AL + AL
Interstella Stella
UK, 2005, digibeta, 13 mins, col

Growing up inside the spectacle of perfect illusions, a child model embarks on a journey inside a labyrinth formed from her advertising pictures. Looking through the mirror of technology, she glimpses the stellar course of her mystery and unveils the secret project of photography…

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SEBASTIAN BUERKNER
PURPLE GREY
UK, 2006, digibeta, 8 mins

A vivid imagination can be a seductive but debilitating distraction from life. Twisted fantasies, associations and flashbacks offer an enticing escape, and even a mundane room may be made more bearable by mentally morphing space and time. But in this instance the unhindered and infinite virtual flood of imagery and meaning turns into an insensitive, dreary obstruction.

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PAUL BUSH
CENTRAL SWISS
2006, 8 mins, digi beta, colour

It is the winter and the inhabitants of central Switzerland head for the mountains. They arrive in cars, trains, boats and buses, queue for the cable car, and then ski, snowboard, toboggan, eat, drink and fall asleep in one of the most beautiful landscapes in the world. In the evening the workmen come out to prepare the snow for the next day. It is the weekend of 11 and 12 February 2006 at the ski resort of Klewenalp and the film-maker has captured the portraits of Swiss men, women and children using a time lapse camera whilst all around them an extraordinary activity takes place.

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DUNCAN CAMPBELL
‘O JOAN, NO…’
UK, 2006, video, 12 mins

o Joan, no... begins in darkness; abstract darkness; primordial darkness perhaps. As the film progresses the darkness is interrupted by light or a light. A random sequence of lights ensues – theatre lights, streetlights, household lights, the lit end of a cigarette. The camera greets these interruptions in the darkness with alarm, reticence, perplexity, curiosity. The accompanying voice emits a series of grunts, moans, sighs, laughs. Nothing happens.’ Duncan Campbell, 2006

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BRUCE CHECEFSKY
MM MOMENT MUSICAL
USA, 2006,  6 mins, video/16mm, b&w, silent

Remake of Stefan and Franciszka Themerson’s first sound film, "Moment Musical' (1933), a three-minute commercial in which photograms of light-pierced jewelry, porcelain and glass were animated to music by Ravel which was destroyed during the Nazi occupation of Warsaw. Checefsky's Moment Musical  is based on published reviews from the 1930s Polish press, original film stills, and notes from Stefan and Franciszka Themerson. The film was shot with American experimental filmmaker Robert C. Banks, Jr.

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JEM COHEN
BLESSED ARE THE DREAMS OF MEN
USA, 2006, 10 min, video

Moving towards an unknown destination, a group of anonymous passengers float through an unidentified landscape. Built from Cohen's archive documenting his travels, the film can be seen as a curious parable. The film's subheading refers to the Old Testament, Daniel chapter 11, verse 40:

"And at the time of the end shall the king of the south push at him: and the king of the north shall come against him like a whirlwind with chariots, and with horsemen, and with many ships; and he shall enter into the countries, and shall overflow and pass over."

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JEM COHEN
NYC WEIGHTS AND MEASURES
USA, 2006, 6.15 min, video

"My film is a simple gathering of New York City street footage.  It was shot with a spring-wound 16mm Bolex on, above, and below the streets of Manhattan and Brooklyn and includes footage of the ticker tape parade for astronaut John Glenn.

Sometimes I just wander around with my camera -- I like to see what comes around the corner, and sometimes I just like the corner itself. Due to supposed "national security concerns," recent prohibitions are restricting what can be filmed in New York and other locales. While shooting from a train window in 2005, my film was confiscated and turned over to the Joint Terrorism Task Force and the F.B.I. This piece, which once might have been seen as strictly 'lyrical', is now also a reflection on these issues."
--Jem Cohen

"Like a floating, drifting piece of ticker tape, the film makes its way across boroughs and time to explore New York City's many moods, from loud and relentless to grave and dreamy."
--WNET (Reel New York)

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WILLIAM ENGLISH
CONTRACT
UK, 1989, 16mm, 10 mins, b&w

A collaboration between the filmmaker and Maurice Seddon who squeezes the air out of a black plastic bag three times.

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WILLIAM ENGLISH WITH SANDRA CROSS AND HUGH DE LA CRUZ
WHAT DID YOU EAT TODAY?
UK, 2001, 16mm, 10 mins, col, sil

Number one in an ongoing project in collaboration with Sandra Cross. The subject of this silent film/portrait is Hugh de la Cruz and shows what Hugh ate on one typical day.

