All projects organised in 2003
Projects 2002
Projects 2004
Projects 2005
Projects 2006
Projects 2007
15 January 2003
LUX SALON: ALEX MACKENZIE
LUX
Alex MacKenzie works as a media curator, filmmaker and performer in the film and video fields. His works are simultaneously accessible and abstract, working from a model of both expanded cinema and performance with the serendipity of the hand-processed and degraded image integral to the work. Alex is the primary programmer and coordinator of The Blinding Light!! Cinema, an alternative and underground screening and performance space devoted to presenting cutting edge, underground, and obscure film and video 6 nights a week in Vancouver, Canada. He is also the Festival Director for the Vancouver Underground Film Festival. This is his first European tour. ‘I am currently interested in reconfiguring, repositioning and recontextualizing outmoded and ephemeral film materials and media devices in order to examine them beyond their original intention and as a formal attempt to dehistorify and reinvent meaning.’ (Alex MacKenzie)
This Fleeting (2003, 45 mins, video, originally 16mm)
In 1996 I was handed a boxfull of ten-minute reels containing 16mm home movies. Shot on gorgeous Kodachrome and in Black and White the films are an incredible document of a time in history - 1948 to 1957 Vancouver and around the world - a stunning record of people, places and activities. I was inspired to reinvent and retool meaning from these films. Until now this retooling for me has meant a conscious highlighting of intended moments of spectacle, beauty and awe. With This Fleeting, I explore precisely the opposite. What of moments that are unintentional, unplanned, and finally, undesired? This Fleeting is, then, a reconfiguring of the minute and fragile moments of unintended beauty captured by a stranger in the middle of the twentieth century. Exploring the structural and visual fields with equal interest, a language of movement and invisible history is magnified, slowed down and meticulously uncovered. ‘This Fleeting is a re-take on the empire of family, going back through a single family's archive and relooking at the moments, the gestures of inclusion and exclusion, the way they've managed to say yes with the camera. These home movies were originally made between 1948-1957 and feature bathing beauties, parades, cars, trips abroad and much much more. Relive the dream.’ - Mike Hoolboom
MEDI(CINE) (expanded cinema performance, 2003, 20 mins, 16mm)
Through a subtle and mesmerising recombination of rare 16mm American medical films (originally intended for doctors' eyes only), MEDI(CINE) jars us with unexpected clashes of images and subtle gestures of reinterpreted visual and audio information, rendering illness as beauty - the decomposing and recomposing body as site of transformation. Using colour gels, hand-masking and image-layering in a two-screen live presentation, MEDI(CINE) blends original sounds with re-tooled audio in an expanded cinema performance of physical catastrophe. ‘The sheer virtuosity of MacKenzie's live film performance is enough to blur the line between cinema and historical re-enactment. This is history - that which is made only when reproduced - the vital urge to comprehend what has not been lived, to find meaning in the abandoned fragments of mere grandeur.’ - Jeremy Rigsby, Artistic Director, Mediacity
22 January 2003
LUX SALON: FILMBLIK 1997 – 2002
LUX
Filmblik 1997 – 2002, a project by Filmstad, Den Haag, selected and presented by Florian Wüst, Berlin/Rotterdam.
Filmstad organizes, for already ten years now, special film and video screenings in Den Haag. Next to these screenings Filmstad produces Filmblik: an opportunity for young filmmakers and artists to make a short 16mm film. Filmstad offers one can of 16mm film, containing 120 meters = 10 minutes. With this material, the filmmakers can realize a film to their own imagination, and Filmstad helps in accomplishing the short experiment. For Lux Salon, filmmaker and curator Florian Wüst, who participated in the newest edition of Filmblik in 2002, made a selection out of the total of 30 Filmblik films that were produced between 1997 - 2002. The one-hour programme will feature films by Nathalie Alonso Casale, Theo Botschuijver, Fow Pyng Hu, Hein van Liempd & Sanny Overbeeke, Imogen Stidworthy, Vava Stojadinovic, Jan Willem van Dam, Joost van Veen & Roel van der Maaden, Pia Wergius, Erik Wesselo and Florian Wüst.
With special thanks to Nico Bunnik, Filmstad Den Haag.
12 February 2003
LUX SALON: AZAZEL JACOBS
LUX
Nobody Needs to Know (Azazel Jacobs, USA, 2003, 95m)
A fresh and absorbing portrait of New York, its streets and views is folded intelligently in with a story of a young New York actress struggling to escape the shallowness of the acting world, heightened by a subtle sub-theme of almost Warholian filmed auditions.
