STAN BRAKHAGE
THE WONDER RING *NEW RESTORED PRINT*
1955, USA, 6 mins, 16mm

'On a theme suggested by Joseph Cornell. A sharp change in Brakhage's work, we see New York's Third Avenue El (since demolished) as though through the eyes of a child on a merry-go-round.' - Cinema 16.

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STAN BRAKHAGE
THE RIDDLE OF LUMEN *NEW RESTORED PRINT*
1972, USA,14 mins, 16mm.

'The classical riddle was meant to be heard, of course. Its answers are contained within its questions, and on the smallest piece of itself this possibility depends upon SOUND 'utterly', like they say... the pun its pivot. Therefore, my Riddle of Lumen depends on qualities of LIGHT. All films do of course. But with the Riddle of Lumen, 'the hero' of the film is light itself. It is a film I'd long wanted to make - inspired by the sense, and specific formal possibilities, of the classical English language riddle...only one appropriate to film and, thus, as distinct from language as I could make it' - S.B.

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BETZY BROMBERG
A DARKNESS SWALLOWED
2006, USA, 78 min, 16mm

In Betzy Bromberg's new experimental feature film, her most abstract and most intimate, the camera sensually explores a range of hues that go from the golden amber of light reflected through murky waters and resin sculptures, to the light gray and pale green of subtle, Japanese-like compositions. A dark, brooding, richly textured soundtrack (non-traditional percussion, processed sounds and instruments, a lone woman's voice) echoes the film's journey through a metaphorical, surreal landscape. Like a whisper, invisible traumas and imaginary memories haunt the cinematic space, sending the viewers back to their own swallowed darkness. 'An instant classic' – Variety

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PETER GIDAL
ROOM FILM (DOUBLE TAKE) *NEW PRINT*
1967, UK, 10 min, 16mm

"When you first showed Room at the Old Arts Lab in Summer 68 it was, for the English filmmakers present (Steve Dwoskin, Malcolm Le Grice, Simon Hartog, David Curtis, etc) a revelation"-Malcolm Le Grice, 1969

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JOHN 'HOPPY' HOPKINS/ TVX
VIDEOSPACE
1970, UK, 13 min, video

Recently rediscovered tape of early video experiments by John Hopkins and the TVX collective which starts with music video, made for the BBC to accompany Code 615's ' Scotland ' of Area. The remaining material comes from a fragment of the Videospace happening, which took place in a television studio of the BBC: a never transmitted experiment with music, tape, film and feedbackloops, dancing and inflatable things and early examples of live video-mixing.

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JAYNE PARKER
CATALOGUE OF BIRDS; BOOK 3
2006, UK,  15.30 min, 16mm

A visual interpretation of Olivier Messiaen's music for piano.

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ANDREW KÖTTING
OFFSHORE (GALLIVANT)
2007, UK, 20 min, video

10 years ago I made a film called Gallivant that took as its inspiration the coastline of Great Britain. This September I will make a new film that takes as its inspiration a Channel light vessel called Gallivant. It will travel along side me as I attempt to swim the English Channel as part of a family relay team. Sounds and images from the original film will invade Off Shore as both mnemonic and catalyst, littering it like the flotsam and jetsam that we will be swimming through to get to the other side. I will be assisted in this endeavour by the words of Iain Sinclair and the presence of my daughter Eden.

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ALFRED LESLIE
THE LAST CLEAN SHIRT
1964, USA, 39 min, 16mm

In a letter to his friend and collaborator, the poet Frank O'Hara, Leslie writes: "We will shoot for two SEPERATE LEVELS on the film. One is the VISUAL, the other the HEARD & the spectator will be in TWO places or more SIMULTANEOUSLY. NOT AS MEMORY BUT AT THE SAME MOMENT. PARALLELISM! MULTIPLE POINTS OF VIEW!" It is a blueprint for The Last Clean Shirt in which a man and a woman take a car ride through the streets of downtown Manhattan. A clock on the dashboard foregrounds the fact that the film is a single shot. The woman speaks in Finnish jibberish, interpreted by the beautiful and brilliant story told via O’Hara’s subtitles that run throughout.

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MIRANDA PENNELL
DRUM ROOM
2007, UK, 15 min, video

The empty spaces of an ambiguous building open-up to reveal a group of aspiring musicians as they play together, alone.

