Feel Flows: The Films of Phil Solomon

FEEL FLOWS: THE FILMS OF PHIL SOLOMON
London Tate Modern
24 & 27 October 2011

On his first visit to the UK, Phil Solomon presents two programmes of his alchemical film work. By treating the celluloid surface with a variety of substances and techniques, Solomon transforms images to construct an emotionally charged and deeply affecting cinema. Often elegiac in tone, his symphonic approach makes the personal profound.

The Snowman (Phil Solomon, 1995)

This survey of Solomon’s 16mm films also features Rehearsals for Retirement, a machinima work from the digital series In Memoriam (for Mark LaPore), made with imagery drawn from the Grant Theft Auto videogames. Programme two includes Seasons…, a collaboration with Solomon’s colleague, friend and mentor, Stan Brakhage.

“Although part of a long avant-garde tradition, Solomon makes films that look like no others I’ve seen. The conceit of the filmmaker as auteur has rarely been more appropriate or defensible – the liberating effect of Solomon’s work suggests a rather different realm: Film Meets Vision, Rejoice!” (Manohla Dargis, New York Times)

Curated by Mark Webber and presented in association with The 55th BFI London Film Festival. Solomon will premiere American Falls at BFI Southbank on Sunday 23 October.

The Exquisite Hour (Phil Solomon, 1989/94)

Monday 24 October 2011, at 7pm
PHIL SOLOMON: PROGRAMME 1

THE EXQUISITE HOUR
Phil Solomon, 1989/94, 16mm, colour, sound, 14 min
“… Partly a lullaby for the dying, partly a lament of the death of cinema … [it] is dedicated to the memory of my grandparents, Albert Solomon, who was a projectionist for Fox, and Rose Solomon, who took tickets at Lowe’s Paradise in the Bronx.” (Phil Solomon)

THE SNOWMAN
Phil Solomon, 1995, 16mm, colour, sound, 8 min
“A meditation on memory, burial and decay – a belated kaddish for my father.” (Phil Solomon)

CLEPSYDRA
Phil Solomon, 1992, 16mm, b/w, silent, 15 min
“Solomon has evolved his technique so that in his latest work (‘Clepsydra’ – ‘waterclock’) the textures are constantly changing and are often appropriate to each figure in metaphoric interplay with each figure’s gestural (symbolic) movement. He has, thus, created consonance with thought as destroyer/creator – a Kali-like aesthetic ‘There is a light at the end of the tunnel’ (Romantic); and it is a train coming straight at us: … (and, to balance such, perhaps, with a touch of Zen) … it is beautiful!” (Stan Brakhage)

PSALM III: “NIGHT OF THE MEEK”
Phil Solomon, 2002, 16mm, b/w, sound, 23 min
“It is Berlin, November 9, 1938, and, as the night air is shattered throughout the city, the Rabbi of Prague is summoned from a dark slumber, called upon once again to invoke the magic letters from the Great Book that will bring his creature made from earth back to life, in the hour of need. A kindertodenliede in black and silver on a night of gods and monsters.” (Phil Solomon)

REHEARSALS FOR RETIREMENT
Phil Solomon, 2007, video, colour, sound, 10 min
“Had I known the end would end in laughter / I tell my daughter it doesn’t matter.” (Phil Ochs)

Nocturne (Phil Solomon, 1980)

Thursday 27 October 2011, at 7pm
PHIL SOLOMON: PROGRAMME 2

WHAT’S OUT TONIGHT IS LOST
Phil Solomon, 1983, 16mm, colour, silent, 8 min
“Adopting its title from a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay, What’s Out Tonight Is Lost is an elegiac film sifting through the unrecoverable. The film is a reflecting pool where vision breaks up. The home we recognize is swallowed in the brume, the light barely penetrates; and the yellow school bus steals us away, delivering us into new clouds, embracing fear. The film has a surface of cracked porcelain and intaglio: the allergic childhood skin of cracks and bruises. This is a film of transubstantiations, the discorporation of human forms into embers. Air looms and blossoms into solidity and nearness … I hear it breathing …” (Mark McElhatten)

PSALM I: “THE LATENESS OF THE HOUR”
Phil Solomon, 2001, 16mm, colour, sound, 10 min
“A little Nachtmusik, a deep blue overture to the series. Breathing in the cool night airs, breathing out a children’s song; then whispering a prayer for a night of easeful sleep. My blue attempt at a sequel to Rose Hobart.” (Phil Solomon)

NOCTURNE
Phil Solomon, 1980, 16mm, b/w, silent, 10 min
“Its setting is a suburban neighbourhood populated by kids at play and indistinct but ominous parental figures. A submerged narrative rehearses a type of young boy’s night-time game in which a flashlight is wielded in a darkened room to produce effects of aerial combat and bombardment. A sense of hostility tinged with terror seeps into commonplace movements … Fantasy merges with nightmare, a war of dimly suppressed emotions rages beneath a veneer of household calm … In Nocturne, found footage is worked so subtly into the fabric of threat that its comes as a shock ploughed from the unconscious.” (Paul Arthur)