First-time feature film maker Azazel Jacobs skillfully interweaves four strands of New York life. The city itself is a central character, portrayed in delicate black and white imagery. A young black man who observes and acts as our eyes through his voice-over represents another. The third, forming the central story, involves a young actress, disenchanted by an audition, now struggling to find another way to be herself, in contrast to her flat mate still dreaming of being a star. And fourth are the auditions of a pretentious young director, actually completely unclear about what he seeks, who takes his actresses through the ordeal of convincingly playing their death. While he works with some dangerously familiar motifs of the American indie cinema (agonising young actresses, the making of films about the making of movies), Jacobs gives fresh depth to this territory, always offering a completely convincing and sympathetic portrait of his young New Yorkers and their scene, always keeping us involved. He gets the best out of his actors, the auditions in particular make fascinating performance pieces within the film itself. A film with brains. Premiered at Rotterdam Film Festival 2003, and selected for screening in the Hong Kong Film Festival.
25 February 2003
LUX SALON: THE SUBJECTIVE CAMERA
LUX
Curated by artist/filmmaker Sarah Pucill: 'The work selected draws influence from the early pioneer Maya Deren, resisting the authority of the word and instead allowing the quiet voice of the moving image to speak. The films attempt to tap into the unconsciouness. Each filmmaker reinvents the possibilities of film language in their own distinct way. What they share, is the pleasure taken in the trance of a subjective camera, that seeks to elicit a voice out of non-verbal silence. The choreography of movement is intrinsic to the overall sense of the film as is the image. In much of the work the elemental looms large. The 'negative' space of air, water or Earth, that surrounds the foregrounded object is highlighted in the work of Parker and Syed and as an aesthetic of active background is shared across the other works where oreground and background switch place. The projection of the actual film is central to these concerns with the elemental.'
Programme includes: Eerie (Sandra Lahire), Looking for the Moon (Moira Sweeney), Salamander (Tanya Syed), The Pool (Jayne Parker), Chameleon (Tanya Syed), Whirlpool (Jayne Parker), Witches Cradle Outtakes (Maya Deren) and Swollen Stigma (Sarah Pucill).
24-27 April 2003
LUX OPEN 2003
Royal College of Art, London
LUX OPEN (formerly DNET) was a 4 day show of new British artists' film and video plus curatorial projects from UK-based independent curators and organisations. The event consisted of new gallery installation works plus two screens of rolling screenings and presentations from 11am-11pm each day. All screenings and events were free on a first come basis.
29 April 2003
A SNAIL’S TRAIL IN THE MOONLIGHT: STAN BRAKHAGE 1933-2003
The Other Cinema
An evening of screenings and talk to celebrate the life and work of one of the founding fathers of the modern avant-garde film. Over the course of 50 years and 400 plus films he mapped out a highly personal and passionate alternative history of motion pictures which looms large in the history of American post-war modernism. It is impossible to express all aspects of his work in one screening so instead we aim to present a small sample of works that were important to him, by himself and friends, as well as rare interviews and home movies. A celebration of his life and his remarkable creativity.
Songs 4 – 7 (Stan Brakhage, 1966, 10 mins, projected in 8mm)
The Dante Quartet (Stan Brakhage, 1987, 8 mins)
Concresence (Stan Brakhage & Phil Solomon, 1996, 3 mins)
Yggdrasill: Whose Roots Are Stars In The Human Mind (Stan Brakhage, 1997, 17 mins)
Notebook (Marie Menken, 1962-63, 10 mins)
Rolls (Bruce Baillie,1967-70, 7 mins)
Moonstreams (Mary Beth Reed, 2000, 10 mins)
Gossamer Conglomerates (Courtney Hoskins, 2001, 5 mins)
Plus: personal videos by Ken & Nisi Jacobs and Phil Solomon, Brakhage interview segments shot by English documentary maker Colin Still in the 1990s, and a feature made by Pip Chodorov for French television, shot late last year.
There will also be selections from audiotapes made by Stan Brakhage for his friends and acquaintances, including the poetry of James Thompson BV and music by Charles Ives and Erik Satie.
Speakers will include Pip Chodorov and Al Rees.
23 - 25 May 2003
VISIONARY LANDSCAPES: FOLK, FILM, LANDSCAPE.
Cecil Sharp House, London.
Drawing on the unwritten and elusive histories of folk and its reflections, 'Visionary Landscapes' at Cecil Sharp House, the home of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, brought together diverse voices and perspectives on representations of English landscape and folk culture. Highlights included a one-off evening presented by artist/filmmaker Andrew Kötting (Gallivant, This Filthy Earth) and artist/musician Jem Finer (founder member of The Pogues and developer of Longplayer, a 1000 year musical composition) of music, film and performance. Dramatist/playwright, David Rudkin discussed his work, (much of which deals with the mystical nature of the English Landscape) followed by one of his key works, the 70s TV play 'Penda's Fen' (dir. Alan Clarke). A presentation by celebrated folklorist/oral historian Doc Rowe, who has spent the last 40 years documenting British folk traditions, drawing from his extraordinary collection of films, photographs and audio recordings.
