Tuesday, July 31, 2012

STRANGE ATTRACTOR

I've just completed Strange Attractor, a video made at the invitation of Strange Attractor ("the finest experimental improv in the country at the moment", Bernard Carke, Lyric FM) and based around sound and some images from their performance at the Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, on June 30th last.

Rather than performance documentation, this video strives to set up a 'conversation' between various luminous elements that in some way echoes the improvisational interaction between the sounds created by the group's members.

It will be screened as part of Strange Attractor's upcoming residency in Studio Soto, Boston, USA. For more information on this:

 http://www.mobius.org/events/strange-attractor-studio-soto-boston-ma

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Vicky Langan Interview Online

'Thumped' has posted a lovely in-depth interview with regular accomplice Vicky Langan by Aoife Barry. The accompanying photos are also terrific.

http://thumped.com/interviews/vicky-langan-infinite-conversations.html 

Le Coeur fantôme

 
'The Noteworthy' column in Mubi Notebook has dragged an eleven year old article of mine 'from the archives'. 'Voyeurism of the Soul' is an account of Philippe Garrel's work that I wrote for Senses of Cinema at the height of my love affair with Garrel's films.

But there's no need to read it; this clip says it all:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlWrRbMGQAI


Monday, July 23, 2012

Coming Soon! BLACK SUN CINEMA


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)

Thursday, July 05, 2012

This Monday...

Wednesday, July 04, 2012

Stephen Dwoskin (1939-2012)

The passing of another filmmaker whose influence on me has been incalculable. I'll never forget the shock of seeing Dyn Amo (1972) at a festival screening in Italy in 2006... I've never experienced such a palpable sense of stunned revelation run throughout a whole audience. (An audience that included Dwoskin and an effusive Kenneth Anger...)


Tuesday, July 03, 2012

Langan / Le Cain Screening / Performance @ The Black Mariah, July 9th



The third event in Cork's upcoming Avant Festival that I'm directly involved in has just been announced. The Black Mariah Gallery is putting on a night of screening and performance showcasing the collaboration between Vicky Langan and me. Here's the blurb:

For over two years, sound/performance artist Vicky Langan (Wölflinge) and experimental filmmaker Maximilian Le Cain have been working intensively together in a unique creative audio-visual partnership. This is built on the strikingly fitting match between Langan’s magnetic, often troublingly intense presence as a performer and Le Cain’s distinctively jarring, disruptive visual rhythms.

On the night of Monday July 9th, 10.30PM, The Black Mariah will showcase their collaboration through film, performance and video. Two of their more recent videos, Dirt (a Cork premiere) and Lullaby, will be projected. This will be followed by a special presentation of Le Cain’s Super-8/audio tape piece The End of The Universe as Red which will be extended and enriched by a once-off live Wölflinge performance.

Mon Cinématon Online

In November 2010, Gérard Courant filmed my portrait as the 2303rd part of his ongoing Cinématon project, which he began in 1978. This is now online, as is Donal Foreman's, which was filmed in the same session. 

Monday, July 02, 2012

'Note' on Rousseau at 'La Furia Umana'

I've contributed a brief 'note' on one of my favourite filmmakers, Jean-Claude Rousseau, to a dossier on his work in the excellent online journal 'La Furia Umana'.