Close Watch

THE END OF THE UNIVERSE AS RED

2012-01-22T07:38:00.000-08:00

I've just completed The End of the Universe as Red, a follow-up to Dark, Plastic, Reversal. Like that earlier film, it's a minimalist ten-minute Super-8 piece made exclusively for performance on 8mm, with a soundtrack on tape. An immersive experience designed for a small audience in a small, very dark space.

EXPERIMENTAL CONVERSATIONS Issue 8 on MUBI Daily Briefing

2012-01-21T10:23:00.000-08:00

The invaluable MUBI Daily Briefing round-up of film news has favourably featured the latest issue of Experimental Conversations, especially Fergus Daly's article 'Sidney Lumet: Experimental Filmmaker?'

http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/daily-briefing-experimental-conversations-8

Experimental Conversations is Cork Film Centre's online journal of experimental film, art cinema and video art, which I edit.

THE LAST OF DEDUCTIVE FRAMES Project

2012-01-09T10:49:00.000-08:00

Our ever-dynamic chief Rouzbeh Rashidi has launched an exciting new Experimental Film Society project. It's a feature film called The Last of Deductive Frames, to be made up, exquisite coprse style, of ten-minute segments each made by one of the members of the group. This is the official description:

The Last of Deductive Frames is a collaborative omnibus feature film being made gradually over time by the members of Experimental Film Society. It is a film that starts but never finishes. Each filmmaker will contribute a ten minute section to it. These sections will be assembled in the order in which they are completed. This constantly growing work will initially be for the internet, but will eventually be presented on the big screen. The only strict rule at the outset is that each segment must last exactly ten minutes, although further rules might be added as the film develops. The Last of Deductive Frames is a living cinematic organism designed to forget its creators as it evolves.

The first installment can be seen here.

Esperanza Collado on DARK, PLASTIC, REVERSAL

2012-01-05T11:02:00.000-08:00

Esperanza Collado wrote the following very insightful review of my my Super-8 film Dark, Plastic, Reversal. It first appeared in the winter issue of Experimental Conversations.

Last November, coinciding with the 56th Cork Film Festival, a series of three screenings extended the concurrent exhibition 'Seeing the Light' that took place at Cork's Sample Studios/TACTIC Gallery. Curated by Maximilian Le Cain, the show featured contemporary experimental film works by Michael Higgins, Rouzbeh Rashidi, Chris O'Neill and myself, among others.

From what I saw, the screenings didn't attract large audiences, even though some interesting work recently produced in Ireland outside the frame of commercial cinema was shown. And I can clearly recall that the members of the audience all appeared to be artists and filmmakers, including the lively and stimulating presence of Ivan and Igor Buharov, indicating that such an event doesn't seem to draw regular festival-goers. After all, there's not much film festival glamour associated with an event like this. It brought to mind a text Michael Snow wrote in honour of Hollis Frampton in 1984, in which he reminded us that before Warhol gave experimental film 'glamour', for years the underground was ignored and looked down on as poor, grungy and inbred.

But that's not the subject I wanted to write about here...

I wanted to write about Dark, Plastic, Reversal, an ephemeral work Maximilian Le Cain performed at the end of the first screening in Sample Studios. Without announcement and in a rather intimate environment, Le Cain switched on a Super8 projector and a small tape recorder/player. In addition to the phenomenological situation of the spectator in the filmic space of projection, this work also thematized the economy of the technological apparatus in ways that revealed an attempt to see what the fundamentals of cinema are.

The film projected was a meticulous exercise in montage, a sort of terrorist action performed on a strip of celluloid on which a series of images had been previously captured. By inserting long fragments of black leader between very short bursts of images, these images only appeared at regular intervals, wrecked, scratched or hand-painted. This created a strong sensation of rhythm, which harmonized extraordinarily with the steady pulse that came from the tape machine.

The importance of the time element and the possibility of an alternative form to narrative construction were given in Dark, Plastic, Reversal by structuring the duration of a cinematic experience for the spectator. If there was suspense, which of course also exists in experimental film, it was provided by the form in which images had been assembled and, most importantly, by the extremely short spell, between 3 and 10 frames, they remained on the screen, as if imploring in pain to be allowed to escape their surrounding blackness. Their brevity made it almost impossible to discern the original content of the images, but had a strong effect on perception and memory that I wouldn't just associate with persistence of vision, but to more complex processes of cognition.

In fact, one of the most beautiful aspects of Dark, Plastic, Reversal, in its reduction of filmic presentation to elementary determinants like light, screen, pulse, and the cut, is the reversal aspect of it. The black leader fragments presented a film ‘in reverse', or ‘in negative', that it only occurs in the spectator's mind. Perhaps for that reason Le Cain ended this happening handling out to the audience fragments of celluloid torn from the projected film, black leader mostly.

It would be interesting to relate this kind of work to the Lettrist actions of the 1950s and the sort of ‘suicidal cinema' (‘contemplate my word talking about cinema and you will see my film', proclaimed Roland Sabatier) that claimed and requested the dissolution of film into situations in which an understanding of cinema as a collective experience of exchange and participation is prioritised.

JR @ Pufferfish

2011-12-22T09:10:00.000-08:00

JR: Dream This in Remembrance of Me has been posted at the Pufferfish website:http://pufferfish.ie/index.php/2011/12/21/maximilien-le-cain/

Experimental Conversations 8 is Online

2011-12-19T14:59:00.000-08:00

The 8th issue of Experimental Conversations, the online magazine which I edit, is now up!It includes in-depth articles on Jose Val del Omar by Esperanza Collado, Adolfas Mekas by Philippe Dijon de Monteton, Sideny Lumet by Fergus Daly, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul by Phillina Sun; interviews with Rouzbeh Rashidi (discussing Experimental Film Society) and Michelangelo Frammartino (in conversation with Gianluca Pulsoni); Tony McKibbin on the body in contemporary film; and the second part of David Brancaleone's expoloration of The Thin Line Between Documentary and Fiction. Happy reading!

10 PIECES OF VIDEO re-posted on Mubi

2011-12-17T08:24:00.000-08:00

The first three installments of my two-year-old internet work 10 Pieces of Video for Internet has been re-posted at the Experimenatl Film Society Mubi page. The other episodes will follow...http://mubi.com/garage/projects/29

Ordinary Videos

2011-12-15T08:56:00.000-08:00

As 2011 draws to a close, it's time to announce the last project of the year: I've started a new series of videos called Ordinary Videos which will act like a sketchbook for images, ideas, ephemera... The first two are complete. Ordinary Video 1 is drawn from footage graciously given to me by Mollie Anna King of a performance she did a couple of years back (depicted in the still above). Ordinary Video 2 was filmed rather closer to home... The series will be added to as next year progresses. Other than that, I'm gradually editing the feature length Still Days and occasionally adding videos to the ongoing Operation Rewrite online project with Esperanza Collado.

HEREUNDER Response by Dean Kavanagh

2011-11-28T05:05:00.000-08:00

Filmmaker Dean Kavanagh has written the following response to Hereunder:

I watched all of your films that you sent me at night, since you describe yourself as a 'nocturnal', and you work at night. However, everything seems different in the light of day, a sense of renewal, beginning again, or that we have a chance to get away before the night comes back. Nonetheless, there is time to escape, but I like to think of this as time to prepare. I can see from your films (some I have seen in public screenings) that there is an impending sense of doom, at times beautiful or terrifying, and often both.

This film, like many of your films, seems to raise an anxiety in the viewer. I am never sure what to expect, and I always try to see ahead in a certain 'damning' sensation- to try and find a way out, to try and save myself. But I have never found a way out, and certainly have not found any way to deal with Hereunder. There is no escape in the films of Maximilian Le Cain.

The film opens in a very tactile way, a woman rubbing her head and the sound of breathing. The sound of the breathing becomes a comforting factor throughout Hereunder, and then it becomes the most terrifying part.

A particular moment I found very beautiful was the woman's stare (at the 2min mark), and the slow sweeping movement made by the camera. This stood out for me in a film dictated by montage. It reminded me of some of the faces of old women in 'church-going' scenes in works by post-impressionist painters. And this complete rendering of the 'forlorn' and a sense of distance (not only of space but time) reminded me of Tarkovsky, and the faces of the women in the dream sequences of Nostalghia.

But there was a difference. There was a jagged sense of intimacy, perhaps achieved through the format and the choice of expression and composition.