Including: Andrew Kotting, Jem Finer, Adam Chodzko, David Rudkin, Iain Sinclair, Tom Baker, Kevin Brownlow, Guy Sherwin, Anna Thew and Doc Rowe. A collaboration with the English Folk Dance and Song Society as part of the 125th anniversary celebrations of the Folklore Society.
Read more on the Visionary Landscapes page
28 May 2003
LUX SALON: FORMS OF RESISTANCE: SITES OF PROTEST
LUX
A screening of films that raise questions with experimental form. Often resistance can be as much embodied in the radical use of form as in the message that it seeks to express. Programme includes; Anne Rees Mogg, Jeanette Iljon, Annabel Nicolson & Lis Rhodes. Curated by Lucy Reynolds as part of the Mary Kelly Project.
10–19 June 2003
HARUN FAROCKI: FIVE FILMS ABOUT WAR & IMAGE TECHNOLOGIES
Goethe Instituut London
Harun Farocki made his first films during the student protest movements in
Berlin in the 1960's. Since then he has moved away from using film primarily as a means of political agitation to developing increasingly complex works which, though no less political, are more open and reflective in nature. He has explored diverse genres - from full-length features to his specific variant of the essay-film. He has experimented with a vast variety of techniques, such as staging model situations with actors, juxtaposing found footage and self-produced images, or adopting a primarily observational stance as in his documentaries on training-courses, advertising campaigns or urban-planning processes. In recent years he has also started to set up his work in the form of installations.
One of his ongoing concerns has been to examine the production, use and perception of photo, film, video and computer images, whether produced by the media or by an increasingly sophisticated arms and surveillance technology. In a number of films he has addressed the problematic relation between reality and its increasingly prolific visual representation with reference to specific national and international conflicts in 20th century history. It is these films in particular that the screenings at the Goethe-Institut and the Imperial War Museum focus on and that have helped to establish Harun Farocki as one of Germany's most persistent critics of dominant image culture and history writing.
The films will be introduced by Florian Wüst, co-curator of Alternative Histories of Modern Conflict (see above). Florian Wüst is an artist and filmmaker currently living in Berlin and Rotterdam. In 2002, he curated the Special Programme ‘Catastrophe’ at the 48th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen.
www.farocki-film.de
As You See - Wie Man Sieht
(Germany 1986, 16mm, colour, 72 mins)
In As You See, Farocki searches for those instances and facts in the history of technology that have been overlooked or ignored, also exploring the ambivalent relationship between technologies developed for civil use and those designed for military purposes. Thus the film for instance describes how in the 1970's workers at the British arms factory Lucas Aerospace attempted to develop socially useful products to replace the company's military output. Rather than following a linear argument, this essay-film juxtaposes disparate images and weaves them into a mosaic-like structure which makes it possible for the viewers to make their own connections between the different images as well as between the images and the commentary.
Videograms Of A Revolution – Videogramme Einer Revolution
(Germany 1992,16mm, colour, 106 mins; directed together with Andrei Ujica)
During the Romanian revolution in December 1989, the demonstrators took control of the state-run television station in Bucharest and started a 120-hour continuous live-broadcast, thus turning the TV-studio into an ambivalent historical site from which the revolution was recorded as well as pushed forward. In a joint project with writer-director Andrei Ujica, Farocki assembled excerpts from this broadcast and from amateur videos to create a media-based chronology of the events. The film points to an apparent shift in the relationship between film and history. Whereas previously film seemed simply to make history visible, it now seems to make it possible.
Inextinguishable Fire - Nicht Löschbares Feuer
(Germany 1969, 16mm, b/w, 25 mins)
The title of this early agitprop film refers to napalm and the fact that once it burns it cannot be extinguished. Farocki's conclusion from this is that ‘You have to fight napalm where it is produced: in the factories’. Made in the context of the protest against the Vietnam War, the film also has to be understood as a more general critique of science's role within the war industry.
Eye/Machine I - Auge/Maschine I
(Germany 2001, video, colour, 25 mins)
In this film Farocki focuses on the Gulf War and the dramatic revolution it brought about in the use of image and war technology. With the use of ‘Smart bombs’ that, equipped with cameras, became their own ‘reporters’ and that transmitted images which were not distinguishable from video simulations, the role of the human eye as historical witness was rendered obsolete. The boost that the Gulf War gave to the electronic Eye/Machine has resulted in the set-up of the C3I cycle, an intricate global system of surveillance, detection and warning technologies. The film also shows how these technologies have entered into many areas of civilian life.
