is it possible to see the landscape of the past even though it was first seen by the other’s murderous gaze?’ Dangerous Supplement poetically appropriates footage shot by US military to explore the secrets of the mountain, and the legacy of the Korean War.

CATALOGUE OF BIRDS: BOOK 3
Jayne Parker / UK 2006 / 16 mins
Following World War II, Messiaen’s fascination with birdsong inspired many compositions, and dominates the monumental ‘Catalogue d’Oiseaux’ of 1959. Jayne Parker has created a visual interpretation of the third movement – ’The Tawny Owl and The Woodlark’ – which evokes the habitat and symbolism of these nocturnal birds.

HIS EYE ON THE SPARROW
Bruce Conner / USA 2006 / 4 mins
The power of music transports the founders of the Soul Stirrers gospel quartet back in time to the Depression Era. A poignant refrain by a master of found footage.

MARGUERITE DURAS / ALAIN RESNAIS (0.65, 0.85, 1.0 FPS)
David Dempewolf / USA 2007 / 19 mins
The opening act of Hiroshima Mon Amor has been condensed and structured, with urgent repetition, to reconstitute the dialogue between Duras’ text and Resnais’ vision. Words assume priority as potent images are crudely masked, emphasising details and inviting fresh analysis of this powerful sequence.

HELENÉS (APPARITION OF FREEDOM)
Christoph Draeger / Switzerland 2005 / 18 mins
Helenés combines two examples of propaganda from East and West. A bleak Hungarian instructional film on nuclear attack is presented in its entirely, strategically subtitled with text from George Bush’s inauguration speech (an idiosyncratic interpretation of the concept of freedom).

Total running time approximately 80 mins

Fuses (Carolee Schneemann, 1964-67)

Saturday 27 October 2007, at 7pm, NFT3
CAROLEE SCHNEEMANN PRESERVATIONS

Newly preserved prints. Carolee Schneemann is a multi-media artist whose films, performances, installations and writings are a radical discourse on the body, sexuality and gender.

FUSES
Carolee Schneemann / USA 1964-67 / 29 mins
Fuses is a vibrant celebration of a passionate relationship, openly portraying sexual intercourse without the objectification of pornography. To extend the tactile intimacy of lovemaking to filmmaking, Schneemann treated the filmstrips as a canvas, working by hand to paint, transform and cut the footage into a dense collage. The erotic energy of the body is transferred directly onto the film material. Recently preserved by Anthology Film Archives, this legendary work glows with a clarity unseen since its debut in the 1960s.

KITCH’S LAST MEAL
Carolee Schneemann / USA 1973-76 / c.60 mins (double screen)
The moving conclusion to the autobiographical trilogy which began with Fuses, Kitch’s Last Meal documents the routines of daily life. It was shot on the Super-8 home movie format and is projected double screen (one image above the other) as an interchangeable set of 18-minute reels. The soundtrack mixes personal reminiscences with ambient sounds of the household, and includes the original text used for Schneemann’s 1975 performance ‘Interior Scroll’. Time passes, a relationship winds down and death closes in: filming and recording stopped when the elderly cat Kitch, Schneemann’s closest companion for two decades, died. Each performance of the film in its original state was a re-ordering of the visual and aural materials, arranged by the artist according to mood and environment. For the preservation print, three pairs of reels have been selected and blown up to 16mm.

Total running time approximately 80 mins

The preservation of Fuses was supported by the University of Chicago Film Studies Center and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. The preservation of Kitch’s Last Meal was supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Water Spell (Sandy Ding, 2007)

Saturday 27 October 2007, at 9pm, NFT3
MYSTERIOUS EMULSION

WATER SPELL
Sandy Ding / USA 2007 / 42 mins
A journey from realism to a supersensory realm, slipping under the surface and between molecules at a microscopic scale. Channeling the subconscious, Water Spell is both odyssey and invocation; a ritual of transformation and retinal blast. The film releases the energy locked within its frames through flickering pulsations of light.