It felt like she was saying "what are you doing here?", and while the audience (the movement) pulls away, I felt like she really wanted us to stay, or wanted me to stay, or someone…whoever it was. Vicky gave the character a real sense of solidity, while in other moments appearing 'phantom-like'.

There is a huge building sensation, and then there was a moment of release. Momentary. The woman is standing in open air, arms wide apart, and for once there is a sense of 'real' distance. Not only did this not last, but it never really existed in the first place. She is surrounded by a massive wall of rusted metal and junk. It looks like it will crush her. Her worries are always with her.

Is there any escape from daily routine, from sounds and lights? Perhaps through sleep? No. The film uses what sounds like a person sleeping as an atmospheric bed for its duration. There is no way to fall asleep and escape this existence.

Perhaps death.

Often for me, absence = death. And this, like most of your films seem to disclose and expose spaces, light and occupation of the spaces. Spaces are filled. Spaces are absent too. The investigation of the lockers for example, some of them had rusted bolts, boxes and paint cans in them. Others didn't have anything. The light filled them and created shadows. They seemed more inviting than the occupied lockers. The lockers that had items in them seemed empty. The woman later opens them and re-investigates, once again, clanging them off of the concrete floor, or tampering with the boxes to make some natural noise. It would seem she wants the items talk of this space, to hear a possible answer by the reverberated sound from the space.

Then there is the sense of absence when the woman is not in the room at all. There is a rack of empty lockers and a hanging light bulb. Moments later, we see her in another room getting changed, or suffering from the cold.

Eventually the room feels empty whether the woman is there or not. Perhaps this 'death' comes while we are alive: in an open space. Below. Above. Whether in a sound or in a conversation, once there is a sense of absence, and no more investigation, things begin to fade. We are dead while we are living sometimes.

The film is highly intimate, thoroughly engaging and at moments disengaging and subjective to the point that even voids criticism. But I felt provoked by the film to give my view. Films like this get people talking because they are silenced for the duration of the work and even for days after.

I thought the film was very poetic, and Vicky's performance was sublime, even when it became eerie. Certainly these were moments 'captured', processed and explored to the full extent of the atmosphere. Hereunder leaves the viewer in a very strange space indeed.

JR @ Mubi Garage

2011-11-16T10:27:00.000-08:00

JR: Dream This In Remembrance Of Me has been re-posted at The Experimental Film Society's MUBI Garage page. It's well worth browsing through many of the interesting films presented there...

LIGHT/SOUND @ Galway Arts Centre

2011-11-15T04:20:00.000-08:00

Light/Sound is being featured as part of the group exhibition 'Void:Volume' curated by Sarah Lundy at Galway Arts Centre, November 21st-27th.

Other artists included are: Jennifer Macklem, Roisin O’Sullivan, Shelby Woods, Vanya Lambrecht Ward, Ailbhe Ní Bhriain, Adrian Duncan, Barbara Knezevic, Lydia Holmes, Méadhbh O' Connor and Sarah Lundy.

Galway Arts Centre
1st Floor, 47 Dominick Street, Galway.

Dublin EFS Screening Postponed

2011-11-14T08:23:00.000-08:00

Some sad news: The Shebeen Bar in Dublin has been evicted from its premises. One of the consequences of this is the cancellation of the announced Experimental Film Society screening scheduled to take place there tomorrow. The screening will go ahead when a new venue is found. Watch this space...

HEREUNDER & DESK 13 @ CineB

2011-11-08T03:52:00.001-08:00

Hereunder and Desk 13 are playing as part of an Experimental Film Society programme at the CineB Festival in Chile on November 12th:

http://www.cerofilm.com/fcineb/?page_id=1630

Full details from the ESF website:

Film Festival CineB, on Saturday 12th November 2011, 15.00 pm, CINE ARTE ALAMEDA, Santiago, CHILE, will be screening the first programme of EFS short films in an international film festival :

Founded and run by Dublin-based Iranian filmmaker Rouzbeh Rashidi, Experimental Film Society unites works by filmmakers scattered across the globe, whose films are distinguished by an uncompromising, no-budget devotion to personal, experimental cinema. Mainly, but not exclusively, drawn from a diaspora of Iranian artists, Experimental Film Society is responsible for rescuing and preserving many of its members’ films, which otherwise might have been lost forever.

This programme features a selection of works by some of the most prolific Experimental Film Society members: Jann Clavadetscher, Michael Higgins, Kamyar Kordestani, Hamid Shams Javi, Maximilian Le Cain (working in partnership with Vicky Langan), and Rashidi himself.

1_ЧОП (2011) By Jann Clavadetscher / Switzerland 11mins

2_VAT 7 (2007) By Michael Higgins / Ireland 2mins

3_The Petrol Station (2011) By Michael Higgins / Ireland 12mins

4_ The Good Man Has No Shape (2011) By Kamyar Kordestani / Iran 13mins

5_ Something’s Fishy (2011) By Hamid Shams Javi / Iran 16mins

6_Shingle Beach (2008) By Rouzbeh Rashidi / Iran 4mins

7_Nonessential Recall (2010) By Rouzbeh Rashidi / Ireland & Iran 16mins

8_Desk 13 (2011) By Maximilian Le Cain and Vicky Langan / Ireland 8mins

9_Hereunder (2011) By Maximilian Le Cain and Vicky Langan / Ireland 12mins

The Buharov Brothers in Cork

2011-11-05T09:26:00.001-07:00

Some amazing news: this year's Corona Cork Film Festival / Cork Film Centre guest filmmakers are The Buharov Brothers!

The partnership of Hungarian filmmakers Ivan & Igor Buharov (Kornél Szilágyi and Nándor Hevesi) has produced some of the most unique and quirkily beautiful experimental cinema to have come out of Europe in the past decade. To watch a Buharov film has been described as “getting lost in someone else’s dream. The directors Igor and Ivan Buharov invite us to see the insides of their brains through various amusing and absurd story-lines.”(Off Screen Film Festival, Brussels) These darkly playful hallucinations come with the aura of having been discovered in someone’s attic, precisely revealing a world perhaps subconsciously suspected but hitherto un-describable.

They usually work without a script, or deviate from it, encouraging the actors to improvise and utilise found footage and free association while often composing and performing the film music themselves. The duo are also founders and members of the avant garde jazz band Pop Ivan and are founding members of a number of collectives including Labor 40 and the Kaos Camping Group.

I've programmed two Buharov screenings, which will both take place early next week. Tuesday's screening will include an audience q&a.

BUHAROV BROTHERS PROG. 1

Mon 07 Nov | 4:00pm | Gate Multiplex

Rudderless

2010 | 30mins | Beta | Colour | Subtitled

Slow Mirror

2007 | 84mins | 35mm | Colour | Subtitled

BUHAROV BROTHERS PROGRAMME 2

Tue 08 Nov | 6:00pm | Tactic Gallery (as part of the Seeing the Light screening series)

Five short films, to be followed by a discussion with Ivan & Igor Buharov.

For more details:

http://www.corkfilmfest.org/2011/strands/133/buharov-brothers

CONTACT @ London New Wind Festival

2011-11-04T16:01:00.000-07:00

Contact will be featured as part of the following programme, with a new live improvised soundtrack:

ENSEMBLE TRIP-TIK HOSTS AN EVENING
OF IMPROVISED MUSIC & FILM

Catherine Pluygers - Oboes, Adrian Northover - Saxes,
Adam Bohman - Found Objects,
Guest Artists include John Russell - Guitar, and Roland Ramanan - Trumpet

Music includes Lament for Japan for Solo Oboe by Catherine Pluygers,
Text Pieces by Adam Bohman and Instrumental solos
and Improvised Music for Full Ensemble.

Films include 'Lucretia' by Trisha McCrae as well as films by
Helen Petts and Vicky Langan with live accompaniment.

November 7th , Time 7.30
H.M.S. President, Victoria Embankment, London EC4Y OHJ.

New Video Premiering at Upcoming Dublin EFS Screening

2011-10-31T07:36:00.000-07:00

In Advance, a video I made this summer exclusively for the Experimental Film Society, will receive its first screening as part of an EFS programme in Dublin on November 15th. The lineup also features my Hotel La Mirage and JR: Dream This In Remembrance of Me, along with works by Pouya Ahmadi, Jann Clavadetscher, Bahar Samadi, Kamyar Kordestani, Hamid Shams Javi, Michael Higgins and, of course, EFS founder Rouzbeh Rashidi.