Eye/Machine II - Auge/Maschine II
(Germany 2002, video, colour and b/w, 15 mins)
Eye/Machine II continues the examination of the same subject in a wider context, bringing together visual material from military and civilian sources.
21–22 June 2003
ALTERNATIVE HISTORIES OF MODERN CONFLICT
The Imperial War Museum, London
A weekend of screenings exploring non-mainstream representations of war and how the military makes an impact on civil society. A collaborative project between the Imperial War Museum, LUX, Impakt Festival (Utrecht) and the Goethe Institut London (see above). Curated by Florian Wüst & Ben Cook.
21 June
Artists In War
Out of Chaos (1944) Jill Craigie's documentary about the flourishing of art in Britain during the Second World War, which includes scenes of the war artists Henry Moore, Stanley Spencer, Graham Sutherland and Paul Nash at work.
Angela Weight, Keeper of the Department of Art, introduces the war artists programme and discusses the recent selection of artists who use the moving image.
John Keane
The artist discusses his work with video in the Gulf War of 1991. With a Q&A chaired by Angela Weight.
Heather Burnett
Artist and film-maker Heather Burnett introduces Witness: An Aesthetic (2001) and a new video piece incorporating archive film. The photographer Angus Boulton introduces Cood Bay Forst Zinna (2001) his video exploration of a deserted Soviet Army base in the former East Germany. With Q&A chaired by Angela Weight.
Artists In The Archive
Artists who have recently made videos incorporating archive film from the Museum's collection will present and discuss their work. Warmovie (2001) Artist and film-maker Nick Berkeley's video montage of archive film is a chilling and eerily beautiful journey through the Second World War. In Hand (2002) textile designer and artist Caroline Broadhead collaborated with the video-maker Peter Anderson to produce this experimental study of camouflage. The work was sponsored by the Testing Ground Scheme. Feathered Water (2002) Artist Joanna Griffin's manipulation of Admiralty footage of submarines was inspired by Moby Dick, and conjures up dreams of sea monsters. With Q&A chaired by Toby Haggith.
Images Of The World And Inscription Of War - Bilder Der Welt Und Inschriften Des Krieges
(Harun Farocki, 1988, Germany, 75m mins)
‘The vantage point of Images of the World and Inscription of War is the aerial footage of the IG Farben industrial plant in Auschwitz taken by the Americans in 1944. Notes on the photographs show that it was only decades later that the CIA noticed what the Allies hadn't wanted to see: that the concentration camp was indeed depicted next to the industrial bombing target.’ - Christa Blümlinger
Followed by a lecture and Q&A with Harun Farocki.
22 June
Challenging The Glamour Of The Gun
This programme of films from the IWM archives will include: Deutsche Panzer (1940) The director of the city poem Berlin: Die Symphonie der Grosstadt (1927), Walter Rutmann then went on to make this paean to mechanisation and the Panzer tank for the Nazi regime. Streaked Lightning (1960) Want to fly a Lightning? Want to occupy the single-seater, all weather, night-and-day, high-flying, supersonic, super-normal Lightning? Hell Unlimited (1936) Norman Mclaren's pioneering animation criticising the arms race. Enduring Freedom: The Opening Chapter (2002) Klaus Obermeyer, USA. Fablesafe (1971) Eric Barnouw and Tom Glazer on nuclear proliferation. Kill Or Be Killed (1942) Len Lye's training film for snipers. Lachendes Leben: 10 Minuten Froeliche Gymnastik/Laughing Life: 10 Minutes Of Happy Gymnastics (1940). This Is The War (2002) Greg Meeson examines conflict through the iconic figure of the toy soldier.
Trauma And Brutalisation
Let There Be Light (1945, 58 mins) John Huston's documentary about the treatment of US soldiers suffering a variety of psychiatric conditions as a result of their experiences in combat.
Memory And War
Age Shall Not Weary Them (1952) Jack Wedderburn's own film of his return to the battlefields of Ypres, evokes the horrors and fears of forty years before. Narvik: My Pet, My First Love (2003) Helen Walker's journey to Norway is intertwined with her grandfather's story as commander of the Warspite during the second Battle of Narvik. Silence (1998) Sylvie Bringas and Orly Yadin's film about a Jewish child who survived the Holocaust.
Testimonies
Ranging between the collective and the personal, this programme reflects on strategies and ways for coping with the experience of war and violence. Paris-based artist Olivier Zabat will be present to introduce his video Miguel et les Mines. Curated by Florian Wüst.
Conversation Du Salon (Living Room Conversation) (Danielle Arbid, France, 2002, 8 mins). Ten years after the war in Lebanon four women meet in my mother's living room. They talk about the war like they talk about their diets....'
