Big news for experimental filmgoers in Cork:
Black Sun Cinema: A Day of Experimental Film at Triskel Christchurch; 1.30pm, 12 August 2012
Presented in association with
Triskel Christchurch,
Black Sun, Cork's weirdo/outer limits music/film event, is presenting a day of
unsettling experimental film, a host of rare cinematic shadows
flickering mysteriously at the darker fringes of the mind. On the afternoon of Sunday August 12th, adventurous souls seeking haven from the
harsh summer light will find sanctuary in Triskel’s Christchurch
Cinema as three programmes of hauntingly dreamlike avant-garde visions
fall through the church’s muffled darkness to take possession of all
present:
American underground legend James Fotopoulos’
feature The Nest (2003) “offers up a bleak and cryptically funny
assault on suburban anomie… Fotopoulos creeps around the edges of
character and drama, conjuring moods of paranoia and dread that suggest
the carefully ordered routines of daily life are a kind of opiate
administered by sinister forces. Shooting in harsh 16mm color,
Fotopoulos renders The Nest in a typically Spartan, forbidding style
that makes it seem as though he is some extraterrestrial visitor
photographing humans for the first time.” (Scott Foundas, Variety) Ideal
mind-warping viewing for admirers of David Lynch who think they’ve seen
everything…
Frans Zwartjes is arguably Holland’s preeminent experimental filmmaker. His highly
stylised, poetically claustrophobic films achieve a unique level of
sensual intimacy in their renditions of sexual and domestic tension, and
voyeurism. These wordless works draw on performance art but are equally
distinguished by their oneiric visuals, disconcerting editing rhythms
and hypnotically minimal sound design. Once Zwartjes has caressed the
surface of your eyeballs, you will never see cinema in the same way
again. Black Sun will present a mini-retrospective of five of his most
accomplished short films from the late ‘60s and early ‘70s.
And three of Ireland’s most uncompromising contemporary experimental filmmakers, Rouzbeh Rashidi, Dean Kavanagh and Black Sun film programmer Maximilian Le Cain
will be on hand to present a series of their more disturbing short
films. Strange atmospheres, tense self-portraits, troubled meditations
on the ghostly power of cinema itself… Filmmaking at its most eerie and
obliquely personal.
Although best known as an experimental
music event, Black Sun is also Cork’s only year-round platform for
screening experimental film. For over two years, Black Sun’s film
programmes have given Cork an all-too-rare taste of the more far-out
side of cinema. It has established
an impressive track record of world-class film programming, introducing Irish audiences to the work of
several major underground filmmakers for the first time.
This is the
first of what will become regular Black Sun events devoted exclusively
to film.
Programme 1: Irish Underground
Schema (Maximilian Le Cain, 2012)
The Man in Autumn (Dean Kavanagh, 2010)
Good Evening (Dean Kavanagh, 2012)
Homo Sapiens Project 92 (Rouzbeh Rashidi, 2012)
The Hamilton Cell (Maximilian Le Cain, 2009)
Homo Sapiens Project 71 (Rouzbeh Rashidi, 2012)
Programme 2: Frans Zwartjes
Birds (1968)
Visual Training (1969)
Spare Bedroom (1969)
Spectator (1970)
Living (1971)
Programme 3:
The Nest (James Fotopoulos, 2003)