BLUE MONET
Carl E. Brown / Canada 2006 / 56 mins (double screen)
Rarely shown in the UK, Carl Brown is a long-established film artist whose practice is dedicated to the modification of images by chemical means. Blue Monet is an homage to the French Impressionist, and an attempt to bring the Monet experience into the realm of cinema. Through the ebb and flow of intricate imagery, water lilies eternally blossom and fade with otherworldly grace. Brown has used his alchemical techniques to transfer Monet’s sense of colour, light, sky and water onto film. Viewed in spacious double-screen and enhanced by swathes of sound, this film is an immersive experience.

Total running time approximately 100 mins

Now Wait for Last Year (Rachel Reupke, 2007)

Sunday 28 October 2007, from 12-7pm, Studio, FREE
NOW WAIT FOR LAST YEAR

NOW WAIT FOR LAST YEAR
Rachel Reupke / UK-China 2007 / 9 mins (continuous loop)

In response to the rapid pace of property development in Beijing, Reupke references the visual style of architectural practice and corporate videos to present a sequence of fixed views of urban landscapes. Buildings which share the characteristics of both traditional and futuristic design are displayed, but all is not what it seems. Digital images cannot be trusted: these could be plans for future structures or computer-aided fantasy.

The Ivalo River Delta (Patrick Beveridge, 2007)

Sunday 28 October 2007, at 2pm, NFT3
OVER LAND AND SEA

THE IVALO RIVER DELTA
Patrick Beveridge / UK 2007 / 17 mins
Shot within the Arctic Circle in northern Lapland, the film documents the landscape and lively night sky of an icy wilderness. The Aurora Borealis and other extraordinary phenomena are captured through long exposures and stunning time-lapse photography.

AT SEA
Peter Hutton / USA 2007 / 60 mins
Peter Hutton has modestly spoken of his work as being ‘a little detour’ from the history of cinema but perhaps he is following a path that others have neglected, or are yet to discover. Typified by fixed shots of extended duration, his concentrated gaze builds a bridge between early cinema, landscape painting and still photography, evoking Lumière, Turner and Stieglitz. Hutton’s camera often records the subtle changes of light and atmospheric conditions of rural and urban locations, and has frequently been directed toward nautical themes. This new film is essentially about the birth, life and death of large merchant ships. Following the construction of the vessels in South Korea and the passage of a massive container ship across the North Atlantic, it ends with images of shipbreaking in Bangladesh. At Sea is a real tour-de-force, in which the weight and scale of its subject is conveyed by masterful cinematography over a series of breathtaking compositions.

Total running time approximately 80 mins

Note: Peter Hutton will present a screening of his early work at Tate Modern on Monday 29 October 2007.

Pitcher Of Colored Light (Robert Beavers, 2007)

Sunday 28 October 2007, at 4pm, NFT3
THE PERCIPIENT IMAGE

DISCOVERIES ON THE FOREST FLOOR 1-3
Charlotte Pryce / USA 2007 / 4 mins
‘Three miniature, illuminated, hagiographic studies of plants observed and imagined, hand-processed and optically printed.’ (Charlotte Pryce)

THE SKY WALKS ME HOME
Allen D. Glass II / USA-China 2005 / 24 mins
A journey through China, visiting northern provinces, Inner Mongolia, Tibet and Beijing. The filmmaker travelled alone, photographing the landscape and inhabitants of this extraordinary region with a keen and compassionate eye.

THE CROSSING
Timoleon Wilkins / USA 2007 / 6 mins
Crowns of light and subtle gradations of colour are refracted through extreme close-ups of natural phenomena. Moments of sentience, an elevation of consciousness.

THE BREATH
Minyong Jang / Korea 2007 / 10 mins
‘A respiratory exchange between me and a bamboo forest.’ (Minyong Jang)

PITCHER OF COLORED LIGHT
Robert Beavers / USA 2007 / 24 mins
Following the completion of his 17-film cycle ‘My Hand Outstretched’, Beavers travelled to New England to photograph the solitude of his mother’s house. Employing a more intimate approach to filming, he created this tender portrait which contrasts a dark interior with the vibrancy of an abundant garden. As seasons pass, the camera searches through shadows, conveying the slowed pace of life in old age.