This event is part of the Shebeen Flick, a new film night showing "loved & unseen Irish films" on Tuesdays at 7pm in Shebeen Chic, 4 Georges Street, Dublin 2.

For more details:

http://www.experimentalfilmsociety.com/2011/10/third-efs-screening.html

Exhibition & Screening Series @ Cork Film Festival

2011-10-28T02:30:00.000-07:00

I'm curating an exhibition and screening series at TACTIC Gallery / Sample Studios during Cork Film Festival:

Seeing the Light
Where film and video collide: an exhibition of contemporary Irish experimental film curated by Maximilian Le Cain.

Preview 6pm Friday 4th November. Exhibition runs until Wednesday the 16th.
Open Saturday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons.

TACTIC
Sample-Studios, 2nd Floor, Former Government Buildings, Sullivan's Quay, Cork

Work by
Esperanza Collado (still above from her film Horses) // Rouzbeh Rashidi // Michael Higgins // Chris O’Neill // Soltan Karl

The visually intense experimental films that comprise this exhibition were all created with the textural particularity of celluloid as a key factor. Yet they are all presented, as many films are today, in a a digital format. Are they, therefore, still ‘films’? Or studies of film on video, the dynamic investigation of the properties of one medium by another?

With the support of Cork Film Centre.

Screenings:

Monday November 7th, 8pm: THE CONSECUTIVE IMPOSTORS

The Consecutive Impostors are Esperanza Collado and Maximilian Le Cain, and this screening presents work from or connected to their ongoing project ‘Operation Rewrite’. Stemming from an original conecpt of making very short videos for the internet following a set of strict formal rules, ‘Operation Rewrite’ has mutated into a multi-disciplinary art project that keeps at its centre the idea of the interruption as crucial to cinematic montage.

Tuesdsy November 8th, 6pm: IVAN & IGOR BUHAROV SHORTS PROGRAMME AND DISCUSSION

The partnership of Hungarian filmmakers Ivan & Igor Buharov has produced some of the most unique and quirkily beautiful experimental cinema to have come out of Europe in the past decade. To watch a Buharov film has been described as “getting lost in someone else’s dream. The directors Igor and Ivan Buharov invite us to see the insides of their brains through various amusing and absurd story-lines.”(Off Screen Film Festival, Brussels) These darkly playful hallucinations come with the aura of having been discovered in someone’s attic, precisely revealing a world perhaps subconsciously suspected but hitherto un-describable. Ivan & Igor Buharov will be present in person to discuss their work…

http://buharov.hu/portfolio/

Wednesday November 9th, 6 pm: (AN)OTHER IRISH CINEMA & VICKY LANGAN

The (An)Other Irish Cinema screening project consists of the work of three Irish-based independent filmmakers: Donal Foreman, Rouzbeh Rashidi and Maximilian Le Cain. Although their styles are very different, they are linked by the use of exploratory, non-script-based approaches to filmmaking and by a keen awareness of the cinema histories that have explored the medium's possibilities far beyond the accepted rules of the multiplex. This programme includes Foreman’s acclaimed fiction shorts Pull and Refuge; three episodes of Rashidi’s current, darkly hypnotic short film series Homo Sapiens Project; and the premiere of the visually overpowering Lullaby, the latest work in an ongoing creative partnership between Le Cain and Cork-based sound/performance artist Vicky Langan.

http://anotheririshcinema.blogspot.com/

Last Days of Alan Lambert's Fundit Campaign

2011-10-27T10:21:00.000-07:00

A few weeks back, I mentioned that Alan Lambert had a Fundit campaign underway to help finance his new film, The End of The Earth is My Home. With six days to go, he has reached just over 50% of his target figure. Come on, everyone! If you care about great, truly independent cinema happening in this country, and you have any money to bestow on a worthy cause, it's time to dip hands into pockets...

http://www.fundit.ie/project/the-end-of-the-earth-is-my-home

Change of Date for Solus / Darklight Screening

2011-10-18T06:51:00.000-07:00

The Solus screening at the Darklight Festival, which includes Wölflinge 17/11/’10, has been rescheduled. It's now between 5 and 8pm in Studio 5 in The Factory, 35a Barrow Street, Dublin 4.

The Man Between...

2011-10-17T13:13:00.000-07:00

In a section of Andrew Klevan's fine article Expressing the In-Between devoted to Truffaut's hugely underrated masterpiece Le Peau Douce (1964), he draws on and quotes extensively from a piece I wrote on this film a few years back. Great to see he found this useful and even better to see Truffaut's finest film receiving some much-needed appreciation...

Klevan's article can be found in Lola, the new online film journal edited by Adrian Martin and Girish Shambu.

Films @ Hunter's Moon

2011-10-16T02:04:00.000-07:00

Two of my collaborations with Vicky Langan, Light / Sound and Contact, and one of my films 'as Soltan Karl', Everybody's Favourite Disease , will be shown as part of the experimental film section of the Hunter's Moon Festival in Carrick On Shannon, Co. Leitrim (October 28-30th).

The Festival also showcases two of my closest regular accomplices. Rouzbeh Rashidi has three films in the film programme. And Wölflinge herself will be performing live on the Sunday evening (5.30pm, The Dock Arts Theatre). Not to be missed!

(An)Other Irish Cinema @ Darklight

2011-10-13T16:45:00.000-07:00

In addition to the screening of Wölflinge 17/11/’10 as part of the Solus programme during the upcoming Darklight Festival, there will be a presentation by (An)Other Irish Cinema in the New Indie Voices Show-and-Tell Screenings on the 22nd of this month. Rouzbeh Rashidi and I will be present.

For more details:

http://www.darklight.ie/festival-2011/new-indie-voices/

HOTEL LA MIRAGE @ Kaunas Biennial

2011-10-13T05:33:00.000-07:00

Last May, Hotel La Mirage was featured on a programme of Super-8 works presented by Cherry Kino in the UK.

This programme is now playing in the Kaunas Biennial in Lithuania:

http://www.bienale.lt/2011/?p=1629&lang=en

JR: DREAM THIS IN REMEMBRANCE OF ME - New Online Video

2011-10-06T11:40:00.000-07:00

JR: Dream This In Remembrance Of Me is a new video I've made for online viewing.

It's a small tribute to a great filmmaker- Jean Rollin. It can be seen here:

http://vimeo.com/30146126

HEREUNDER @ Cinekinosis

2011-10-05T08:02:00.000-07:00

Vicky Langan and my Hereunder will play as part of an Experimental Film Society programme in Cinekinosis, Bristol on Tuesday October 18th.

Hereunder is an intense, fragmented (auto)biographical portrait of Vicky, which sets her adrift amidst lockers of garden shed bric-a-brac from which she summons an ocean of sound.

For more details of this screening, please visit:

http://www.experimentalfilmsociety.com/2011/09/0-0-1-326-1863-home-15-4-2185-14.html

WOLFLINGE 17/11/'10 @ Darklight

2011-10-04T08:12:00.000-07:00

Wölflinge 17/11/’10 will be screened at the upcoming Darklight Festival in Dublin as part of the Solus Film Collective's programme of new Irish work. This programme also includes works by, amongst others, Esperanza Collado, Alan Lambert, Moira Tierney, Anthony Kelly / David Stalling and... eh... The Rubberbandits!

Friday October 21st, 7:00pm
The Factory, 35a Barrow Street, Dublin 4

MONOLOGUE at LUFF

2011-10-03T12:15:00.000-07:00

Monologue will be screened at this year's Lausanne Underground Film & Music Festival on October 19th and 22nd.

This looks like a terrific festival- their selection of feature films is particularly mouthwatering.

Operation Rewrite Exhibition Documentation

2011-10-03T08:49:00.000-07:00

The Consecutive Impostors' Operation Rewrite exhibition is now up and running in Dublin's Instituto Cervantes...

What follows is the text of a declaration we read out remotely over a loudspeaker, interspersed with jarring tape noise, during our presentation/intervention at the opening, while viewers looked at a projection of us on a wall.

(To enlarge the images, please click on them.)

Underneath these documents are some wonderful photographs of the exhibition by Rouzbeh Rashidi.

Operation Rewrite Exhibition in Dublin

2011-09-24T15:12:00.001-07:00

Here's the official announcement:

‘Operation Rewrite’
Esperanza Collado & Maximilian Le Cain
Instituto Cervantes
29 September – 29 October 2011

Opening & artists' talk: Thursday 29 September 2011, 6pm.

