SCORPION'S STONE

I'm pleased to announce the completion of Scorpion’s Stone - a film that was never there...

Four years in the making, this is my most ambitious and challenging work to date. A mysterious underworld is evoked through the aura of obscure abandoned tapes and fictionalized video diaries to reveal the traces of a full-blown B-movie serial. Sounds and images that might mean everything or nothing hover between life and death, as do the characters that drift through them: a ghost hunter pursuing the phantom of an obscure criminal named ‘Maurice’; murdered gangster Dutch Schultz, sometimes accompanied by his wife, and tempted by a snake-spirited demon; an anguished explorer trying to help his entranced companion who is possessed by the spirit of a child kidnapped in a fake jungle many years ago; an intrepid little explorer seeking an animal familiar; and the exiled princess of the underworld herself.

Over its six-hour running time, Scorpion’s Stone makes use of multiple rhythms and visual textures to repeatedly evoke and dissolve narrative traces. The result is a unique meditation on the haunting malleability of forgotten sounds and images.

Screenings will be announced this autumn.

LEK AND THE DOGS Q&A

Thrilled to announce that I'll be hosting the Q&A with the great Andrew Kötting at Triskel Christchurch Cinema, Cork after the screening of his fascinating new film Lek and the Dogs this Wednesday June 27th. Screening details here.

Double-Blinded

Thanks to all who attended our Langan/Le Cain film-performance Double-Blind at Cork Midsummer Festival last Monday. The work was made possible through the assistance of Cork Film Centre and Experimental Film Society, and was developed with the support of a Cork City Council Individual Artist Bursary. Here are some photos taken on the night by Jed Niezgoda of Vicky and I in costume and with the ever-supportive Rouzbeh Rashidi and Jann Clavadetscher who were so helpful on the night.

INSIDE Review in The Irish Times

As part of his Irish Times review of the exhibition Encountering the Land: Artworks 2018, presented by Carlow Arts Festival and VISUAL Carlow, Aidan Dunne devoted an exceptionally thoughtful and perceptive couple of paragraphs to Inside:

"Vicky Langan and Maximilian Le Cain’s experimental 70-minute film Inside eludes categorisation. It occupies an indeterminate space that includes aspects of film, from fiction to essay film, and performance art. Focusing with unwavering and unnerving intensity on Langan as the main protagonist, it is largely static but hypnotically watchable."

"The setting is an isolated rural dwelling and one commentator suggested that we are watching a woman in the process of “psychic breakdown”. Certainly, we are led to feel a claustrophobic closeness to Langan’s physical being and to her inner life – the long final take is particularly remarkable – but there may be no breakdown, just being. In her meditative, melancholy stillness Langan is both contained by and incredibly open to her surroundings."

The exhibition runs until September 2nd. Full details here.