Sunday 1 st November at 1pm
Epic Soundtracks: Experimental Film Show
Violin Power
Steina Vasulka USA 1978 9 mins
An unconventional self-portrait. Audio/visual pioneer Steina is first seen in footage from the early 1970s, playing the violin and singing to the Beatles' 'Let It Be'. As succeeding segments trace a chronological progression, Steina layers imagery and time. The violin itself ultimately becomes an image-generating tool, as she connects it to imaging devices, creating abstract visual transpositions of sounds and vibrations.
May Tomorrow Shine the Brightest of All Your Many Days As It Will Be Your Last Ben Rivers + Paul Harnden UK 2009 14 mins
Somewhere in the backwoods at turn of the last century in a valley surrounded by impenetrable mountains; a crack unit of female Japanese soldiers track a group of lost ancient desperadoes. They dig holes, they read, their leader channels the ghost of Futurist sound poets, and they keep moving onward...but who is searching for who and why? With a soundtrack expertly crafted from dictaphone recordings, old 78s, hiss and scratches, this is a magnificent return to fiction and mystery for Rivers after a series of experimental docs. Beautifully shot and hand processed on 16mm - A UK premiere.
Caboong!
Jonna Karanka and Johanna Lonka Finland 2007 4 mins
Immersive, frenetic, richly coloured hand painted super 8mm film, energised further by the claps, drumming and junk percussion of Kukkiva Poliisi.
Porter Springs 4
Henry Hills USA 1999 10 mins
Hills is best known for his rapid-cut explorations of the New York downtown art scene of the 70s/80s. Porter Spring by contrast weaves together footage from 20 years of idyllic summers spent in North Georgia. An hallucinatory love poem; walks in the woods, swimming in rivers, time passes, a sister dies, a log cabin is struck by lightning. "Assembled and presented in the rhythms of my mind and body." HH
The Ancient Set
Steve Claydon UK 2008 9 mins
'A staccato collision of monadic pixels, antique statuary, modern-day men and women in woeful nylon togas and a soundtrack that feeds the score of a composition designed to be played on replica Roman instruments through a slightly outmoded synthesizer, the work is a deliberately unsuccessful, even grotesque, appropriation of Classical culture, which nevertheless points not only to other such appropriations in Western history and to the power structures they supported but also to the wild side of the ancient world that they so often suppressed or denied' SC
Lentokalojen Hautuumaa
Jonna Karanka Finland 2007 3 mins
Karanka's camera intimately explores flowers, sunlight, sometimes people in what seems to be an old out-house, all the while her mesmerizing soundtrack (as Kuupuu) further adds to the air of languid eerie wonder.
Lines And Pulses
Ian Helliwell UK 4 2008 4 mins
The culmination thus far of Helliwell's experiments with flicker film - an immersive, head on, varied, vivid excursion through concentric circles and lines - horizontal, vertical, wavy and joyous, filmed frame by frame, bleached and coloured with ink. Helliwell's homemade, rewired soundtrack further breaks down the barriers.
Hameenkatu
Sami Sänpäkkilä Finland 2003 4 mins
It's a simple idea...a journey by car or tram all the while filming from the window...but with chance and Sanpakkilia's painterly eye this journey becomes a thrilling succession of abstract shapes composed of fleeting buildings, skies and people, perfectly fueled by Sänpäkkilä's (as ES) minimal, tone score.
Trevor
Steina Vasulka USA 2000 11 min
Steina continues her investigation into the interaction between processed sound and image. Here she manipulates footage of electroacoustic music composer (and Friday's headline act) Trevor Wishart at a studio microphone, electronically morphing his words into a stream of synthesized sound.
Plazmatic Blatz
Jeff Keen 1991 UK 9 mins
A blowtorch, melting toys and multiple video overlays culled from Hollywood westerns and disaster movies. Volcanoes explode, dams bust, Keen appears in frame working on drawings and paintings while pixels distort, corrupt and glitch in vast swirls of colour. All the while a war is fought out on the soundtrack. Visceral, abstract and incredible. |