Esperanza Collado and Maximilian Le Cain explore the workings of the cut and the interruption as fundamental associative principles of cinematographic montage in a diversity of artworks. ‘Operation Rewrite’s multidisciplinary nature allows it to trace the fault lines between cinema and the inevitably ruptured articulation of language. This rhizomatic art project takes its name from a chapter of William S. Burroughs’ novel ‘Nova Express’, where the author describes his subversive ‘Cut-Up’ method, the aim of which is to explode the disaffecting ‘parasite organism’ commonly known as language. In ‘Operation Rewrite’, the wide use of black screen and of spaces ‘in negative’ (not in the sense of negation, but of inversion, crack or leak) become machines of affection, places for expropriation and the radical displacement of meaning.

This exhibition has been made possible by the support of MUSAC (Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y Léon) and Cork Film Centre.

www.dublin.cervantes.es

Alan Lambert Film Project on Fundit

2011-09-24T05:59:00.000-07:00

Alan Lambert, responsible for the criminally under-recognised masterpiece Ouroboros which I wrote about here, is seeking funding for an exciting looking new film project with the beautiful title The End of the Earth is My Home. To find out more or to make a contribution to this very worthwhile campaign, check out his Fundit profile:

http://www.fundit.ie/project/the-end-of-the-earth-is-my-home

Operation Rewrite Exhibition Stills

2011-09-22T02:24:00.000-07:00

Here are some photos Esperanza Collado took of our Operation Rewrite exhibition in Spain last week...

Culture Night

2011-09-21T14:14:00.001-07:00

Tomorrow, Friday 23rd, is Cork's Culture Night and what I'm looking forward to most is Vicky Langan's performance at The National Sculpture Factory, which will be open between 5 and 9pm. Having heard some of the sound that will be used, I can safely say on the basis of that alone that this is not to be missed!

If anyone's around later and feeling like some experimental cinema, a 'surprise' screening of my The Everywhere Trilogy will close festivities at Civic Trust House on Pope's Quay. That'll be at 10 or just after...

LULLABY

2011-09-21T12:45:00.000-07:00

Lullaby, the latest video by Vicky Langan and me, is now complete. This 20-minute, black and white plunge into noctrunal solitude makes more elaborated use of flicker than anything I've done previously, seeking the stillness at the heart of the visual storm...

Operation Rewrite Exhibition in Spain

2011-09-12T04:04:00.001-07:00

The first of two upcoming exhibitions stemming from Esperanza Collado and my Operation Rewrite project will be taking place later this week at the a.a. LEVE arts space in Castro de Cepeda, León.

The opening is on Friday, September 16th at 8pm and the show will run until October 16th. To book a viewing, +34 987 053 862

This will be followed up by an exhibition at the Instituto Cervantes in Dublin, kicking off on September 29th. But more about that soon...

THE LAST FILMS OF HUMPHREY ESTERHASE

2011-09-10T02:27:00.000-07:00

As reported here last year, the mysterious and enigmatic legend of underground cinema Humphrey Esterhase was finally intending to start making films again. Having given up filmmaking for nearly forty years after all his films were destroyed, he worked with me on Ten Minutes Isn't worth a Dream, after which he planned to make several films of his own. Unfortunately this never happened. He seemed to sink into dejection and indecisiveness. At the time of his death, it was believed he hadn't even touched a camera recently. But two rolls of Super-8 were found amongst his possessions, as was an audio tape on which he had recorded some of his thoughts. Close Watch has set these Super-8 images to the soundtrack of this recording as The Last Films of Humphrey Esterhase, a tribute to this bizarre and tormented figure.

George Kuchar 1942 - 2011

2011-09-08T11:32:00.000-07:00

The sense of freedom his films give me is second to none. A huge influence...

Eclipse of the Sun Virgin (1967) :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_soO-tEsiOU

(PR)EVENS in Amsterdam

2011-09-07T06:50:00.000-07:00

(Pr)Evens, a short documentary on Ian Mackaye that I made with Tim Furey back in 2006, is to be screened in Amsterdam on the 20th, along with Jem Cohen's Instrument.

This is part of an event by artist Jeremiah Day centring on Hannah Arendt:

Hannah Arendt’s The Crisis in Culture: Its Social and Its Political Significance
September 20th, 24th
GOLEB
Burg. De Vlugtlaan 125
Organized by Jeremiah Day

Tuesday, September 20th
Introduction of Arendt project by Jeremiah Day 19:00
Film Screening 20:00
Instrument, Dir. Jem Cohen, 1999
(Pr)Evens, Dir. Maximilian Le Cain & Tim Furey, 2006

As both the launch of GOLEB's fall film series and the introduction to Day's Arendt project, this evening will present two documentaries about Dischord Records, the home of musical groups such as Fugazi and Minor Threat. Following Arendt's focus on the distinction between culture and entertainment, we will consider the way Dischord Records' founder Ian Mackaye has tried to organize a practice in which music is not reduced to consumption, and as an example of the engagement of art with public life. Also discussed will be the 2005 Cork Caucus, an international forum of artists and thinkers, of which (Pr)Evens was one of the legacies.

For more information, contact: golebreadinggroup@hotmail.com

My First Film

2011-09-04T15:19:00.000-07:00

After seventeen years of making videos (including quite a few featuring or entirely comprised of film elements), I've finally completed my first film!

Dark, Plastic, Reversal is a ten-minute strip of Super-8 constructed of two-second sections of black leader interspersed with one-sceond bursts of image fragments. This resolutely materialist work is accompanied by a soundtrack of noise recorded and played back on audio tape. It will not be transferred to any digital format.

Watch this space for details of future screenings...

HEREUNDER Hilltown Stills

2011-08-25T03:33:00.000-07:00

These stills are of Hereunder as it appeared at the Hilltown Music Festival last month. They're by curator Anthony Kelly, who was responsible for the inspired installation of this video by Vicky and me. Many thanks to him and David Stalling for including it...

Raoul Ruiz 1941-2011

2011-08-19T12:08:00.000-07:00

It's impossible to overestimate what Ruiz's films have meant to me, the extent of their influence on me as a filmmaker and a human being... Second to none. They are with me always, reflected in the world around me always.

It's equally impossible to believe that Ruiz, of all people, can be consigned to a category as closed and definitive as 'death'...

And, yet, the world is so much poorer now, so much poorer...

Katerina Golubeva 1966-2011

2011-08-18T11:08:00.000-07:00

Pola X, the greatest film of its decade...

CONTACT @ W.U.D. Feast of Fools

2011-08-01T01:44:00.001-07:00

Contact will be screened in Sligo this Friday as part of an eclectic film/music/performance event described as:

The third in a series of free monthly events. The First Friday Arts Club will host Galway based Live @ 8 who will present the work of both local and international visual artists and performers. Taking place in the Trades Club at Number 2 Castle Street on Friday August the 5th from 8 pm, the recently reopened cultural centre offers the space for developing local arts initiatives, music, events, training and socialising. Curated by Vivienne Dick, Aine Philips and Maeve Mulrennan.

The film programme also includes work by, amongst others, Abigail Child, Vivienne Dick, James Nares and Moira Tierney.

Live @ 8 on Tour
5th August 2011, 8 pm, admission free
Tades Club, 2 Castle St. , Sligo

DESK 13 @ MisALT

2011-07-23T03:55:00.000-07:00

Desk 13 is being screened in San Francisco this week as part of the MisALT Screening Series, curated by Tessa Siddle.

For the full lineup of this very intriguing programme, entitled 'Pornography and its Discontents', please visit:

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=107062366058966

Thursday, July 28 · 7:30pm - 10:30pm
Workspace Limited Art Studios
2150 Folsom St
San Francisco, California

EFS Screening @ Hello Operator

2011-07-15T08:49:00.000-07:00

Two of my films, Smudge and Bouquet, will screen as part of the following programme curated by Rouzbeh Rashidi:

On July 29th, Hello Operator, Dublin, will host the first Experimental Film Society screening.

Founded and run by Dublin-based Iranian filmmaker Rouzbeh Rashidi, Experimental Film Society unites works by a dozen filmmakers scattered across the globe, whose films are distinguished by an uncompromising, no-budget devotion to personal, experimental cinema. Mainly, but not exclusively, drawn from a diaspora of Iranian artists, Experimental Film Society is responsible for rescuing and preserving many of its members’ films, which otherwise might have been lost forever.