SEASONS ...
Phil Solomon & Stan Brakhage, 2002, 16mm, colour, silent, 15 min
“Brakhage’s frame by frame hand carvings and etchings directly into the film emulsion, sometimes combined with paint, are illuminated by Solomon’s optical printing, then edited by Solomon into a four part seasonal cycle‚. This film can be considered to be part of a larger work by Brakhage entitled “…”. Seasons… is inspired by the colours and textures found in the woodcuts of Hokusai and Hiroshige, and the playful sense of forms dancing in space from the filmworks of Robert Breer and Len Lye.” (Phil Solomon)

REMAINS TO BE SEEN
Phil Solomon, 1989/94, 16mm, colour, sound, 17 min
“In the melancholic Remains to Be Seen, dedicated to the memory of Solomon’s mother, the scratchy rhythm of a respirator intones menace. The film, optically crisscrossed with tiny eggshell cracks, often seems on the verge of shattering. The passage from life into death is chartered by fugitive images: pans of an operating room, an old home movie of a picnic, a bicyclist in vague outline against burnt orange and blue … Solomon measures emotions with images that seem stolen from a family album of collective memory.” (Manohla Dargis, Village Voice)

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

London Film Festival 2011

LONDON FILM FESTIVAL: EXPERIMENTA WEEKEND
London BFI Southbank
21-23 October 2011

The Experimenta Weekend is the London Film Festival’s annual survey of artist’s film and video. Over three days, from 21-23 October 2011, a unique sequence of programmes will offer a curated selection of outstanding work made around the world.

Phil Solomon, renowned for his exquisite 16mm films, will make his first appearance in the UK to introduce the epic American Falls. In a triptych of images, waves of chemically treated celluloid reflect the aspirations and tragedies of the American dream.

Two festival regulars return with debut features: Lewis Klahr’s elliptical narrative The Pettifogger further develops his distinctive cut-out animation techniques; Ben Rivers’ Two Years at Sea mixes fact and fantasy in an extended study of a marginal outsider. Observational filmmaker Robert Fenz and Portuguese artist Gabriel Abrantes are featured in solo screenings.

Contemporary moving image owes much to the pioneering generation of avant-garde filmmakers that appear in Pip Chodorov’s documentary Free Radicals. Jonas Mekas, a central figure in that movement’s history, will present two new works of his own: Sleepless Night Stories and Correspondence (in collaboration with José Luis Guerin). The visionary films of West Coast pioneer Chick Strand, which combine experimental, collage and ethnographic styles, can be rediscovered in newly preserved prints.

The Experimenta Weekend is curated by Mark Webber, with assistance from Adam Pugh and Marina Ribera.

Outside the weekend programme, the Festival also includes James Benning's Twenty Cigarettes, plus new preservations of Roberto Rossellini’s The Machine That Kills Bad People and Nicholas Ray’s experimental project We Can’t Go Home Again. See The 55th BFI London Film Festival for full details.

Due to the popularity of the Experimenta Weekend, we now offer several repeat screenings. If programmes are listed as “sold out”, please keep trying as additional tickets are released in the days leading up to the weekend & limited numbers are usually available on the door immediately before each programme begins.

Free Radicals (Pip Chodorov, 2010)

Friday 21 October 2011, at 6:30pm, NFT3
& Monday 24 October 2011, at 4:15pm, NFT3
& Monday 24 October 2011, at 7pm, STUDIO
FREE RADICALS: A HISTORY OF EXPERIMENTAL CINEMA

FREE RADICALS: A HISTORY OF EXPERIMENTAL CINEMA
Pip Chodorov | France 2011 | 82 min

Free Radicals scratches the surface of the history of avant-garde cinema in Europe and the USA, from early post-war pioneers through to the founding of New York’s Anthology Film Archives, a museum whose screen is the exhibition space. Director Pip Chodorov is well-placed to chronicle the movement – he established the Re:Voir label to distribute tapes and DVDs of artists’ films, and counts many key exponents amongst his friends. In this personal journey through experimental movies, he surveys a generation of artists who pushed the boundaries of the medium. Working without compromise, and without financial rewards, they were forced to create their own support structures in an expression of solidarity. Whilst not claiming to be a definitive documentary, Free Radicals is a discerning introduction to the field, and its informal nature provides a privileged glimpse at the personalities involved. Archival footage of Hans Richter, Nam June Paik and Stan Vanderbeek (drawn from TV programmes made by the filmmaker’s father) supplements new interviews with Chodorov’s distinguished acquaintances (Jonas Mekas, Peter Kubelka, Robert Breer, Ken Jacobs) and generous excerpts from the films themselves.