Extract from a taped interview:

Sandra: "Would you have known what you were eating if you had been blindfolded?"

Hugh: "Erm, I would have known what some of it was, yes. The chicken and the bread of course, but I... it wasn't (laughter) I don't think it was so bad that (laughter) I would have been completely mystified (laughter). Yes, I suppose that's a good test isn't it?"

Sandra: "What did you eat as a child?"

Hugh: "As a child? Well it was, yeah. Yes, I, erm. Again, it was just ordinary English food really... and erm. I mean, I erm, spent quite... a certain amount of my childhood in children's homes and um, they went to the trouble of preparing the food well. It wasn't, it wasn't um, prepackaged or anything like that you know and there wasn't anything like as much pre-prepared, pre-packaged food then and um and they would do things like steak and kidney pie from scratch and what have you and um it was very nice food. I remember liking it very much."

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WILLIAM ENGLISH
EX LIBRARY
UK, 2006,16mm, 20 mins, col, sil

A crane and its operator observed over approximately 18 months.

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INGER LISE HANSEN
PROXIMITY
UK, 2005, digibeta, 4 mins.

An upside-down time-lapse camera moves along a beach, inverting the sand and sky as the weather changes. The result is a disorienting and mysterious space where the originally solid ground at the top of the frame appears to be sliding past like a lava-stream.

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NICKY HAMLYN
OBJECT STUDIES
UK, 2005, 16mm, 17mins, colour, silent

Object Studies was shot in northeast Umbria, Italy. It was made in the same location as a number of my other recent films. It is organised around a colour scheme based loosely on the hues of the colour temperature scale; brown, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, white.

Time-lapse, interlaced single-frame sequences and overlapping dissolves were deployed to explore densities and translucencies of light and the interactions of different kinds of cast-shadows. The space between the camera and its subject is also explored: Space is flattened, collapsed, expanded and bridged. In each section I tried to establish a relation between camera and subject that responds to the peculiarities of the spatial array in front of the lens, but there is a sense in which, at the same time, I want to challenge formulations like "in front of".

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LAWRENCE JORDAN
BLUE SKIES BEYOND THE LOOKING GLASS
USA, 2006, 16mm, 15 mins, col

Combines the Mambo and Tibetan sound effects with Jordan animation and clips of silent film stars, including: Eric Von Stroheim, Greta Garbo, Gary Cooper, Buster Keaton, Lilian Gish, Mary Pickford, Lionel Barrymore, Lon Chaney, Joan Crawford, Marie Dressler, Charlie Chaplin and others.

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MICHAEL MAZIERE
ASSASSIN
UK, 2006, 10 min, video

The figure of the assassin dominates contemporary media and cultural history. ‘Assassin’ explores the seductive spectacle of crime as manifested in cinema through the subjective depiction of the archetypal character of the assassin. Assassin takes as it starting point the plotting of a murder by a couple in love. Using a mosaic of film fragments - clips, music, subtitles, dialogue from French cinema - ‘Assassin’ creates a new text in which the binding effects of narrative have been dissolved. Part picture puzzle, part fragmented image-sequence the film operates as a form of inner speech, often disconnected and incomplete. By reworking the image and dialogue of these cinematic meta-narratives ‘Assassin’ restores a singularity to notions of collective memory. 

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MATTHEW NOEL–TOD
OBCY AKTORZY / FOREIGN ACTORS
UK, 2006, 46 min, video
Polish language with English subtitles

Obcy Aktorzy / Foreign Actors takes as its starting point Polish cinema.

Polish actors were invited to audition in Warsaw with dialogue from a favourite Polish film. The actors in Obcy Aktorzy / Foreign Actors perform a series of moments from the films Ashes and Diamonds (1958), Man of Iron (1981) Dekalog 4 (1988) and Sequence of Feelings (1993). Polish actress Ewa Kasprzyk was invited to join the cast and re-perform her dialogue from Sequence of Feelings. During a process of revision and rehearsals, the words and characters from the original films became recontextualised into a new narrative, including actors and characters inhabiting multiple fictions and dramatic spaces. Aesthetic, sexual, historical and dramatic senses are manipulated to create a video that is a dialogue between artist and actors, between language and image, between past and present

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