This programme, curated and presented by Rashidi, will feature works by all twelve Experimental Film Society members. Several of the filmmakers will also be present. Short Films by: Mohammad Nick Dell, Mahdi Safarali, Navid Salajegheh, Bahar Samadi, Jann Clavadetscher, Behzad Haki, Pouya Ahmadi, Kamyar Kordestani, Michael Higgins, Maximilian Le Cain, Rouzbeh Rashidi & Hamid Shams.

Experimental Film Society is an independent, not-for-profit film production company specialising in avant-garde, independent and no/low budget filmmaking. It was founded in 2000 in Tehran, Iran. Its aim is to produce and promote films by its members.

For a full list of Experimental Film Society members, please visit: http://rouzbehrashidiefs.blogspot.com/

Further CONTACT

2011-07-14T08:16:00.000-07:00

Having featured in Galway's Super 8 Shots Festival last sunday, Contact has been selected by Vivienne Dick to play at the next Live@8 event in early August. Watch this space for more details...

HEREUNDER @ Hilltown

2011-07-11T02:55:00.000-07:00

Hereunder will be playing on loop during the Hilltown New Music Festival from next Friday 15th to Sunday 17th. It looks like a very interesting festival...

tonymckibbin.com

2011-07-06T14:58:00.000-07:00

Scottish critic Tony McKibbin is one of the most brilliant writers on film that I have read. He is the most regular contributor to my magazine, Experimental Conversations. Before that, in 2006, I adapted his short story Wounds for the screen as Game of Truth. And, even before that, he was what he remains: a close and valued friend.

In fact, I was a very young man when I first met Tony and our long conversations about cinema did much to educate me: it was enough to be in the presence of such a high standard of thinking about cinema (and Tony has a fluent capacity for thinking as he is talking, a skill that is actually extremely rare) to inspire ever deeper interrogations of my medium of choice that chose me. His influence was crucial on my then-forming mind...

More than a decade later, these conversations continue, also branching off into discussions of our personal lives. Even if we cheerfully acknowledge some differences in sensibility- a Rohmerian in dialogue with a Ruizian- Tony's conversation and writing remain a singularly cherished and important part of my life, as inspiring as ever to my now, no doubt, degenerating mind...

Therefore, the appearance of tonymckibbin.com, a website of Tony's writings, is exciting news indeed... Strongly recommended!

Langan & Le Cain @ The Avant

2011-07-05T11:23:00.001-07:00

Vicky Langan and I have so far created five moving image works in our ongoing creative partnership. These will all be screened at The Guesthouse this Sunday as part of The Avant festival.

Contact (2011) sets up a dialectical relationship between a figure in an 8mm film, and the film image she inhabits. Wölflinge 17/11/’10 (2011) is a haunting visual interpretation of a performance by Langan that breaks down the boundaries between spectator and performer. Light / Sound (2010) chronicles the ghostly, sonic encounter between Langan, out hunting for sound with her recording apparatus, and an ancient 35mm projector. Hereunder (2011) is an intense, fragmented (auto)biographical portrait of Vicky, which sets her adrift amidst lockers of garden shed bric-a-brac from which she summons an ocean of sound. And Desk 13 (2011) brings a darker, more erotic aspect of our vision to the fore.

This screening takes place at the end of a day packed with performances, as well The Guesthouse's regular Sunday Lunch. Visit The Avant website for a full list of the day's events at The Guesthouse.

Many thanks to Rouzbeh Rashidi for designing our poster!

8.30 pm, Sunday, July 10th
The Guesthouse,
10 Chapel St. Shandon, Cork
www.theguesthouse.ie

Rouzbeh Rashidi Screening @ The Avant, Cork

2011-07-03T03:50:00.001-07:00

As part of the Avant Festival, Cork audiences will have the rare opportunity to see three of Rouzbeh Rashidi's finest and most radical shorter works in a programme which I curated and will present. This screening is a collaboration between The Guesthouse and Cork Film Centre.

The films are:

Harmony With You
Theory PAL
Theory NTSC

For more information,

www.rouzbehrashidi.com

7pm, Monday, July 11th
The Guesthouse,
10 Chapel St. Shandon, Cork
www.theguesthouse.ie

Making CONTACT

2011-06-30T06:35:00.000-07:00

Here are some stills from Vicky Langan and my latest film, Contact, which is now in the last stages of post production.

This short work, which originated on Super-8, will receive its first screenings next week. Watch this space for more details!

WÖLFLINGE 17/11/'10 on Mubi Garage

2011-06-25T13:31:00.000-07:00

Wölflinge 17/11/'10 by Vicky Langan and me has just been posted on the Mubi Garage forum as part of the Experimental Film Society showcase... Thanks to Rouzbeh Rashidi.

(An)Other Irish Cinema in Belfast

2011-06-21T07:23:00.000-07:00

The Ormeau Baths Gallery in Belfast will host an (An)Other Irish Cinema screening on Friday, July 1st.

This will be our regular touring programme which includes my Everybody's Favourite Disease, Making a Home and The Mongolian Barbecue. Rouzbeh and I will be in attendance.

Experimental Conversations 7

2011-06-17T10:28:00.000-07:00

The latest issue of Experimental Conversations is now online!

www.experimentalconversations.com

Maurice Garrel (1923-2011)

2011-06-06T13:20:00.001-07:00

MONOLOGUE @ Onion City

2011-06-04T04:22:00.001-07:00

Monologue has been included in the programme of the 23rd Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival, which is organised by Chicago Filmmakers.

Fore more information:

http://www.chicagofilmmakers.org/onion_fest/

POINT OF DEPARTURE on RTÉ TV

2011-05-25T10:56:00.000-07:00

The TV cut of Point of Departure, my Cork Film Centre/RTÉ Short Script Award winning short film built around Anna Manahan in her last starring role, is scheduled to be screened this Monday, May 30th on RTÉ 2 at 23.45.

For more on this film, follow this link and scroll down the page a little:

http://experimentalfilmclub.blogspot.com/2009_11_01_archive.html

DESK 13 Completed

2011-05-20T02:02:00.000-07:00

Desk 13, my latest collaboration with Vicky Langan, is now complete.

This unsettlingly erotic reverie will be premiered at the (An)Other Irish Cinema screening taking place in Dublin next Friday, May 27th:

http://hellooperator.org/wordpress/?p=630

HOTEL LA MIRAGE @ Cherry Kino

2011-05-18T15:01:00.000-07:00

Hotel La Mirage will be screening in the UK as part of a programme of works originating on Super-8 selected by Cherry Kino as part of the Saltaire Arts Trail in Bradford, and at the Cherry Kino Lab in Leeds during the last weekend of May.

For more information:

http://www.cherrykino.blogspot.com/

Charles Dekeukeleire

2011-05-15T05:21:00.000-07:00

Generally, I use this blog as a record of my own activities and only very exceptionally discuss other films on it- otherwise, there'd be no bloody end to it!

But I'd like to briefly remark on my discovery of two experimental films, two comparatively little-known masterpieces from the late '20s, by Belgian filmmaker Charles Dekeukeleire: Impatience (1929) and Histoire de détective (1930). To say that these works have been the cinematic revelation of the year for me will probably prove an understatement. Although they deserve to be as famous as Un Chien Andalou, they're so far ahead of their time and still so formally radical that it's easy to see how they managed to slip into relative obscurity.

For more background, see this article by Kristin Thompson:

http://www.davidbordwell.net/essays/dekeukeleire.php

New Work at (An)Other Irish Cinema Screening

2011-05-09T08:50:00.001-07:00

Hello Operator, Dublin, will be presenting and (An)Other Irish Cinema screening on May 27th. This screening will feature a new programme, including the premieres of two of my recent works: Background and , in collaboration with Vicky Langan, Desk 13. The above still comes from this work, now almost out of post-production...!

For more details:

http://hellooperator.org/wordpress/?p=630

Experimental Film Society Honorary Membership

2011-05-08T13:23:00.000-07:00

Rouzbeh Rashidi has very kindly offered me honorary membership of his organisation, Experimental Film Society.

Here's a description of this filmmaking community:

Experimental Film Society is an independent film production company (Non-profit organisation) specialized in avant-garde, independent & no/low budget filmmaking. Experimental Film Society was founded in 2000 in Tehran / Iran. The aim is to provide a production and marketing assistance to independent filmmakers who are EFS members. All the materials and films in this society are original and had made by EFS filmmakers. The current office of EFS is in Dublin / Ireland.