Total running time approximately 70 mins

Seven Easy Pieces by Marina Abramovic (Babette Mangolte, 2007)

Sunday 28 October 2007, at 7pm, NFT3
Tuesday 30 October 2007, at 7:30pm, Studio
SEVEN EASY PIECES BY MARINA ABRAMOVIC

SEVEN EASY PIECES BY MARINA ABRAMOVIC
Babette Mangolte / USA 2007 / 93 mins

For one week in November 2005, Yugoslavian artist Marina Abramovic gave seven consecutive performances in the rotunda of the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, presenting her own works alongside interpretations of what are now regarded as seminal performance pieces by artists such as Joseph Beuys and Bruce Nauman. Actions that were once performed to select audiences in studios or small galleries were transformed into public spectacle. The artist’s own ‘Lips of Thomas’ is an intense ritual that repeatedly subjects the body to physical pain, being clearly related to her country’s war torn past. Other uncompromising works address sexuality (Vito Acconci, ‘Seedbed’), confrontation (Valie Export, ‘Genital Panic’) and suffering (Gina Pane, ‘The Conditioning’). The performances, executed with extraordinary discipline and composure, test the thresholds of endurance and determination. Babette Mangolte’s mesmerising document of this event condenses the entire series into 90 minutes. The camera, cool and detached, rarely strays from the artists’ body, detailing mental and physical tension with the sharp clarity of high definition video. Live art, best experienced in the moment, has rarely been captured with such atmosphere.

The Object Which Thinks Us: OBJECT 1 (Samantha Rebello, 2007)

Sunday 28 October 2007, at 9pm, NFT3
THE ANAGOGIC CHAMBER

FILM FOR INVISIBLE INK, CASE NO: 71: BASE-PLUS-FOG
David Gatten / USA 2006 / 10 mins
‘Just barely a whisper. The minimum density, the slightest shape. A series of measurements, an equation for living. The edge of what matters, the contours of an idea. A selection of coordinates for finding one’s way back.’ (David Gatten)

SHADOW TRAP
Greg Pope / UK-Norway 2007 / 8 mins
Shards of emulsion produced during an auto-destructive film performance have been layered and structured onto clear 35mm. Extending across the soundtrack area, the synaesthetic image creates an intense volley of sound and light.

THE OBJECT WHICH THINKS US: OBJECT 1
Samantha Rebello / UK 2007 / 8 mins
Utilitarian objects, related to health and hygiene, rendered in unconventional ways. This unsettling film questions the way that we relate to our surroundings by exploring the ‘radical otherness’ of things.

fugitive l(i)ght
Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof / Canada 2005 / 9 mins
Adrift on the mists of time, archival images of Loïe Fuller’s ‘Serpentine Dance’ shimmer forth and dissolve in folds of abstract colour.

SICK SERENA AND DREGS AND WRECK AND WRECK
Emily Wardill / UK 2007 / 10 mins
A farce of fractures: part study of allegorical stained glass windows, part fiction of disparate doppelgangers.

VICTORY OVER THE SUN
Michael Robinson / USA 2007 / 13 mins
Viewed through science fiction or scientific innovation, the future is as far away now as it ever was. Sites of past World’s Fairs witness battles between good and evil, the spirit world and the cold hard light of day.

TODAY!
Jessie Stead, David Gatten / USA 2007 / 11 mins
‘Touch what you see when you find it or pick it up. Fall off tomorrow’s promise, not injured and again. In the woods there is snow, in the water there is sugar, bodies are made of salt and (yesterday is unaware).’ (Jessie Stead & David Gatten)

Total running time approximately 75 mins

Note: Festival guest David Gatten will lead a practical workshop on the use of text in 16mm filmmaking on Thursday 25 October 2007. See separate announcement.

…

Standard ticket price is £8.50

Book online at www.lff.org.uk
Telephone Box Office: 020 7928 3232
Book in person at BFI Southbank

For full booking info see www.lff.org.uk

LFF: David Gatten Workshop

2007-10-25T10:00:00.000Z

LFF: DAVID GATTEN WORKSHOP
London BFI Southbank
25 October 2007

As a prelude to this year's London Film Festival Avant-Garde Weekend, American artist David Gatten leads a one-day, practical workshop on the use of text in 16mm filmmaking. The workshop is suitable for both beginners and experienced practitioners. Places are extremely limited, so book early to avoid disappointment. Presented in association with no.w.here.

