CLOUD OF SKIN Dublin Premiere

A big thank you to Dean Kavanagh and Sunniva O'Flynn of the IFI, and to all who came along to the Cloud of Skin screening and discussion on Wednesday evening. It was a very special event.

(Photo by Anja Mahler)

CLOUD OF SKIN in Film Ireland

Ahead of its upcoming screening, Film Ireland has published a brief introduction to Cloud of Skin.

Coming Soon...

Full details here.

Luminous Void Wrapping Up

My ears are still ringing from the superb live soundtrack Mick O'Shea & Paul Hegarty performed with my film Damp Access last night as the closing event for the Luminous Void exhibition at Cork's Triskel Project Space. For anyone who hasn't seen the show, there is one more day left to catch the Cinema Cyanide installation Venerable Brethren and Anja Mahler's memserising single channel projection This Harmony is an Accident. Then six weeks of Experimental Film Society mayhem at Triskel will draw to a close.

Heartfelt thanks to Mick, Paul and Vicky Langan for their live performances, and to the many EFS filmmakers who participated in the exhibition and events, especially my co-curator Rouzbeh Rashidi without whose tremendous work this would not have been possible. Thanks to Chris Hurley of Cork Film Centre for his crucial technical support. And, of course, thanks to Triskel for offering us the space and opportunity to put on this show and for facilitating our series of events.  

Coming This Thursday...

DAMP ACCESS + NINEVEH @ Triskel Project Space, May 19th

Luminous Void:

Maximilian Le Cain's Damp Access with live sound by Mick O'Shea & Paul Hegarty
+ Nineveh, a short film by Émmsen Jafari

8pm, Thursday May 19th
Triskel Project Space, Cork
http://triskelartscentre.ie/

The third of three screening/performance events that punctuate the Experimental Film Society exhibition Luminous Void at Triskel Project Space will take place this Thursday, May 19th.

Damp Access is a uniquely personal meditation on the landscape of Cork City, or a certain vision of that landscape. For its Irish premiere screening, Mick O'Shea and Paul Hegarty will be performing a special live soundtrack to enhance the alien resonances the film excavates from intimately familiar spaces.

"Lately, I’ve had a recurring vision: to make a video as someone from another planet. I’ve also been thinking that there’s a lot in this cinema that’s ritual, that offers the conditions for a ritual to take place when it starts to occur. A film that is a ritual and which proposes a ritual, like an expanded cinema which is another expanded cinema. One which expands itself through the images towards the spectators. Which establishes a connection between the screen and their brains, a union I like to visualize as an organic cathode ray tube of millions of colours or greenish, vibrant, terrifying but taking me where it wants me to go. Damp Access offers these possibilities."  

- Jorge Núñez, Fuerza Vital

Émmsen Jafari's Nineveh likewise explores an alien landscape but a radically contrasting one: the Iranian desert, against the vivid colours of which displaced figures attempt to make contact.

Anja Mahler @ Triskel Project Space

Experimental Film Society is delighted to present the premiere of This Harmony is an Accident, a new work by Anja Mahler that will be playing on loop as part of the Luminous Void exhibition at Triskel Project Space in Cork until May 21st. Mahler's work is situated in the field of time-based art. The essential element of her work is the passage and manipulation of time through the expressive use of moving image technology and the human body.

This Harmony is an Accident is the final film loop of the Luminous Void exhibition and as an iconically intense assertion of ocular perception, it is a very fitting conclusion to six weeks of Experimental Film Society activity. Read Mahler's fascinating statement about the piece here.

This Harmony is an Accident will be running from 10-5 each day from now until May 21st, except Sunday and Monday when the gallery's closed.

Only Thing For It...

"There is only one thing a writer can write about: what is in front of his senses at the moment of writing. I am a recording instrument. I do not presume to impose story, plot, continuity. In so far as I succeed in direct recording of certain areas of psychic process, I may have limited function."

- William S. Burroughs

CLOUD OF SKIN @ IFI, May 25th

Delighted to announce that my feature Cloud of Skin will be playing at the Irish Film Institute, Dublin on May 25th as part of their Irish Focus programming strand. Full details here and Facebook event page here.

Luminous Void Documentation

A gorgeous series of photographs by Rouzbeh Rashidi taken in the Luminous Void we opened at Triskel Project Space, Cork. Shot on an ILFORD Delta 3200 Professional + Nikon EF. (For anyone in Cork, the Luminous Void exhibition currently features a series of short film collaborations between Vicky Langan and me that are screening on loop this Tuesday to Thursday, 10am-5pm.)

A Great Screening!

Many thanks to aemi for curating and organizing last Tuesday's Experimental Film Society screening at the Irish Film Institute. It turned out to be a memorable event with an exceptionally well informed discussion afterwards.

Above, left to right: Rouzbeh Rashidi, Jann Clavadetscher, Dean Kavanagh, Atoosa Pour Hosseini, me, Vicky Langan and Michael Higgins. (Photo by Alan Lambert.)