HEREUNDER: Upcoming Video / Performance

2011-04-25T13:51:00.000-07:00

Vicky Langan and I will be presenting our new work, Hereunder, in Limerick this Saturday in the 'Just Listening' showcase, part of the Just Listen sound art festival.

Except that we sincerely hope our audience won't be 'just listening' as Hereunder is a video work that will give viewers a great deal to look at as well as hear. An intense, fragmented (auto)biographical portrait of Vicky, it sets her adrift amidst lockers of garden shed bric-a-brac from which she summons an ocean of sounds...

For this screening, Vicky will accompany the projection with a special live performance...

Just Listening
Showcase of Irish-Based Sound Artists
Limerick School of Art & Design
Church Gallery Space
10.30-4.30 April 30th

Arts Council Bursary Award

2011-04-21T12:33:00.000-07:00

Many thanks to the Irish Arts Council, who've awarded me a substantial bursary to allow me the means to develop my ambition to work with film-on-film.

Watch this space for news of those projects as they develop over the next year...

BACKGROUND

2011-04-16T15:23:00.000-07:00

Background, a new 20-minute video, is now completed. A slow, brooding, atmospheric work, it expands on the measured fragmentation of Ten Minutes Isn't Worth a Dream, while sharply juxtaposing HDV, degraded Super-8, and sometimes protracted 'interruptions' of black screen. Shot for the most part in the wintry beauty of rural northern Spain, it uses images of ruined buildings, discarded objects, and old-looking film footage to form perhaps the starkest articulation yet of my idea of a moving image work as a broken thing, a ruined space. Esperanza Collado and Vicky Langan are the humans occasionally spotted adrift in this construct, exploring and filming as they go...

BLACK SUN Rose

2011-04-15T12:38:00.000-07:00

Another edition of the Black Sun experimental music and film event is coming up this easter weekend! The live acts, curated as always by Vicky Langan, feature Daniel Higgs, with Raising Holy Sparks, Rory Francis O'Brien and Sacred Harp Singers of Cork also on the programme.

The film section, programmed by me, consists of two early films by Peter Rose. Please see the programme notes below....

Black Sun
Saturday April 23rd, Doors 7pm, €8
Camden Palace Hotel, Camden Quay, Cork

This April’s Black Sun film screening is devoted to two hypnotic films by American artist Peter Rose. Active in film, video, installation and performance since 1968, Rose’s work interrogates the nature of time, space, light and perception, often drawing influence from his background in mathematics. Although subsequently known for his work involving language used as written text on screen, the two early works in this programme are both strikingly hallucinatory explorations of space.

Analogies: studies in the movement of time (14 mins, 1977) has been described by Rose as ‘an intriguing series of visual riddles’. Simple camera movements taking place around a plain, institutional looking building are rearranged as multiple screens according to structuralist principles, allowing several perspectives on the same action, often with slight time delays between them. This opens space, movement and gesture to dizzying new permutations. For example, in the words of Noel Carroll, "when Rose fills the screen with twenty-five images, the experience is akin to music. An image ripples across the screen as a theme echoes across the instruments of an orchestra, giving way to complicated designs, each image an arabesque in a Persian rug."

Incantation (13 mins, 1970) is an ecstatic montage of images of nature- trees, plants, the sun, the moon, water- rapidly layered and intercut in a way that suggests a powerful dynamic force behind natural rhythms. Its irresistible energy is enhanced by the use of a compelling, breath-based Islamic chant on the soundtrack, which brings a prayer-like energy to the film. Astoundingly, this exceptionally visually dense, yet precise, work was created entirely in camera on Super-8 film, with no post-production work performed on the image at all. In our day of instantly accessible digital manipulation, such a technical feat appears all the more marvelous- and its results all the more gorgeous.

Special thanks to Pip Chodorov, without whose help this screening would not be possible.

Notes on MONGOLIAN BARBECUE

2011-04-15T07:45:00.000-07:00

Esperanza Collado has written the following programme notes for one of my most widely screened videos, The Mongolian Barbecue (2009). In spite of its brevity, it encapsulates the work perfectly.

Described by the artist as 'the internalization of vision… and its outcome', The Mongolian Barbecue presents us with the edge of an abyss circumscribed by cinematic possession. The corporeal ritual involved in such a transcendental rapture falls at its ultimate climax into the rhythmical interstices of red frames that subsequently opens the way to a collection of static images from vampire B-movies, the feminine paradise a cinephile could encounter after taking a glimpse at cinema's interior cavities. Insolent in its subversive depiction of bodily intervention, disquieting and perfectly balanced, The Mongolian Barbecue shares with much of Le Cain's work the presence of TV static and the use of sounds that directly refer to medium specificity.

Expanded OPERATION

2011-04-13T01:51:00.000-07:00

Operation Rewrite, the internet video project Esperanza Collado and I have been working on since January, is about to burst its online boundaries. Thanks to a generous production grant from MUSAC (Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y Leon), we are to expand this constantly self-defining phenomenon into a website, a book, an installation, an expanded cinema work... It's growing...

In the meantime, be sure to have a look at our most recent videos, -4 and -3, posted over the last couple of days.

MONOLOGUE at AIEFF

2011-03-30T10:13:00.000-07:00

Monologue has been accepted as part of the programme for this year's Australian International Experimental Film Festival, which takes place in Melbourne over the last weekend of April.

For more on the Festival:

http://www.aieff.org/2011programme.html

TENEBROUS CITY... Trailer Online

2011-03-28T11:19:00.000-07:00

The trailer for Rouzbeh Rashidi's Tenebrous City and Ill-Lighted Mortals can be seen here:

http://vimeo.com/21591659

Petition Against the Eviction of L'Abominable

2011-03-28T10:58:00.000-07:00

Please consider adding your name to this petition:

http://www.l-abominable.org/petition/index.php

STILL DAYS Trailer

2011-03-23T12:59:00.000-07:00

Shooting on Still Days, an experimental feature starring John McCarthy, Ailish Claffey and Sara Jane Power, is finally about to kick off. It'll be shot piecemeal over the next few months.

A 'teaser' trailer can be seen here:

http://vimeo.com/21404566

TENEBROUS CITY AND ILL-LIGHTED MORTALS

2011-03-23T10:26:00.000-07:00

Rouzbeh Rashidi has completed a haunting and mysterious new 65-minute film called Tenebrous City and Ill-Lighted Mortals. Approximately two-thirds of it is constructed from unused footage that I shot with Ed Malone for ...And The Poor Bird Died back in 2008. I'm honoured and delighted that Rouzbeh chose to work with these tapes. He has at once understood perfectly the essence of the images and performances, and made it something completely his own. His use of still images is especially powerful in this film.

SURFACE in Dingle

2011-03-16T06:50:00.000-07:00

Surface will be screening over the next four nights at the Dingle Film Festival as part of the video art loop programme, Uisce, at the Old Ice Plant.

http://www.dinglefilmfestival.com/programme/

Senses of Cinema

2011-03-14T08:04:00.000-07:00

Bill Mousoulis' review of last year's Thessaloniki International Film Festival in Senses of Cinema contains a few favourable words on both of my two films that played in it:

http://www.sensesofcinema.com/issue/festival-reports/

This isn't the only mention I've had in recent editions of that prominent online film journal. Gianluca Pulsoni talked about the (An)Other Irish Cinema screening at the Lucca Film Festival last year in his review of it:

http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2010/festival-reports/free-radical-the-6th-lucca-film-festival/

And, nicest of all, Fergus Daly cited Light/Sound on his favourite films of the year list as part of the 2010 Senses of Cinema end of year poll:

http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2011/feature-articles/2010-wold-poll/#13

Wölflinge Online

2011-03-03T09:13:00.000-08:00

Wölflinge 17/11/'10, which got its first public screening at a small, invite-only event in Cork last night, is now availble to view online:

http://vimeo.com/20433181

esperanzacollado.org

2011-02-28T12:10:00.000-08:00

My frequent partner-in-crime and current Operation Rewrite co-conspirator Esperanza Collado has just launched a superb new website devoted to her multifaceted achievements as artist-curator-musician-researcher-writer-thinker-...etc...

Each link on the homepage leads to a wealth of fine work, all reflecting her characteristic combination of dense thought and elegantly simple gesture.