David Gatten

Thursday 25 October 2007, from 10am-5pm, BFI Southbank
DAVID GATTEN: THE IMAGE & THE WORD (WORKSHOP)

Throughout the history of cinema, images and text have been combined on-screen in a variety of ways and for a range of reasons. Silent-era comedy, mid-century newsreels, avant-garde films and home movies have used words to tell stories, convey facts and explore the enjoyments and anxieties of reading.

In this day-long workshop, Brooklyn artist David Gatten will provide an overview of such practice, with particular attention to filmmakers who have deployed on-screen text to investigate the way text functions as both image and language, the border between the legible and illegible, and the limits of what can be known through words.

David Gatten has made prominent use of the printed word in the ongoing series The Secret History of the Dividing Line (sections screened here in previous years) and his recent Film for Invisible Ink, Case No: 71: Base-Plus-Fog (showing on 28 October).

Following introductory screenings of relevant works, participants will make their own films using a variety of processes, including direct-on-film applications, ink-and-cellophane tape transfers, slide projections, close-up cinematography, in-camera contact printing and more.

Tickets: £35 (standard) / £25 (concessions & no.w.here members)
Box Office: 020 7928 3232, online at www.lff.org.uk or in person at BFI Southbank.

Tickets go on sale on 29 September 2007. (26 September 2007 for BFI members.)
Places are extremely limited, so book early to avoid disappointment.
Additional tickets or returns may be available in the days before the event.

Babette Mangolte

2007-09-12T19:30:00.000Z

BABETTE MANGOLTE: THE CAMERA, JE or LA CAMERA, I
London Whitechapel Gallery
Wednesday 12 September 2007, at 7:30pm

A rare screening of The Camera: Je or La Camera: I, followed by a discussion between filmmaker Babette Mangolte and Ian White, Adjunct Film Curator, Whitechapel. Presented in association with LUX and Mark Webber.

The Camera: Je or La Camera: I (Babette Mangolte, 1977)

THE CAMERA: JE or LA CAMERA: I
Babette Mangolte, USA, 1977, 16mm, b/w & colour, sound, 88 minutes

An experimental film which acts out the view of a photographer on her subjects and the city she lives in, New York. The film uses a technique of subjective camera, to give to the spectator an active sense of the problematics in the relation of camera to subject, photographing to photographed.

The film is a description of the act of making photographs from the point of view of the still camera and therefore the point of view of the photographer. This technique of 'subjective camera' places the person who looks at the film in the same relation with the screen as the one of the photographer with her subjects, therefore giving to the spectator, on a first-hand basis, so to speak, a direct experience of the tension as well as the wanderings and timing of a photographic session, and a way to understand and perceive the relation between photographer and subject, a relation which is not about dialogue but about power, power of saying yes or no to the taking of the photograph, power however undermined by the elements of anxiety (coming from both sides, the subject and the photographer). The situation is turned around at the end of the film when the power is shown to belong to the performer on the screen, acting as a critic, looking at the photographs displayed in front of him, and questioning by his look the work of the photographer.

We guess along the way the character of the photographer, a woman, through the kind of pictures she is taking: portraits in the first part, streets and buildings in the second part. This double structure is conceived as a metaphor of the inherent dual aspect of the act of taking a photograph: being outside with the still camera, being removed and maintaining the distance which is felt necessary to judge and take the picture as opposed to the desire to participate and be included, to be inside of it ...

A going back and forth between observation and sentiment or imagination, the film is a self-portrait of the photographer-filmmaker during the years 1976-1977.

Presented in association with John Hansard Gallery, Southampton as part of the exhibition Live Art on Camera, 18 September - 10 November 2007, which includes photographic work by Babette Mangolte and others.

Babette Mangolte's new feature Seven Easy Pieces by Marina Abramovic, a document of the artist's week-long performance series at the Guggenheim Museum, will be screened in The Times BFI 51st London Film Festival in October.