Hotel Des Invalides (Georges Franju, France, 1951, 23 mins) A short documentary about the Parisian War Museum 'Hôtel des Invalides' which represents a national monument in France. The film is a ferocious anti-war statement that attacks notions such as 'honour', 'dignity' and 'heroism' which are necessary to support military endeavour. Georges Franju denounces war not as an abstract phenomenon but as an event directly linked to a particular ideology.
Miguel Et Les Mines (Olivier Zabat, France, 2002, 50 mins) With the cautious patience of a bomb disposal expert, this documentary essay structured in short episodes, pieces together a series of testimonies on war, boxing, mines, puzzles etc. The aim is to try to discover what lies beneath the word 'conflict' and reveal, perhaps, that every word revolves around a central point and that this centre is explosive. (Jean-Pierre Rehm).
13-19 June 2003
CALIFORNIA SOUND / CALIFORNIA IMAGE: FROM HOLLYWOOD TO SAN FRANCISCO, THE WEST COAST AND THE AVANT-GARDE
Barbican, London
A trip through 70 years of artists' filmmaking in, on and around the American West Coast, featuring expressionist experiments, pioneering psychodrama, freewheeling Beat Culture and the psychedelic explosion. The post-war avant-garde began in Los Angeles with the revolutionary trance films of Kenneth Anger, Maya Deren and Gregory Markopoulos, but San Francisco soon established itself as a major centre in the 1960s when Bruce Baillie, Chick Strand and Bruce Conner founded Canyon Cinema, organising screenings and distribution. This unique season included rare works by these filmmakers, and many others including Jordan Belson, Ernie Gehr, George Kuchar and Gunvor Nelson, plus Andy Warhol's scenario based on the real-life arrest for shoplifting of Ecstasy starlet Hedy Lamarr.
Curated by Mark Webber for Barbican and LUX.
Read more about the programmes on the California Sound / California Image page
26 June 2003
LUX SALON: COURTNEY HOSKINS & MARY BETH REED
LUX
Courtney Hoskins and Mary Beth Reed both studied with, and became close associates of, Stan Brakhage at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Their films combine photographed footage with hand-painted, hand-processed film and masterful manipulation of the optical printer. This is their first show in England. LUX is pleased to present the first UK show by Courtney Hoskins and Mary Beth Reed, two young American filmmakers whose films combine photographed footage with hand-painted film and manipulation of the optical printer. Both studied with Stan Brakhage and Phil Solomon at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and their works were included in the recent Brakhage fundraiser and tribute at The Other Cinema. Courtney Hoskins uses various optics techniques to create her film worlds. Using the properties of the light waves themselves (twisting and bending certain wavelengths), she develops an otherworldly palette that shows the complexities and surprises found in the seemingly mundane objects of our daily lives. Mary Beth Reed mixes animation and abstraction into a kaleidoscopic flow of hand painted and optically printed film. She creates films of exquisite colour and imagery that dance across the screen with a mesmerising and unique rhythmic quality. The programme will be in two discreet parts, with a short interval, and both Courtney and Mary Beth will be here to discuss their work.
Courtney Hoskins:
The Galilean Satellites (Europa, Io, Ganymede, Callisto), Munkphilm, Gossamer Conglomerate, Snow Flukes, Les Vitraux de St. Chappelle
Mary Beth Reed:
Sunday Afternoon, Sand Castle, Pink Film, Montessori Sword Fight, Floating Under a Honey Tree, Moose Mountain, Moose Mountain 2
See Courtney Hoskin’s website at www.quarzfilms.com
2-3 July 2003
KINETICA 3
The Other Cinema, London
Groundbreaking programmes of key abstract 'visual music' films from the Iota Center of Los Angeles showing for the first time in the UK. Includes new prints of classic films by Hy Hirsh, John and James Whitney, Mary Ellen Bute, Jordan Belson and Harry Smith and contemporary artists
www.iotacenter.org
30 July 2003
AN EVENING WITH YVONNE RAINER
Whitechapel Gallery
Yvonne Rainer will introduce a screening of her first feature film Lives of Performers (1972, 90 mins), followed by a discussion between Yvonne Rainer, Berlin-based writer / curator Madeleine Bernstorff and the audience.
Explicating the emotional love triangle between three dancers who, as characters, play themselves, Lives Of Performers is at once a melodrama and a sustained documentation of roles played within roles. Simultaneously stylised and asymmetrical, posed and improvised, it beats an episodic path through public and private observation (the dancers in rehearsal, backstage and onstage), love and pain, possibility and impasse, culminating in a series of tableaux that tell the Lulu story. Babette Mangolte's camerawork echoes Rainer's choreography, describing emotional intensity through durational experience, challenging narrative conventions and reconstructing expectation as radical experience.