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MARGARET TAIT
THE LEADEN ECHO AND THE GOLDEN ECHO
1955, UK, 7 min, 16mm

'An entracing 'translation' into film of a peom by Gerard Manley Hopkins, `The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo`. The theme is a common one in this most difficult and yet most transparently simple of all poets: all things lovely and young are doomed inevitably to decay and death - nothing can keep them away. Yet (comes back the golden echo from the grayness of the lamentation) having once existed they can never pass away: beauty is gathered and stored in granaries beyond corruption. Every film artist who attempts to interpret such a poem will do it in her own different way. I found Margaret Tait's choice of individual images extraordinarily moving and evocative: the flowers, the children, the wrinkles in the mirror...'

[Source: George Mackay Brown The Orcadian 13 Dec. 1979]

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EMILY WARDILL
BEN
2007, UK, 10 min, 16mm

'Ben' is a 10 minute 16mm film that forms the second part of 'Basking in what feels like 'an ocean of grace', I soon realise that I'm not looking at it, but rather that I AM it, recognising myself '.

Shot in colour on a set that was built in Black and White, 'Ben' re- inhabits a famous case study involving hypnosis. The authority of the case study, the rickety construction of the set,  and the faltering voice over hold the film together in a precarious balance.

With thanks to : Geraint Edwards, Heather Phillipson, Hamja Ahsan, Riffat Ahmed, Silje Lysle, Miria Swain, James Dove, Barbara Wardill, Geoff Wardill, Harry Wardill, Chris Ray, Valerie Barrow, Len Thornton, Keisha Sandy-Wellington and Gregory Cox.

With financial support from Central Saint Martins College of Art.

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EMILY WARDILL
BASKING IN WHAT FEELS LIKE 'AN OCEAN OF GRACE' I SOON REALISE THAT I'M NOT LOOKING AT IT, BUT RATHER I AM IT, RECOGNISING MYSELF
2006, UK, 8 min, 16mm

In Basking in what feels like 'an ocean of grace', I soon realise that I'm not looking at it, but rather that I AM it, recognising myself, instead of taking a symbol that was constructed ideologically then applied to reality, she took the setting of the ‘focus group’ and used its surface as an example. The participants were speaking, but they became images. Emily Wardill used computer software to compose music that would appear symmetrical when seen laid out as sheet music. The middle of the music, where it began to play inverted, would be the middle of the film that the music was written for. Rhythmical and mathematical to the point of irrationality, the film attempts to become a resistant image in itself. Mocking the idea of representation as a token, as a replacement rather than a tool of involvement, she wanted to ask: “if the object of ideology becomes sublime, what is the relationship of the image to that which is represented?”

But she wanted that question to be an ocean.

This is the first of two films looking at the way in which the personal becomes represented. Exploring the ‘focus group’ and the ‘psychological case study’, historically and in the present day, Wardill continues her interest in the exemplary and the symbolic.

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EMILY WARDILL
BORN WINGED ANIMALS AND HONEY GATHERERS OF THE SOUL
2005, UK, 9 min, 16mm

Emily Wardill’s 16mm film Born Winged Animals and Honey Gatherers of the Soul 2005 is set within earshot of the bells of St Anne’s Church designed by Hawksmoor in Limehouse, London as they strike noon.

This work is a mesmerising visual and phonetic translation of an excerpt from the prologue to On the Genealogy of Morality 1887 by nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. In this text he argues that humans have never been able to find out who they really are and even in the attempt to do so they inevitably lose themselves:
‘Rather, much as a divinely distracted, self-absorbed person into whose ear the bell has just boomed its twelve strokes of noon suddenly awakens and wonders, ‘what did it actually toll just now?’ so we rub our ears afterwards and ask, ‘what did we actually experience just now?’ still more: ‘who are we actually?’ and count up afterwards, as stated, all twelve quavering bell strokes of our life, of our being – alas! And miscount in the processes.’

The film evokes the poetic mood of Nietzsche’s text by alternating between the sonorous rhythm of the bells and recorded snapshots of everyday life in this area of east London. For Wardill a text or a theory is just a starting point. Whether her work takes the form of performance, painting, film or sound, it contains some sense of the original but ultimately exists autonomously. Without literally referencing its source, from which the title is also taken, Born Winged Animals and Honey Gatherers of the Soul harnesses the visceral impact of bells tolling, and juxtaposes this with evocative realist film footage to both suggest and dissolve Nietzsche’s symbolic description of an individual’s attempt to gain self-awareness.

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