Two Years at Sea (Ben Rivers, 2011)

Friday 21 October 2011, at 9pm, NFT1
& Monday 24 October 2011, at 1:30pm, NFT1
TWO YEARS AT SEA

TWO YEARS AT SEA
Ben Rivers | UK 2011 | 88 min

Using old 16mm cameras, artist Ben Rivers, who has been nominated for the Jarman Award and has won a Tiger Award at Rotterdam, creates work from stories of real people, often those who have disconnected from the normal world and taken themselves into wilderness territories. His new long-form work extends his relationship with Jake, a man first encountered in his short film This Is My Land. The title refers to the work Jake did in order to finance his chosen state of existence. He lives alone in a ramshackle house, in the middle of the forest. It’s full of curiosities from a bygone age, including a beloved old gramophone. We see his daily life across the seasons, as he occupies himself going for walks in all weathers, and taking naps in the misty fields and woods. Endlessly resourceful, he builds a raft to fish in a loch. Jake has a tremendous sense of purpose, however eccentric his behaviour seems to us. The presence of the camera is irrelevant to him; he has no desire for human contact, and is completely at home in his environment, the nature around him and his constructed abode. Rivers’ gracefully-constructed film creates an intimate connection with an individual who would otherwise be a complete outsider to us. (Helen de Witt)

Trypps 7 (Badlands) (Ben Russell, 2010)

Saturday 22 October 2011, at 2pm, NFT3
& Thursday 27 October 2011, at 3:45pm, STUDIO
ALTERED STATES

TRYPPS #7 (BADLANDS)
Ben Russell | USA 2010 | 10 min
The mirror crack’d: As a young woman, high on LSD, looks toward the camera, the doors of perception swing open for both viewer and subject.

WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING
Mary Helena Clark | USA 2010 | 9 min
‘This is your life. It rides like a dream.’ (MHC)

SANS TITRE
Neil Beloufa | France 2010 | 15 min
In a reconstruction of a villa occupied by terrorists during the Algerian War, onlookers speculate on the activities that took place.

THE PIPS
Emily Wardill | UK 2011 | 4 min
A gymnast performs, and everything begins to fall away …

…THESE BLAZEING STARRS!
Deborah Stratman | USA 2011 | 14min
Watch the skies! Throughout history, comets have heralded events of grave significance and change; today it is thought that they can reveal facts about the formation of the universe.

THESE HAMMERS DON’T HURT US
Michael Robinson | USA 2010 | 13 min
‘Tired of underworld and overworld alike, Isis escorts her favourite son on their final curtain call down the Nile, leaving a neon wake of shattered tombs and sparkling sarcophagi.’ (MR)

Total running time approximately 70 min

The Return (Nathaniel Dorsky, 2011)

Saturday 22 October 2011, at 4pm, NFT3
& Tuesday 25 October 2011, at 8:45pm, NFT2
NATHANIEL DORSKY / BEN RIVERS

PASTOURELLE
Nathaniel Dorsky | USA 2010 | 17 min
‘A pastourelle and an aubade are two different forms of courtship songs from the troubadour tradition. In this case, the film Pastourelle, a sister film to Aubade, is in the more tumultuous key of spring.’ (ND)

THE RETURN
Nathaniel Dorsky | USA 2011 | 27 min
‘Like a memory already gone, this place of life.’ Dorsky has created a poetic form of cinema in which the screen becomes a site for reverie or transfiguration. In his most recent film, he seems to move towards a more abstract representation of light and being.

SACK BARROW
Ben Rivers | UK 2011 | 21 min
The march of time claims another casualty. Sack Barrow documents (and laments) the out-dated, but functioning, technology of a family owned electroplating factory in the weeks around its closure – its old ways now unsustainable in the modern world.

Total running time approximately 70 min

Palácios de Pena (Gabriel Abrantes, 2011)

Saturday 22 October 2011, at 7pm, NFT3
& Tuesday 25 October 2011, at 1:15pm, NFT2
GABRIEL ABRANTES

LIBERDADE
Gabriel Abrantes & Benjamin Crotty | Portugal-Angola 2011 | 16 min
Liberdade sketches episodes in the relationship between a domineering Chinese immigrant and her Angolan boyfriend with lavishly cinematic panache. Travelling through spectacular locations in and around Luanda, they navigate the complications of their burgeoning identities and the different cultures they represent.

PALÁCIOS DE PENA (PALACES OF PITY)
Gabriel Abrantes & Daniel Schmidt | Portugal 2011 | 56 min
Gabriel Abrantes and his collaborators use the tropes of mainstream cinema to make works that are by turns comical, thought-provoking and transgressive. In a parable on guilt and oppression, which alludes to aspects of Portuguese colonial history, two cousins are potential heirs to their grandmother’s fortune. A new generation may be oblivious to the past, but inherits it nonetheless.

OLYMPIA I & II
Gabriel Abrantes & Katie Widloski | Portugal-USA 2008 | 7 min
Mimicking the composition of Manet’s notorious painting, the artists play out two possible scenarios: between a prostitute and her gay brother, and between a wealthy transsexual and his devoted maid.