Presented by LUX, Mary Kelly Project and Whitechapel, in association with the London International Summer School.
24 September 2003
LUX SALON: STRANGER THAN FICTION
LUX
Three visually stunning, witty and thought provoking films looking at the inherent fiction of film documentary, curated by Jacqueline Holt.
New Improved Quality: In the Environment of Liquids and Nasals a Parasitic Vowel Sometimes Develops (Owen Land, 1976): Autobiographical adventures in the land of educational institutions and I.Q exams.
Stepford Lives (Jacques Peretti, 2002): The scary mundanity of modern suburban existence.
Desert People (David Lamelas, 1974): A constructed documentary film in which five talking heads describe their visit to the reservation of the Papago Indians.
30 September & 7 October 2003
HERE ARE SOME PICTURES. WHAT IS HAPPENING?: CHRISTOPHER MACLAINE & THE SAN FRANCISCO UNDERGROUND
The Other Cinema, London
Christopher Maclaine was active in the early hipster scene of San Francisco's North Beach in the 1940s-1950s, one of the authentic characters at the very emergence of the beat movement. He contributed poetry and prose to small periodicals with his contemporaries Michael McClure, Robert Duncan, Kenneth Patchen and Philip Lamantia, and read at late night rap sessions in coffee bars and jazz clubs. His introduction to avant-garde world came through exposure to the important ‘Art in Cinema’ series at San Francisco Museum of Art, and personal connections with pioneer filmmakers Jordan Belson, Stan Brakhage, Larry Jordan and Harry Smith. He was often completely broke, unable to keep jobs, and constantly relying on the generosity of others, whose patience he tested. Maclaine was a heavy user of amphetamines, which ultimately rendered him debilitated, resulting in his internment in hospital and early death. From the late 50s he was addicted to methadrine, and in 1963 he attempted suicide, resulting in a three-month stay in the psychiatric ward of SF General Hospital. He died in 1975, having spent his last six years in a completely incapacitated state in a convalescent home. These two screenings at the Other Cinema present brand new prints of Maclaine's complete films plus a documentary and classic films from the period by Anger and Brakhage, and will be accompanied by a newly commissioned essay by film scholar Fred Camper.
30 September
The Films Of Christopher Maclaine
Jazz, dope and rebellion - four films from the hipster subculture of San Francisco, all made by obscure and elusive poet Christopher Maclaine. His masterpiece The End (1953, 35 mins), salvaged in the 60s by Stan Brakhage and revered by many since, is a remarkably apocalyptic post-war saga of impending doom: the last day on earth for six of 'four friends' living in the shadow of the A-bomb. These new prints of Maclaine's complete films also feature alchemical incantation (The Man Who Invented Gold, 1957, 14 mins), existential despondence (Beat, 1958, 6 mins) and highland flings (Scotch Hop, 1959, 6 mins).
7 October
To Re-Edit The World
A chance encounter with Loreon Vigné, at the Temple of Isis in California, started David Sherman on a mysterious journey through the outer reaches of 50s & 60s bohemia. Loreon's memories, and the films of her deceased husband Dion, told of their orbit around an artistic circle that included Kenneth Anger, Jordan Belson, Christopher Maclaine and the Whitney Brothers, and intersections with the occult (Bobby Beausoleil, Anton LaVey). This loose video documentary includes evocative footage and audio recordings of the era. Screening with classic films of that period, including Kenneth Anger's Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, Stan Brakhage's Desistfilm and Moods in Motion, a newly discovered abstract film with soundtrack by Christopher Maclaine.