Her text Notes Towards Paracinema and Inerruption is an absolute must-read, a perfect introduction for people unaware of the history of paracinema and a re-inspiring distillation of it for those of us with some idea. That her thesis on this subject remains tantalisingly un-translated is probably the greatest incentive I can think of to learn Spanish!

Hour of the Wölflinge

2011-02-27T03:39:00.000-08:00

I've just completed Wölflinge 17/11/'10, a phantasmagoric rendition of video documentation of a performance by the sublime Vicky Langan from late last year. It carries on the investigation into the relationship between sound and vision already underway in our Light/Sound, albeit in a simpler register, with the performer's body repeatedly fading from vision and reappearing. The sound summons this body from a sort of sensory primordia. Initially spectral, the performer's physicality becomes increasingly manifest as the intensity of the live sound increases until it fully establishes itself as the sound's source and the origin of its emotional intensity. However, in the course of this process, the ambiguities of both the fusion and distance of spectator/performer and performer/performance are navigated.

Save 16mm in the UK Petition

2011-02-25T11:42:00.000-08:00

Please consider adding your signature to this:

http://www.gopetition.com/petition/43288.html

2011-02-24T09:49:00.000-08:00

THE MONGOLIAN BARBECUE @ Drifting Clouds

2011-02-21T15:52:00.000-08:00

My The Mongolian Barbecue will play as part of a 'Drifting Clouds' film programme at an event called 'The Sound of Film' in Stoke Newington, England. Rouzbeh Rashidi's Woodpecker is also being screened. Many thanks to James Devereaux for selecting these films.

Details:

The Sound Of Film, Wed 23 Feb 2011,
The Drop, 175 Stoke Newington High Street, N16 0LH.

www.thesoundoffilm.co.uk

Rouzbeh Rashidi (An)Other Irish Cinema Screening in Cork

2011-02-20T12:45:00.000-08:00

This week, I'll be presenting Rouzbeh Rashidi and his latest feature, Closure of Catharsis, as part of the Flickswitch screening series at the Guesthouse here in Cork. Not to be missed!

Many thanks to Claire Guerin for making this event possible.

Here are the details:

Flickswitch Presents

(An)Other Irish Cinema:
ROUZBEH RASHIDI
Solo Screening

Thursday February 24th, 7pm
The Guesthouse, 10 Chapel St., Shandon, Cork

CLOSURE OF CATHARSIS
100 mins, UK/Ireland, 2011

+ short films ANATOMY OF MAN and FLOODED MEADOW

Rahsidi will be present at this screening,
which is presented by Maximilian Le Cain

www.anotheririshcinema.blogspot.com

OPERATION REWRITE

2011-02-13T04:35:00.000-08:00

A message from the Operation Rewrite team:

Dear Friends,

You are cordially invited to sample the mysteries of Operation Rewrite.

http://vimeo.com/operationrewrite

Operation Rewrite is an online video project by Esperanza Collado and Maximilian Le Cain.

It will keep growing,

The Operation Rewrite Team

(An)Other Irish Cinema Reviewed

2011-02-10T03:21:00.000-08:00

The blogger Nuts4R2 has written a generous and thoughtful review of the recent (An)Other Irish Cinema London screening:

http://nuts4r2.blogspot.com/2011/02/irish-stew.html

Just to reassure him, though, that even if I do resemble "a big, powerhouse of a Bond villain that you wonder where he’s hiding his white pussycat and his mechanical hands with their black iron touch of death", I'm actually closer to the pussycat than the villain in nature. And that chasing people "down a street brandishing a big board with a nail in it" really isn't my style at all!

LIGHT / SOUND Distributed by CJC

2011-02-08T02:08:00.000-08:00

The Paris-based Collectif Jeune Cinéma has accepted Light/Sound, the film I made in collaboration with Vicky Langan, for distribution.

Founded in 1970, CJC is one of the leading experimental film co-operatives in France, and the oldest. Its catalogue of films by more than 260 filmmakers includes works by such artists as Pierre Clementi, Jonas Mekas, Maurice Lemaitre, Stan Brakhage, Jean-Claude Biette, Takahiko Iimura, Patrick Bokanowski, Pip Chodorov, Karpo Godina, Gérard Courant...

Please visit our catalogue page:

http://www.cjcinema.org/pages/fiche.php?film=1549

Trailer for (An)Other Irish Cinema London Screening

2011-01-26T05:41:00.000-08:00

The trailer for the upcoming (An)Other Irish Cinema London screening is now online. I put this one together...

http://vimeo.com/19191104

London Screening, February 4th...

2011-01-21T08:34:00.000-08:00

www.anotherirsihcinema.blogspot.com

New Youtube Videos Online

2011-01-16T09:35:00.000-08:00

I've finished five new internet-exclusive video-type-things which can now be seen at my Youtube page:

www.youtube.com/user/closewatchfilms

They're called Neither Here Nor..., Oh, my, the ambling!, Approach 2, The Most Beautiful Video on the Internet and Now. They complete the series of extremely minimal and largely conceptual internet sketches which I began late last year with Presence 1 - 20, Somewhere It Is Snowing and Approach.

A Special Trailer

2011-01-13T12:05:00.000-08:00

Rouzbeh Rashidi has prepared a very special trailer for my upcoming screening in Dublin. Rather than editing something together from clips from my films, he has created a short film of his own in response to the style of my work:

http://vimeo.com/18754305

Thanks, Rouzbeh!

Screening Stills

2011-01-12T12:38:00.000-08:00

Here are some characteristically atmospheric stills that Rouzbeh Rashidi took at our (An)Other Irish Cinema screening in Dublin last night:

http://www.fotopedia.com/albums/gditSXw6WKA

It was a very enjoyable event. A big thank you to Fernanda Parente for organising it as part of her regular screenings of 'Loved & Unseen Irish Films' at Shebeen Chic...

Solo Screening in Dublin, January 28th

2011-01-09T04:57:00.000-08:00

Upcoming (An)Other Irish Cinema Screenings

2011-01-04T07:02:00.000-08:00

Three (An)Other Irish Cinema screenings are scheduled for the next month, including our London debut on February 4th.

The Januray 28th projection in Dublin is a solo screening of my work and includes the first public projection of Small Example (2008) and of all three parts of the Everywhere Trilogy (2009).

"Shebeen Flick" @ Shebeen Chic, George's St, Dublin 2
Tuesday, January 11th, 7.30pm

(An)Other Irish Cinema has been requested to present a recently assembled 90 minute programme of films for "Shebeen Flick", a fortnightly screening of "loved and unseen Irish films".

See http://www.facebook.com/shebeenflick for more information.

Address: Shebeen Chic, 4 South Great George's Street, Dublin 2.

Hello Operator, Dublin
Friday, January 28th, 7pm

(An)Other Irish Cinema will present a solo screening of our most prolific filmmaker, Maximilian Le Cain, in the independent art space Hello Operator (http://www.hellooperator.org/). This will be the first of several screenings showcasing the work of a single filmmaker from the group.

Address: Hello Operator, 12 Rutland Place, Dublin 1.

Drifting Clouds @ Monty's Bar and Lounge, London
Friday, February 4th, 7pm

(An)Other Irish Cinema will be getting its London premiere with a 90 minute programme of films hosted by the Drifting Clouds Cinema Group (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=360188074804), which "supports and promotes diversity and independence in our film culture by spreading the word about the films we love and organising nights out at the movies".

Address: 149 Brick Lane, Shoreditch, London, E1 6SB.

Experimental Conversations 6 Online!

2010-12-22T05:48:00.000-08:00

Articles include Don O Mahony on Mark Nugent, me on Rouzbeh Rashidi, Christopher Clarke on Guy Debord, Tony McKibbin on Eric Rohmer, Santiago Rubín De Celis on Dimtri Kirsanoff and coverage of the Different Directions and Kilruddery Film Festivals...

www.experimentalconversations.com

More Youtube Works

2010-12-19T05:17:00.000-08:00

I've uploaded two more videos made exclusively for Youtube viewing. Approach and Somewhere It Is Snowing can both be seen at:

www.youtube.com/user/closewatchfilms

Like the recent Presence 1-20, these are essentially conceptual works born of ruminating on the whole business of consuming images through the internet and broader concerns about the curious public/private interface of online communication of all sorts.

There are three main ideas at play in these works. To summarise them briefly and, no doubt, quite crudely:

First, 'presence', self-representation, the illusion of a virtual existence rendering oneself illusory. Of course, this is mainly dealt with in Presence.

