45:37

Phase one of the ongoing Operation Rewrite saga, the online video series 45:37, is currently on show at MUSAC (Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León) as part of the exhibition Una pausa para reflexionar, an overview of art they have funded over the years.

These videos can also be viewed here.

Fergus Daly on Irish Cinema

Fergus Daly expresses some interesting and provocative thoughts on the state of Irish cinema in Filmkrant:

http://www.filmkrant.nl/TS_februari_2014/10392

Karen Power / Michael Higgins Seesound Performance Online

http://vimeo.com/84381353

Documentation from last October's Seesound event.

FORBIDDEN SYMMETRIES

Forbidden Symmetries, a new collaborative experimental science fiction movie by Dean Kavanagh, Rouzbeh Rashidi and me, is now finished:

Three witnesses to the invasion. Three accounts. Are they observing the same thing? Were there any warning signs? And, after all they’ve seen and heard, are they even competent to offer a reliable report? The purpose of this film is to demonstrate that an effort to construct functions known not to exist may on occasion produce interesting frauds.

 Credits and trailer here...

1st Phantoscope Screening: Dwoskin's DYN AMO

This month sees the launch of Phantoscope, a new experimental cinema screening series at Triskel Christchurch Cinema, which I will be programming. These screenings will take place once every three months and will essentially be a continuation of the type of programming I was doing for Black Sun from 2009 until it wrapped up last year. I'm kicking off with one of my favourite films, Stephen Dwoskin's disturbing 1970 feature Dyn Amo, which I wrote about briefly here. This will be followed up in March or April with Dean Kavanagh's A Harbour Town.

Here's the official blurb:

Dyn Amo
120 mins – UK 1973 – Dir: Stephen Dwoskin
Starring: Jenny Runacre, Pat Ford and Catherine Kessler

Thursday January 23rd, 6.30pm
Triskel Christchurch Cinema

Phantoscope is Triskel Christchurch’s new quarterly experimental cinema event. In combining programmes of shorts and features from past and present, it promises to leave both eyes and minds wide open with its striking selection of some of the most startling and unusual films cinema has to offer. It launches with the late Stephen Dwoskin’s masterpiece Dyn Amo, a searing and controversial exploration of the distinction between a person’s self and the projection of that self to others, set in a strip club. The hallucinatory intensity of Dwoskin’s unique camerawork is memorably underscored by Gavin Bryars relentless drone soundtrack. 

Phantoscope is programmed by Cork-based filmmaker Maximilian Le Cain, who brings to the task four years of experience as film curator of Black Sun, the noted experimental music/film event that was a mainstay of the Cork scene between 2009 and 2013.

Full screening details here.

Ivan Ladislav Galeta 1947-2014

"Water-Pulu, another truly great film, uses found footage of a water polo match to extraordinary effect. Again using an optical printer, Galeta keeps the ball centre frame at all times, allowing the action to lurch and flow around this fixed point. The abstraction of the surrounding movement is accentuated by the superimposition of the image on top of itself three times, with a very short delay. The range of associations this visually mesmerising work generates is never less than surprising, from the apparent Impressionist sunset that the opening freeze frame suggests to the solar significance the ball again assumes in relation to the dynamically granular universe that surrounds it."

The above is an extract from a report I wrote on The Experimental Forum of the 2008 Thessaloniki Film Festival, programmed by Vassily Bourikas. It featured a full retrospective of Galeta's films introduced by the artist in person. Both the work and Galeta's remarkable graciousness as a human being left a lasting impression.   

Senses of Cinema End of Year List

My contribution to Senses of Cinema's end of year lists can be found here.