Total running time approximately 80 min

Sleepless Nights Stories (Jonas Mekas, 2011)

Saturday 22 October 2011, at 9pm, NFT3
& Tuesday 18 October 2011, at 9pm, VUE3
& Thursday 20 October 2011, at 7pm, STUDIO
SLEEPLESS NIGHTS STORIES

SLEEPLESS NIGHTS STORIES
Jonas Mekas | USA 2011 | 114 min

Jonas Mekas’ opening confession that he suffers from insomnia will come as no surprise to anyone aware if his singular contribution to cinema. Over 50 years he has established and promoted a viable culture for truly independent and avant-garde filmmaking, and his recent acceptance by the art world has brought a long overdue wave of attention and success. Sleepless Nights Stories is the latest in the series of long-form diary films that Mekas has been making since his arrival in the USA in 1949. Eating, drinking, singing and dancing with friends, the tireless octogenarian is full of life and wonder, casually weaving together contemporary folk tales collected during travels across the globe. Marina Abramovic fantasizes about domesticity, Lee Stringer recounts an episode from his crack-addicted past, and the protagonist toasts the ‘working class voice’ of Amy Winehouse. Louis Garrel, Björk, Harmony Korine and Patti Smith also appear. Treating significant and inconsequential moments with equal import, Mekas’ modern day saga presents the first episodes from his ambitious ‘1001 Nights’ project.

Mosori Monika (Chick Strand, 1970)

Sunday 23 October 2011, at 2pm, NFT3
INTIMATE VISION: FILMS BY CHICK STRAND

As one of the instigators of Canyon Cinema, Chick Strand (1931-2009) was at the heart of 1960s West Coast avant-garde. Her film work, comprising of found footage and personally photographed material, has been rarely seen in the UK and is presented now in newly preserved prints. Strand’s camera is almost continually in motion, catching details in kinetic close-up to convey celebrations of intimacy and the joys of living.

‘For most of her filmmaking career, the integrity of Strand’s vision lay aslant of prevailing fashions, so that only belatedly did the full significance of her radically pioneering work in ethnographic, documentary, feminist, and compilation filmmaking – and above all, in the innovation of a unique film language created across these modes – become clear.’ (David James, The Most Typical Avant-Garde)

CARTOON LE MOUSSE
Chick Strand | USA 1979 | 15 min
In her collage films, Strand uses the magic of editing to conjure surreal humour from the connections between disparate fragments.

MOSORI MONIKA
Chick Strand | USA 1970 | 20 min
The impact of American missionaries on the Warao Indians in Venezuela is considered from the viewpoints of women from each side.

ANGEL SWEET BLUE WINGS
Chick Strand | USA 1966 | 3 min
A multi-layered cine-poem apropos life and vision.

LOOSE ENDS
Chick Strand | USA 1979 | 25 min
Found footage is used to convey the effect of information overload, finding wit and pathos in the complicated synthesis of personal experience and media assault.

ARTIFICIAL PARADISE
Chick Strand | USA 1986 | 13 min
‘The anthropologist’s most human desire: the ultimate contact with the informant. The denial of intellectualism and the acceptance of the romantic heart, and a soul without innocence.’ (CS)

KRISTALLNACHT
Chick Strand | USA 1979 | 7 min
‘Dedicated to the memory of Anne Frank, and the tenacity of the human spirit.’ (CS)

Total running time approximately 90 min

Loose Ends was preserved by Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley. All other films preserved by Pacific Film Archive and Academy Film Archive, Los Angeles, with support from the National Film Preservation Foundation.

American Falls (Phil Solomon, 2010)

Sunday 23 October 2011, at 4pm, NFT3
& Tuesday 25 October 2011, at 4pm, NFT3
PHIL SOLOMON’S AMERICAN FALLS

‘Should anyone imagine that the art of alchemy died with the Middle Ages, Phil Solomon’s American Falls testifies to the contrary: both to the possibilities of photographic and digital transformation and to the magical emanations of their fusion.’ (Tony Pipolo, Artforum)

AMERICAN FALLS
Phil Solomon | USA 2010 | 60 min
In his sublime 16mm films, Phil Solomon chemically alters photographic imagery to create a thick celluloid impasto that infuses footage with profound emotional resonance. For American Falls, Solomon rifles through a collective memory fashioned from both fact and fiction, mixing elements from newsreels, actualities and narrative films in a monumental retelling of American history which draws parallels with and reflects upon the current state of the nation. Houdini, Harold Lloyd, Keaton and King Kong commingle with presidents, gold-diggers, railroad barons and the civil rights movement. ‘My project is ultimately one of great hope, stemming from a life-long love for this American experiment of ours … but it is also necessitated by my deepest concern for its present and future directions.’ Originally conceived as a 360-degree installation around the walls of the Corcoran Gallery of Art’s rotunda, the work has been reconfigured for the cinema as a panoramic view in triptych, with surround sound mix by composer Wrick Wolff.

WHAT’S OUT TONIGHT IS LOST
Phil Solomon | USA 1983 | 8 min
‘The film began in response to an evaporating relationship, but gradually seeped outward to anticipate other imminent disappearing acts: youth, family, friends, time … I wanted the tonal shifts of the film’s surface to act as a barometer of the changes in the emotional weather.’ (PS)
Preserved by Academy Film Archive, Los Angeles.

Total running time approximately 80 min

Phil Solomon will present screenings of his earlier films at Tate Modern on 24 & 27 October 2011.