To Re-Edit the World (David Sherman, 2003, colour, sound, 32 mins)
Moods in Motion (Ettillie Wallace, c.1950s, colour, sound, 5 mins)
Desistfilm (Stan Brakhage, 1954, b/w, sound, 7 mins)
Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (Kenneth Anger, 1954/66, colour, sound, 38 mins)
8 October 2003
LUX SALON: WOJCIECH BRUSZEWSKI: FILM / VIDEO / PHENOMENA
LUX
As a founder member of the Lodz Film Academy’s radical Workshop of Film Form in the early 70s, Wojciech Bruszewski’s multimedia experiments included ‘YYAA’, a 3-minute long primal scream in which changes in light exposure modulate the soundtrack. Other films, like ‘Tea-Spoon’ and ‘Match-Box’, also challenged the viewer by manipulating expectations of synchronous sound and image, and his early video work examines the immediate relationship between camera, monitor and viewer made possible by instant playback or live feed technology. At the LUX Salon, Bruszewski will offer a selection of works by himself and his students, from his earliest days to the present. The final programme contents to be decided by the audience on the night. Presented in association with Lumen and Evolution 03, Leeds www.lumen.net/evolution2003
www.voytek.pl/aindex.htm
13 October 2003
LUX SALON: TAKA IIMURA: 2 FILM PERFORMANCES
LUX
Legendary Japanese avant-garde film and video artist Takahiko Iimura has rigorously explored structural, material and theoretical properties of film, video and new media for over 40 years. At the Lux Salon he will appear in person to present two of his vintage live film performance of the 1970s. ‘Circle and Square’ (for 16mm film loop and hole punch) and ‘White Calligraphy’ (for mobile Super-8 projector). For more information see his website at http://www2.gol.com/users/iimura/Front.html
Presented in association with Lumen and Evolution 03, Leeds
www.lumen.net/evolution2003
16 October 2003
MIKA TAANILA: FUTURE IS NOT WHAT IT USED TO BE
The Other Cinema, London
A documentary film about Erkki Kurenniemi: ‘The offspring of marinettian futurism and the unacknowledged father of gibsonian cyberpunk, the Finn Erkki Kurenniemi has merged cinema, computer science, robotics and art in a radical and fruitful attempt to find the technological essence of the human soul.’ SonarCinema, Barcelona, Spain, June 2003. Screening with Futuro - A New Stance to Tomorrow (1998) and A Physical Ring (2002).
Also touring to other UK venues including: Sheffield International Documentary Film Festival, CCA (Glasgow), Brighton Cinematheque, Dublin Electronic Arts Festival (DEAF), Herbert Read Gallery (Kent Institute of Art and Design, Canterbury) and Cineside (Newcastle).
23 October 2003
LUX SALON: STEPHANIE MAXWELL
LUX
Stephanie Maxwell presents a selection of her work. Maxwell graduated from San Francisco Art Institute in 1984, where she studied under Larry Jordan and Dennis Pies, in her films she uses various techniques (painting, sandpaper, Scotch tape, razor blades, nitric acid) which is applied directly to the filmic strip. Inspired by Len Lye, she defines direct animation as being a ‘process which reproduces very exactly the individual physical impulses of the artist: the artisanal images reflect the vibration of the fingers, the variations of pressure, the internal rates/rhythms externalised'.
12 November 2003
LUX SALON: HANNES SCHÜPBACH: FILM SOLO
LUX
Three silent and poetic works by young, Swiss filmmaker Hannes Schüpbach, who will introduce the screening. Schüpbach records abstracted traces of locations and events, constructing intimate and multi-layered impressions through editing and superimposition. Portrait Marriage (2000, 9m) turns the staging of a rite of passage into an allusively layered narrative. Spin (2001, 12m) reflects the beauty of the transitory and evokes the regret connect to its passing. The artist’s ageing mother, at the centre of this film, marks the unique presence of the single human consciousness. Toccata (2002, 28m) develops the ‘touch of the place’ through a direct encounter with the seemingly familiar elements of a house and city. The image recreates an inner experience by the use of a wide range of stylised movements and colourings.
14 November 2003
LUX SALON: WERNER VON MUTZENBECHER: EVERYDAY ACTIONS / ORDINARY OBJECTS
LUX
The first ever UK solo screening for this established Swiss artist, who will present a selection of his films from 1971 to present. Mutzenbecher began painting in 1958 and filmmaking in 1968, and has exhibited regularly in Switzerland and Europe. Apparently mundane actions and objects are the focus of his films, which blur the boundaries between materiality, portraiture and performance. The early works are more performative, while later films take a diaristic, personal approach to create impressions of Mutzenbecher’s immediate environment, using those characteristics unique to the medium. Films screening: III/71, XIV/82 Filme, XV/84 Vogelhaus, XVI/84 Fenster III, XVIII/85 Untergrund, XIX/88 ‘4 x 8 = 16’, XXIV/99 Fenster IV, XXVI/99/03 Rencontres, XXVII/03 Filmmakers’ Afternoon.
22-23 November 2003
PETER WATKIN’S THE JOURNEY: A FILM FOR PEACE (1983-6)
The Curtain Theatre, Toynbee Studios, London
First UK public screening of Peter Watkin’s complete epic 14 hour peace documentary. Showing in two parts over two days. Saturday 22nd and Sunday 23rd November 2003 (approximately 7 hours each day with breaks) starting at 1pm each day. Multilingual with English subtitles. The screening will be introduced by Patrick Murphy, author of a new book on Watkin’s work being published in 2004.