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Whitechapel Gallery
80-82 Whitechapel High Street, London, E1 7QX
Nearest Tube: Aldgate East
MAP OF AREA

Tickets: £5
Telephone: 020 7522 7888
Email: film@whitechapel.org

www.whitechapel.org

SECRET CINEMA NEWS

2007-07-11T11:51:00.000Z

As you might have noticed, the Secret Cinema blog has been 'temporarily' mothballed. This has happened for two reasons - firstly, it's quite time consuming to post the announcements here and by email, and I have been just too busy recently. More importantly though, the idea of the blog was to provide the possibility for people to post their reflections on and responses to the screenings that are listed. That hasn't happened, so the blog seems redundant.

The Secret Cinema email list will continue to send out announcements until further notice. To subscribe, please visit http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/secretcinema/

Thank you !

Light Reading: Loren Sears

2007-06-20T19:00:00.000Z

LIGHT READING: Loren Sears
London Light Reading
Wednesday 20 June 2007, at 7pm

Light Reading Series 7
LOREN SEARS

American film and video artist Loren Sears will show and discuss a selection of his early work, including the Haight-Ashbury Quartet, at Light Reading on June 20th at 7pm.

Be-In (Loren Sears, 1967)

Each of the four films in the quartet, which dates from 1967 to 1971, is a personal documentary that uses superimposition and complex (home made) optical printing to portray private and communal life in San Francisco’s hippie centre. They include footage of the legendary Gathering of the Tribes in Golden Gate Park, Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, the Grateful Dead and the Diggers. On the fortieth anniversary of the ‘Summer of Love’, Sears made new digital transfers of the films and presented them at the Cannes Film Festival and market earlier this year.

Loren Sears began making film in 1965 and was a founding member of Canyon Cinema (which remains one of the oldest surviving film co-operatives) and manager of Canyon Cinematheque in San Francisco; an innovator in film and video technology; artist-in-residence at KQED-TV in San Francisco; and helped to build the production departments for both the Public Cable Access Center and KLSR-TV in Eugene, Oregon.

As one of the first West Coast artists to begin using video in the late 1960s, Sears was cited by Gene Youngblood, in his seminal book “Expanded Cinema”, as one of the foremost innovators in the field for the psychedelic video mixes he created at KQED’s centre for experimental television. Between 1972-74, Sears lived and travelled across the USA in a van outfitted for video production, shooting personal journals and initiating community video projects. At Light Reading, he will also screen The Pacific Lake, Tribal Vision as an example of his work from this period.

Light Reading is an on-going series of critical dialogues that engage artists, writers and curators in conversation around a selected artist’s body of work. To be included on the mailing list for future events, please contact courses@nowhere-lab.org

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Light Reading
3rd Floor, 316–318 Bethnal Green Road, London, E2 0AG
Nearest Tube / Train: Bethnal Green
MAP OF AREA

Tickets: £5 door / £4 advance
Telephone: 020 7372 3925
Email: courses@nowhere-lab.org
Booking is essential for this event, as places are limited.

www.nowhere-lab.org

...

LOREN SEARS
Light Reading, Wednesday 20 June 2007

Haight-Ashbury Quartet
For history and art’s sake I want to keep these four pieces before the public. They recount personal but widely shared experiences of the late ‘60s – from street and communal life of Haight-Ashbury to romance and family in deep country. Each is a documentary and a song of the times, people and places they record – so-called “tribal home movies” – ancient and eternal.

A technical note: The last two films explore the techniques of editing and composing within the camera. I had burned out on the demanding optical printing techniques of my previous films and wished for art to be easier. Following Brakhage (and others) I began layering multiple exposures in the camera – imagining one layer to be a base line, another punctuating melody, and another subtle harmony or counterpoint. When I had run the film through the camera three times, it was done. Matting the lens with the left hand provided vignettes and protected other areas of the frame from exposure.

Be-In
Loren Sears, 1967, 16mm on DVD, colour, sound, 6 mins
A credible re-creation of the event, as you might have experienced if you were there – the original, the great Gathering of the Tribes for a Human Be-In, Golden Gate Park, January 14, 1967. Optically re-worked film and sound are energetically woven together in a tapestry of the day.