The Pettifogger (Lewis Klahr, 2011)

Sunday 23 October 2011, at 7pm, NFT3
& Tuesday 25 October 2011, at 7pm, STUDIO
THE PETTIFOGGER

THE PETTIFOGGER
Lewis Klahr | USA 2011 | 65 min
The first feature-length work by Lewis Klahr takes a unique approach to a familiar genre. Ostensibly a thriller that traces events in the life of an American gambler and con man circa 1963, The Pettifogger is described by the filmmaker as ‘an abstract crime film and, like many other crime films involving larceny, a sensorial exploration of the virulence of unfettered capitalism.’ Characters lifted from comic books move through an impressionistic landscape of textures, photographs and drawings, populating a story whose narrative is suggested but not strongly defined. Employing a range of iconography and appropriated audio to expand his signature style of collage animation, Klahr recycles symbols of popular culture to address themes of the loss of innocence and the irresistible allure of wealth.

APRIL SNOW
Lewis Klahr | USA 2010 | 10 min
A love story about cars and girls, carried away by songs from the Shangri-La’s and The Boss.

Total running time approximately 80 min

Correspondence (Robert Fenz, 2011)

Sunday 23 October 2011, at 9pm, NFT3
& Monday 24 October 2011, at 2pm, NFT3
ON THE ROAD WITH ROBERT FENZ

Robert Fenz’s films explore cultural diversity and the human condition with a keen eye reminiscent of his tutors Peter Hutton and James Benning. Mixing improvisation with luminous photography, he offers a poetic but political worldview. An associate of Robert Gardner’s Studio7Arts, Fenz has collaborated with musician Wadada Leo Smith and worked as cinematographer for Chantal Akerman.

THE SOLE OF THE FOOT
Robert Fenz | USA 2011 | 34 min
Filmed in France, Israel and Cuba. ‘Borders (and all the politics attending the drawing of borders) exist to keep some people in (citizenship) and others out. This film is an attempt to capture the presence of people otherwise denied the political right to be at home in some place that is their home, where they have their roots, where they have their being.’ (RF)

CORRESPONDENCE
Robert Fenz | USA 2011 | 30 min
For Correspondence, Fenz travelled to places where the pioneering ethnographic filmmaker Robert Gardner shot three of his best-known films – West Papua (Dead Birds), Ethiopia (Rivers of Sand) and India (Forest of Bliss). While documenting present conditions in these locations, Fenz also constructs an elegy for a form of image-making that is now in decline.

Total running time approximately 65 min


...

Advance booking is highly recommended
Standard ticket price: £10.50
Weekday screenings before 5pm: £7.00
Concessions for weekday screenings before 5pm: £6.00

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

London Film Festival 2010

LONDON FILM FESTIVAL: EXPERIMENTA WEEKEND
London BFI Southbank
23-24 October 2010

The Experimenta Weekend is a rare opportunity to experience artist’s film and video within the concentrated space of the cinema. This annual survey brings together works that acknowledge a tradition of avant-garde filmmaking while taking us forward into the expanded field of contemporary moving image.

Eight curated programmes demonstrate the breadth and diversity of short-form practice and include works by Nathaniel Dorsky, Miranda Pennell, Ben Rivers, Peter Tscherkassky. Featured artist Lewis Klahr will introduce his evocative cut-out animations and Daniel Barrow performs live. Two installations by Emily Richardson and Martin Arnold, each memorialising very different cinematic institutions, will be shown continuously for one day each. An additional event at the Natural History Museum explores the legacy of Darwin and the Galapagos through a new film by David Gatten.

The Experimenta Weekend is curated by Mark Webber, with assistance from Melissa Gronlund.

Due to the popularity of the Experimenta Weekend over the past few years, we are introducing repeat screenings. Rather perversely, some of these additional screenings will take place before the weekend. If programmes are listed as "sold out", please keep trying as additional tickets are released in the days leading up to the weekend & limited numbers are usually available on the door immediately before each programme.

Outside the weekend programme, the Festival’s Experimenta strand also includes features by John Akomfrah, James Benning, Li Hongqui, Sharon Lockhart and Ben Russell. See The BFI 54th London Film Festival for full details.

The Futurist (Emily Richardson, 2010)

Saturday 23 October 2010, from 12-7pm, Studio, FREE
THE FUTURIST

THE FUTURIST
Emily Richardson | UK 2010 | 4 min (continuous loop)
Illuminated by the light of the projector, the interior of a large, 1920s picture house is documented from a central position in the stalls. Emily Richardson’s films record impressions of environments ranging from natural landscapes to industrial or urban spaces. The Futurist is the first of a series in homage to the cinema experience.

Why Colonel Bunny was Killed (Miranda Pennell, 2010)

Saturday 23 October 2010, at 2pm, NFT3
& Monday 25 October 2010, at 2pm, NFT3
READING BETWEEN THE LINES

THE INDIAN BOUNDARY LINE
Thomas Comerford | USA 2010 | 42min
Comerford’s essay maps a historical demarcation which originally divided Native American land from that which was ceded to white settlers in 1812. Modern life has obscured the traces of this history in the Rogers Park district of Chicago. Juxtaposing past with present, footage shot along this formerly disputed territory is matched with readings from official documents, fiction and quotidian accounts.