Read Scott MacDonald on The Journey in the featured section
27 November 2003
LUX SALON: FILM ART PHENOMENA
LUX
To celebrate the launch of his new book ‘Film Art Phenomena’ (BFI, 2003) Nicky Hamlyn presents an evening of films and film performance including work by Simon Payne, Joe Read, Jennifer Nightingale, Guy Sherwin, Stan Brakhage, Ian Kerr, Nick Collins, Denise Hawrysio and William Raban.
Read more about ‘Film Art Phenomena’ and purchase a copy at www.bfi.org.uk/bookvid/books/catalogue/details.php?bookid=420
5 – 9 December 2003
OSKAR FISCHINGER: MUSIC AND MOTION
Goethe Institute London
‘Decades before computer graphics, before music videos, even before Fantasia, there were the abstract animated films of Oskar Fischinger (1900-1967). He was cinema’s Kandinsky, an animator who, beginning in the 1920s in Germany, created exquisite ‘visual music’ using geometric patterns and shapes choreographed tightly to classical music and jazz.’ (John Canemaker, New York Times)
Oskar Fischinger is one of the masters of animated film and an influential pioneer of abstract cinema. Though fiercely independent and resolute, Fischinger spent periods under contract to major studios including Paramount, MGM, and Orson Welles’ Mercury Productions, and created special effects for Fritz Lang. During his brief tenure at Disney, he was responsible for the genesis of Fantasia, which diluted, but popularised, many of his theories about the confluence of music and visual movement.
As early as the 1920s he began to make his own experimental films and participated in ‘light shows’ with composer Alexander László. His hand-drawn Studies, in which abstract or graphic shapes oscillate and transform, closely synchronised to gramophone records, were among the first examples of ‘absolute cinema’. The 1930s were successful years with public and artistic acclaim, frequent screenings and advertising commissions, leading to an invitation to Hollywood in 1938. Working with photography, silhouettes, liquids, oil painting, models and charcoal drawings, Fischinger achieved a synthesis of sound and vision, anticipating what later became the music video. During his American period, his unique and colourful ‘visual music’ developed through more complex techniques and innovations, and received the support of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. In later years he turned to painting as film became more expensive and problematic to produce. Fischinger died of a heart attack in Los Angeles, 1967.
The Tribute to Oskar Fischinger is made possible with thanks to the Fischinger Archive and Cindy Keefer.
5 & 8 December
The Masterworks
A selection of Fischinger’s best known works made between 1927-47, presented in their original formats with new prints restored by the Academy Film Archive. This programme includes the early black & white Studies, Composition in Blue, Allegretto, Radio Dynamics, Motion Picture No. 1 and others of his finest films.
6 December
The Fischinger Effect
A selection of works by international artists who have been inspired by Fischinger’s works. Including both classics and rare works by Jordan Belson, Larry Cuba, Jim Davis, Jules Engel, Hy Hirsh, Len Lye, Norman McLaren, José Antonio Sistiaga, Alexandre Vitkine and John Whitney. Curated by Mark Webber.
+ book launch: Optical Poetry: The Life and Work of Oskar Fischinger by Dr William Moritz.
6 & 9 December
Rarities, Late Fragments & Advertising Films
A unique selection of rare films and unfinished experiments, including München-Berlin Wanderung, Spiritual Constructions and Swiss Trip (Rivers and Landscapes). There is also an opportunity to view nine of Fischinger’s advertising films including the legendary Muratti cigarette commercials. The screening on Saturday night will be introduced by Monika Koenke, PHD Research Student, Edinburgh University.
11 December 2003
LUX SALON: JAYCE SALLOUM
LUX
Vancouver-based artist Jayce Salloum will present selections from his ‘untitled’ project, an ongoing videotape addressing subjects such as living through crises/change, personal interventions in political realities, and the overarching theme of interstitiality.
In part 1: everything and nothing (1999-2001, 40 mins), Salloum, off-camera, talks with Soha Bechara, the ex-Lebanese National Resistance fighter who was detained for 10 years in the notorious El-Khiam torture and interrogation centre in South Lebanon. In a riveting and intimate conversation, Salloum inquires about home, being interviewed to death, resistance, survival, and the distance between Paris, where Bechara now lives, and Khiam. In part 2: beauty and the east (1999-2002, excerpt c. 21 mins), Salloum turns obliquely to the former Yugoslavia. In a kaleidoscope of interviews, refugees, migrants, asylum seekers, and residents address topics ranging from identity and fascism to optimism and monsters. In both anecdotal and theoretical recountings, they lay out the issues currently at stake in this region of displacement and redefinition; their words are located within images of cities and landscapes. part 3: (as if) beauty never ends… (2002, 11 mins), in which a montage of orchids blooming and footage from the sites of the 1982 massacres at Lebanon's Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps provides an elegiac response to the Palestinian dispossession.