Tribal Home Movie #2
Loren Sears, 1967, 16mm on DVD, colour, silent, 7 mins
An intimate flipside of Be-In visits homes, parks and ‘offices’ of the neighbourhood, tearing out discrete images of daily life and assembling them into montage episodes – like a sequence of haiku poems. Featured are the Grateful Dead at home, Oracle office, Diggers’ Free Food in the Park and Free Frame of Reference, and many friends. Be-In, performed on my homemade optical printer. Too visually intricate for sound – this one’s all for your eyes.

Connie Joy
Loren Sears, 1971, 16mm on DVD, colour, sound, 3 mins
This is a love poem, pure and simple. I awoke the morning of our first romance, took up the camera and composed this picture. I’m still astounded at how beautifully and precisely the instant was captured. Exposed in several layers, without editing of any sort – it came out of the camera this way ! A rhythmic sound loop from Bob Dylan’s “New Morning” ices the cake.

Sevin Goes to School
Loren Sears, 1971, 16mm on DVD, colour, silent, 3 mins
Connie’s son’s first day of school, we awoke to a crisp September morning in a tipi overlooking a sheep ranch in Northern California. The multiple layers here are folded back on themselves so the beginning, middle and end of the story run concurrently.

+

Day/Year - The Pacific Lake, Tribal Vision
Loren Sears, 1973, video on DVD, black and white, sound, 25 mins
An edited composition from Tribal Vision Journals, summer 1972 – from Bolinas,CA to Blain, WA. A poem edited around four story lines which climax near the end. It follows the cyclic pattern of a day, morning to evening – across the entire subculture – with birth and awakening as the outcome. It is about inventing new culture.

www.nowhere-lab.org

MIACA@LUX

2007-06-13T19:00:00.000Z

MIACA@LUX
London LUX Salon
Wednesday 13 June 2007, at 7pm for 7:30pm start

As part of an exchange project between LUX and the Moving Image Archive of Contemporary Art (MIACA), Japan, MIACA presents a special lecture and screening of contemporary Japanese artists' video.

Includes a lecture by Hitomi Hasegawa and Mayumi Hirano of MIACA about its work and the arts scene in Yokohama, plus a screening of work by Tetsushi Higashino, Takehiro Iikawa, Tetsuya Karatsu, Takuro Kotaka, Chikara Matsumoto, Kaeko Mizukoshi, Daisuke Nagaoka, Masanobu Nishino, Mai Yamashita + Naoto Kobayashi.

This event is generously supported by The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation and The Japan Foundation.

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LUX Salon
3rd Floor, Shacklewell Studios, 18 Shacklewell Lane, London, E8 2EZ
Nearest Train: Dalston Kingsland
MAP OF AREA

ADMISSION FREE
Places are extremely limited so booking is essential
To book a place send your name to salon@lux.org.uk
Please be on time - no late entry
Telephone: 020 7503 3980

www.lux.org.uk

Light Reading: Hilary Koob-Sassen / Steven Ball

2007-05-30T19:00:00.000Z

LIGHT READING: Hilary Koob-Sassen & Steven Ball
London Light Reading
Wednesday 30 May 2007, at 7pm

Light Reading Series 7
HILARY KOOB-SASSEN / STEVEN BALL

no.w.here is excited to launch it's forthcoming Light Reading series at its new location in the East End. Light Reading’s 2007 series will open with a conversation between the artists Hilary Koob-Sassen and Steven Ball. Extracts of work by Hilary Koob-Sassen will be screened during the event.

Hilary Koob-Sassen is an artist living in London. He performs with his experimental band The Errorists. His audio-visual performances and public syntax experiments work towards a trellis of post-modern political proposal. He shows his sculpture, film, and performance internationally. His solo show, New Vernacular, is currently running at 1+2 Artspace, London, and a forthcoming screening and performance New Lands, is planned at the National Film Theatre this June.

Light Reading is an on-going series of critical dialogues that engage artists, writers and curators in conversation around a selected artist’s body of work. To be included on the mailing list please contact courses@nowhere-lab.org

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Light Reading
3rd Floor, 316–318 Bethnal Green Road, London, E2 0AG
Nearest Tube / Train: Bethnal Green
MAP OF AREA

Tickets: £5 door / £4 advance
Telephone: 020 7372 3925
Email: courses@nowhere-lab.org
Booking is essential for this event, as places are limited.

www.nowhere-lab.org