FLAG MOUNTAIN
John Smith | UK 2010 | 8 min
A view across the city of Nicosia, over the Green Line border, to an unusual spectacle on a hillside. Lives continue in its shadow, amongst the contrasting flags, anthems and calls to prayer.

WHY COLONEL BUNNY WAS KILLED
Miranda Pennell | UK 2010 | 28 min
An exploration of turn of the century colonial life along the Durand Line, the frontier between Afghanistan and British India (now Pakistan). Remarkable period photographs are closely analysed as we listen to reports of exchanges between westerners, natives and mullahs written by missionary doctor TL Pennell.

Total running time approximately 80 min

Blue Mantle (Rebecca Meyers, 2010)

Saturday 23 October 2010, at 4pm, NFT3
& Friday 22 October 201o, at 4:15pm, NFT3
SUBLIME PASSAGES

SHUTTER
Alexi Manis | Canada 2010 | 8 min
Shutter suggests the uncanny atmosphere and changing light on the day of a total eclipse.

DRIFTER
Timoleon Wilkins | USA 1996-2010 | 24 min
Fragments of the filmmaker’s life, home and travels, recorded over a 14-year period. “The glories of atmospheric light and colour, inward soul-drifting, and the literal sensation of drifting within and through each shot and cut.” (TW)

SHRIMP BOAT LOG
David Gatten | USA 2010 | 6 min
“300 shots, 29 frames each, alternating between a notebook listing the names of shrimp boats that frequent the mouth of the Edisto River and images of these same boats.” (DG)

BLUE MANTLE
Rebecca Meyers | USA 2010 | 35 min
Blending 19th century American literature with factual accounts, illustrations and music by Debussy and Wagner, this oblique portrait of a shipwrecked coastline conveys the vastness and majesty of the ocean. A song to the sea, and a commemoration of those who have risked their lives off the treacherous Massachusetts shore.

TRAVELLING FIELDS
Inger Lise Hansen | Norway 2009 | 9 min
In the third film of her ‘inverted perspective’ trilogy, Hansen turns her camera on the North West Russia, creating monumental and uncanny vistas from these barren wastelands..

Total running time approximately 85 min

Every Time I See Your Picture I Cry (Daniel Barrow, 2008)

Sunday 23 October 2010, at 7pm, NFT3
EVERY TIME I SEE YOUR PICTURE I CRY
A Live Performance by Daniel Barrow

EVERY TIME I SEE YOUR PICTURE I CRY
Daniel Barrow | Canada 2008 | 60 min

Daniel Barrow has developed an intimate mode of ‘manual animation’ using the antiquated technology of an overhead projector. From a position amongst the audience, he recites live narration while manipulating layers of transparencies in continuous motion. Accentuated by interference patterns and sleight-of-hand trickery, Barrow’s hand-drawn images contrive an absorbing tale of comic book grotesques. Every Time I See Your Picture I Cry is a bizarre confessional detailing the grand but hopeless scheme of an estranged garbage collector and failed art student. Unloved and rejected by society, the protagonist begins a universal art project in the form of a telephone directory of ‘profound and intimate insights’ to chronicle the lives of those around him. As he snoops through the windows and waste bins of fellow citizens, his survey is rendered futile by a maniacal killer who follows in his wake, picking off subjects one by one. Invoking introspection, pathos and dark humour, this award winning performance piece is accompanied by an unassuming Beach Boys-inflected score recorded by Amy Linton of The Aislers Set.

Get out of the Car (Thom Andersen, 2010)

Saturday 23 October 2010, at 9pm, NFT3
& Tuesday 26 October 2010, at 2pm, NFT3
HIT THE ROAD

MAKE IT NEW JOHN
Duncan Campbell | UK 2009 | 50 min
The story of the DeLorean car and its notorious entrepreneur’s Northern Ireland venture, assembled from found and reconstructed footage. During a momentous period in the province’s history, the manufacture of this futuristic vehicle was beset by its own troubles – governmental pacts, an inexperienced workforce and allegations of misconduct. This insightful film, with its Pinteresque finale concerning the plight of the workers, raises questions on documentary form and the representation of historical events.

GET OUT OF THE CAR
Thom Andersen | USA 2010 | 34 min
Andersen’s latest homage to Los Angeles takes time to stop and consider the temporary architecture of roadside billboards, community murals and hand-painted signs. A movie about the ephemeral sights of the city, with a rocking soundtrack of local music and the confused interjections of passers-by.

Total running time approximately 90 min

Shadow Cuts (Martin Arnold, 2010)

Sunday 24 October 2010, from 12-7pm, Studio, FREE
SHADOW CUTS

SHADOW CUTS
Martin Arnold | Austria 2010 | 4min (continuous loop)
Alternately consumed by darkness and blinded by the light, Mickey and Pluto are caught in an eternal embrace by a film that refuses to end. In his films and digital works, Martin Arnold uses intense repetition or subtle substitution to reveal subliminal nuances beneath the surface of pre-existing footage.