Then the fate of the image, the online degradation of which is now universally accepted. The image as unit of information rather than aesthetic entity. Yet it is a decay not entirely without its own beauty. This is what Approach is about, which is only an image, a still image animated by the visual noise which compression and streaming bring to it. Of course, this way of seeing is still always referring back to the idea of the 'pristine' image of cinema history. Unlike, for example, in glitch art (which I appreciate), that umbilical cord remains firmly attached for me. The fact that so much cinema is dragged through the internet reinforces the connection. The latest in a technological chain of ghosts of cinema (TV, video, DVD...), the internet is replacing cinema with a strange memory of its history...

Finally, and perhaps most stimulatingly, there is the open-endedness of putting video on Youtube, its capacity for incompleteness, its provisional, disposable nature. And the correspondingly casual nature of its viewing. Hence the bloated running times and repetition of Approach and Somewhere It Is Snowing (and even the 10 Pieces of Video for Internet), which define a temporality for themselves that no viewer would probably care to sit through. The fleeting quality of the Presence episodes inverts this process, but to similar ends.

I'll be pursuing this strand of work with further online videos in the near future...

Jean Rollin 1938-2010

2010-12-16T02:39:00.000-08:00

A word of farewell to a sublime filmmaker whose influence is always with me. Fascination, The Naked Vampire, Night of the Hunted, Rape of the Vampire, Lips of Blood, Shiver of the Vampire, Grapes of Death...

The Mubi site has re-posted some nice obituary comments, including the following:

"Fangoria has learned of the passing of beloved French erotic-horror filmmaker Jean Rollin. The director died last night, after a long illness. He was 72. Fans of European genre films, especially those coming out of the free-thinking 1970s, are no doubt aware of the work of Rollin — a talented, gentle poet of sensual horror, a man who made personal, lush and haunting works that were often ghettoized alongside the efforts of some of his more crass contemporaries and yet almost always offered something more, something richer and more melancholy."

Today...

2010-12-12T03:27:00.000-08:00

Manoel de Oliveira turns 102.

Different Directions in Galway (A Plug!)

2010-12-07T02:31:00.000-08:00

The third edition of Different Directions, Ireland's only festival entirely dedicated to experimental film, is coming up this weekend (December 10th - 12th) and the programme couldn't be more exciting:

http://www.differentdirections.ie/

Spread the word! I, for one, will be there watching every minute of it...

LIGHT / SOUND Online at Collectif Jeune Cinema Festival

2010-12-06T04:48:00.000-08:00

Light / Sound, the film I made in collaboration with Vicky Langan, is viewable online from December 6th to 31st as part of Collectif Jeune Cinéma's Festival des Cinémas Differents. The web festival is selected by Daphné Hérétakis, Gloria Morano and Laurence Rebouillon.

http://www.cjcinema.org//pages/web_fest.php

December Black Sun

2010-12-03T06:01:00.000-08:00

Another Black Sun on the horizon, this one coming up on Monday December 6th, 8 pm, in The Pavilion, Carey's Lane. Tickets €14. The live acts, curated as always by Vicky Langan, are Borbetomagus, Thomas Ankersmit and Usurper. This evening is also the culminating event in this year's Cork Art Trail.

Below are the notes for my film programme, which I've devoted entirely to the dazzling work of Stéphane Marti...

For the first time, Black Sun is devoting its entire film programme to the work of a single artist, veteran French filmmaker Stéphane Marti.

Although little known to Irish audiences, Marti has been active since the early ‘70s, creating a sumptuous yet intimate series of baroque, homoerotic cinematic gems on Super-8 that focus on the relationship between the camera and the body. His gracefully intoxicating sense of colour, rhythm, movement, composition and texture is of a force that far outstrips even the more widely recognized work of Derek Jarman.

Two of Marti’s films will be screened at the December Black Sun:

Allegoria (14 mins, 1979) Dating from the first phase of Marti’s career, this “true concerto for body and camera [that] celebrates the worship of Eros” employs dance, elaborate make-up, water and body paint in its dynamically sensuous ‘ritual’.

Mira Corpora (45 mins, 2004) This dazzling and hypnotic homage to Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) represents an indisputable peak in cinema’s exploration of the meeting, and melting, of light and the human body.

An exponent of the Super-8 format, Marti has been compared to a jeweller for the finesse with which he works his miniature medium. He has said:

“How cinema approaches the body is the most stimulating challenge that I know. I’ve given form and light to a filmed body / filming body repertoire which has developed thanks to the lightness of the cameras I use and to the instinctive exchanges I’ve established with my ‘actors’ in the infinite palette of relations of desire: attraction, repulsion, fear, hysteria, ecstasy, pleasure, sweetness, etc. Artifice, theatricality, lyricism always reinject energy into the game… I place the body like a jewel in its box, a precious object trapped in an enclosed space, and attack it from all sides with my camera…”

Le Cain Films at Thessaloniki International Film Festival

2010-12-02T02:25:00.000-08:00

This year, I have the huge honour of being part of the magnificent Experimental Forum of the Thessaloniki International Film Festival, programmed by Vassily Bourikas. I've attended the two previous editions of this section of the Festival and, in both cases, come away with my sense of film history significantly altered and deepened thanks to Vassily's uncompromising devotion to bringing to light unjustly neglected cinemas.

Prior commitments prevent my attending this year, but the programme again promises viewers a once-in-a-lifetime cinematic experience: a retrospective of Australian experimental film, films by George Manupelli, Oleg Mavromatti, Wilhelm Hein... (To say nothing of a tribute to my hero Werner Schroeter happening outside the Experimental Forum as part of the Festival's maintsream!)

The Experimental Forum also includes a programme of recent experimental films called Last Year's Resolutions in which my Monologue and Hotel La Mirage (my 'Greek co-production'!) are screening alongside works by Peter Tscherkassky, Pip Chodorov, Ivan & Igor Buhraov and many others.

On Saidin Salkic's KONVENT

2010-11-30T05:31:00.000-08:00

Here's a text I've written about Australia-based filmmaker and musician Saidin Salkic's extraordinary Konvent. This is a filmmaker to watch...

(Bill Mousoulis has also written eloquently about this film. See:http://www.messandnoise.com/discussions/4096828)

Saidin Salkic’s KONVENT is a medium-length film by a Bosnian filmmaker living in suburban Australia. This is its background. But what actually is it? A man in his home, alone. A man in his own space and time. And this is enough.

To be able to capture a subjective impression of the flow of time and the texture of space is one of cinema’s most specific, if under-used, gifts. If the anecdotal has become cinema’s main subject, it’s perhaps partly because it’s so fiendishly difficult to embrace this most apparently simple capacity of the medium and harness it to the unadorned rendition of a truly personal sense of time passing and space inhabited. Only a few rare filmmakers, including Jean-Claude Rousseau, Chantal Akerman and Rouzbeh Rashidi, have achieved this and, in so doing, have given audiences access to a world that is, in its simplicity, utterly mysterious. They have shared their immediate perception of the details of life, solitary observations which have granted viewers the uncanny privilege of experiencing as another human being, not a vicarious fictional construct but a private individual.

Saidin Salkic is another name to add to this small but priceless list of artists. In KONVENT, he allows us to share his space. Patience is required and rewarded. Narrative exposition is abandoned in favour of a mounting awareness of an ineffable inner intensity created by this man’s silent presence. We see Salkic alone in his house. Night, images of light bulbs. Day, the garden. Salkic shaves. He stares into the camera. We enter his bedroom, he gazes into space. Long takes, the informality of DV images…

It’s not the content of what he’s thinking and feeling that becomes apparent but its emotional residue that permeates the film’s every image in an unusually compelling build up of unspoken discomfort. This discomfort stems from the paradoxical relationship KONVENT establishes with its viewer. On the one hand, the audience couldn’t be closer to Salkic. We are invited into his home, invited to share his loneliness, given access to its articulation of time. The intimacy we come to share with him implies a relationship beyond words and narrative facts. Yet he remains opaque, the silent appeal to the viewer implied by the relationship he sets up with his camera never clarified to the point of allowing the spectator to formulate a response. We don’t know how to reach out. In entering such an acute awareness of another human’s isolation, we become equally aware of ourselves, of our own isolation. In creating such an apparently solipsistic film, Salkic has touched on a universal condition with a rawness that ostensibly ‘universal’ modes of communication can seldom even begin to approach.