Hours for Jerome (Nathaniel Dorsky, 1966-70/82)

Sunday 24 October 2010, at 2pm, NFT3
THREE FILMS BY NATHANIEL DORSKY

Nathaniel Dorsky finds moments of profound beauty among the shadows, reflections and luminosity of city life and the natural world. His open form of filmmaking creates a space for the viewer’s contemplation amidst the subtle and astonishing images which radiate from the screen. This programme presents two new films together with a recent preservation of a formative early work.

COMPLINE
Nathaniel Dorsky | USA 2009 | 19 min
“Compline is a night devotion or prayer, the last of the canonical hours, the final act in a cycle. It is the last film I will be able to shoot in Kodachrome; a loving duet with and a fond farewell to this noble emulsion.” (ND)

AUBADE
Nathaniel Dorsky | USA 2010 | 12 min
“An aubade is a morning song or poem evoking the first rays of the sun at daybreak. In some sense, it is a new beginning for me.” (ND)

HOURS FOR JEROME
Nathaniel Dorsky | USA 1966-70/82 | 45min (restoration print)
“An arrangement of images, energies, and illuminations from daily life. These fragments of light revolve around the four seasons and are very much a part of the youthful energy and poignant joy of my mid-20s. In medieval European Catholicism, a ‘Book of Hours’ was a series of prayers presented eight times every 24 hours. Each ‘hour’ had its own qualities, from pre-dawn till very late at night, and these qualities also changed through the progressing seasons of the year.” (ND)

Total running time approximately 75 min

Hours for Jerome has been preserved by Pacific Film Archive with support from the National Film Preservation Foundation.

Sugar Slim Says (Lewis Klahr, 2010)

Sunday 24 October 2010, at 4pm, NFT3
& Thursday 21 October 2010, at 4:15pm, NFT3
LEWIS KLAHR PRESENTS PROLIX SATORI

Collage artist Lewis Klahr introduces Prolix Satori, an ongoing series which appropriates images from comics, magazines and catalogues. A filmmaker since the 1980s, his signature style is saturated in mid-century Americana but addresses universal experience and is resolutely contemporary. Retaining distinctive handcrafted qualities across a recent shift to digital, Klahr choreographs comic book characters in fractured landscapes of patterns, textures and architectural details. Going beyond abstraction and nostalgic cliché, he builds high melodrama from modest means, conjuring elliptical narratives that evoke complex moods and emotions. Within Prolix Satori, a new project of ‘couplets’ elicits different atmospheres through repetitions of soundtracks or imagery. An emotive mix of classical, easy listening and iconic pop music carries viewers through tales of lost love and wistful reverie. This screening is a chance to be immersed in the idiosyncratic world of a widely acclaimed artist making his first UK appearance.

FALSE AGING
Lewis Klahr | USA 2008 | 15 min

NIMBUS SMILE
Lewis Klahr | USA 2009 | 8 min

NIMBUS SEEDS
Lewis Klahr | USA 2009 | 8 min

CUMULONIMBUS
Lewis Klahr | USA 2010 | 10 min

SUGAR SLIM SAYS
Lewis Klahr | USA 2010 | 7 min

WEDNESDAY MORNING TWO A.M.
Lewis Klahr | USA 2009 | 7 min

LETHE
Lewis Klahr | USA 2009 | 23 min

Total running time c.80 min

Lewis Klahr will present a screening of his early films at Tate Modern on Monday 25 October.

Ghost Algebra (Janie Geiser, 2009)

Sunday 24 October 2010, at 7pm, NFT3
& Tuesday 26 October 2010, at 4:15pm, NFT3
BREAK ON THROUGH

GHOST ALGEBRA
Janie Geiser | USA 2009 | 8 min
“Under erratic skies, a solitary figure navigates a landscape of constructed nature and broken bones. She peers through a decaying aperture, waiting and watching: the fragility of the body is exposed for what it is: ephemeral, liquid, a battlefield of nervous dreams.” (JG)

STILL RAINING, STILL DREAMING
Phil Solomon | USA 2009 | 15 min
Videogaming was never meant to be this way: uncanny and elegiac in tone, poignant and considered in practice. By betraying the violent subtext of his source material, Solomon has found genuine poetry in the desolate spaces of digitally constructed worlds.

SO SURE OF NOWHERE BUYING TIMES TO COME
David Gatten | USA 2010 | 9 min
The windows of a small antique store in the Rocky Mountains displays carefully arranged curiosities – specific objects each with their attendant histories. Visible traces of past uses, previous lives, secrets and significance.

FORMS ARE NOT SELF-SUBSISTENT NUMBERS
Samantha Rebello | UK 2010 | 22 min
Words, concepts, things. Referencing Aristotle and illuminated manuscripts, Rebello asks ‘What is substance?’ Romanesque stone carvings are measured against latter-day beasts, seeking parity between medieval perception and a present-day embodiment.

FACTS TOLD AT RETAIL (AFTER HENRY JAMES)
Erin Espelie | USA 2010 | 9 min
“The author of The Golden Bowl acts as the confessed agent, and the glass through which every image is reflected or filtered takes on a kind of consciousness.” (EE)

COSMIC ALCHEMY
Lawrence Jordan | USA 2010 | 24 min
A voyage in the celestial realm, out beyond consciousness, steered by a master of mystical transformation. Wondrous visions are charted on star maps from the Harmonia Macrocosmica to a spellbinding drone track by John Davis.

Total running time approximately 90 min

Coming Attractions (Peter Tscherkassky, 2010)

Sunday 24 October 2010, at 9pm, NFT3
& Thursday 21 October 2010, at 2pm, NFT3
PEOPLE GOING NOWHERE

DE MOUVEMENT
Richard Kerr | Canada 2009 | 7 min
Kerr’s mind-bending trip through the wipes and dissolves of old feature films is an exhilarating demonstration of the power of cinema.

MAY TOMORROW SHINE THE BRIGHTEST OF ALL YOUR MANY DAYS AS IT WILL BE YOUR LAST
Ben Rivers & Paul Harnden | UK 2009 | 13 min
Female Japanese cadets patrol the woods and countryside where old men channel Futurist poets. Adjacent yes, but simultaneous?

BRUNE RENAULT
Neil Beloufa | France 2009 | 17 min
An abandoned car park is no substitute for the open road. Four characters find themselves in a looped fiction, replete with clichés, acting out cycles of heightened emotions. Like all teenagers, they think the world revolves around them – and in this film it almost does.

VOT
Victor Alimpiev | Russia 2010 | 5 min
As if suspended in limbo, or perhaps deep in rehearsal, five performers exchange glances, gestures and utter strange sounds.

KINDLESS VILLAIN
Janie Geiser | USA 2010 | 4 min
Two boys seem trapped inside their own imaginations, dreaming of naval battles and Egyptian exotica.

COMING ATTRACTIONS
Peter Tscherkassky | Austria 2010 | 24 min
With humour and materialist dynamics, Tscherkassky explores the direct relationship between actor, camera and audience. A meditation on the ‘cinema of attractions’; exploiting leftovers from the commercial industry to collide the intersecting forms of early film and the avant-garde.

Total running time approximately 75 min

Pony Glass (Lewis Klahr, 1998)

Monday 25 October 2010, from 10am to 5pm
BFI Learning Space & Studio
LEWIS KLAHR WORKSHOP: NARRATIVE COLLAGE

Drawing on his considerable experience as an artist, Lewis Klahr will lead a masterclass on how characters, stories and atmospheres can be developed with minimal resources. Following a participatory collage exercise using copies of the day’s newspapers, Klahr will illustrate his creative process through a detailed analysis of his film Pony Glass (1998), a coming of age drama in which Superman’s pal Jimmy Olsen undergoes a sexual identity crisis of epic proportions. The day will culminate in an exclusive preview of brand new works. Declared ‘the reigning proponent of cut and paste’ by critic J. Hoberman, Lewis Klahr has shown his films and digital at most major festivals and in three Whitney Biennials. He teaches directing and screenwriting at CalArts, has created effects and sequences for commercials and TV, and co-rewrote The Mothman Prophesies (2002). The workshop is a unique opportunity to explore collage, animation processes and narrative construction with a leading practitioner.

Workshop Fee: £25. Prior experience of filmmaking is not required.
Limited to 20 participants. Please book early to avoid disappointment.
Please note that an incorrect date for the workshop has been listed in the Festival brochure.

Lewis Klahr will present his Prolix Satori series of recent videos on Sunday 24 October.

Journal and Remarks (David Gatten, 2009)

Wednesday 27 October 2010, at 2:30pm
Natural History Museum
DAVID GATTEN’S JOURNAL AND REMARKS

David Gatten, one of the most accomplished young film artists to emerge in recent years, returns to London to discuss a visit to the Galapagos Islands and screen the film he photographed there. The journey was an opportunity to follow in the footsteps of the naturalist Charles Darwin, whose expedition in the 1830s shaped the theory of evolution. The islands off the west coast of Ecuador have changed little since that time and still sustain a unique array of endemic species. In the absence of predatory mammals, native animals do not fear humans, enabling Gatten to shoot in close proximity to such exotic creatures as giant tortoises and blue-footed boobies. ‘The sights I was able to see – and the images I was able to capture – are remarkably similar to the things Darwin saw.’ Shuttling between these observations and texts from an early edition of Voyage of the Beagle, the film is structured in accordance with Leonardo’s proposal to divide the hour into 3000 equal measures. Along with Shrimp Boat Log (also showing in the Festival), it forms part of a forthcoming cycle titled Continuous Quantities.

JOURNAL AND REMARKS
David Gatten | USA 2009 | 15min plus extended discussion

Presented as part of Nature Live, in association with the Natural History Museum.
This free event is at the Attenborough Studio, Darwin Centre, Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 5BD. Nearest Tube: South Kensington. Please arrive early to avoid disappointment.


...

Advance booking is highly recommended
Standard ticket price is £9.50

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

London Film Festival 2009

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 | 9 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

London Film Festival 2008

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

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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