Cinema Parenthèse #2: Nicky Hamlyn

By on

Rating: 

Average: 3.5 (2 votes)

"Nicky Hamlyn has developed a highly individual style in his precise, formal approach to filmmaking. ‘Style’ might be construed as a pejorative term in the context of avant-garde film, which seeks to undermine pre-existing and over-determined methods of filmmaking, but I simply mean that his films present a way of looking, a way of working, and a particular sense of metre, that are unique. The focus of nearly all of Hamlyn’s films concerns the momentary interaction of light with different surfaces, not least of all the surface of the screen, revealing and concealing different aspects of what’s present to view." - Simon Payne

CINEMA GALERIES
Program start: 19:00 (no entry after program has started)
Limited seats
Entrance: 6€

Programme:

INTRODUCTION
by Nicky Hamlyn

- FOUR TORONTO FILMS (PART I)
2007 | 16mm | b&w | silent | 7'00
The filmmaker’s trajectory through an unremarkable street is marked by a series of black-and-white, time-lapse shots of the pavement. Among the visual details that mark his passage are various shadows cast on the ground, indicating the presence of surrounding foliage and of the camera on its tripod. The technique of shooting single frames generates an effect of stillness-in-motion that is occasionally altered when the shadows of leaves appear to move in a strikingly naturalistic manner. - Federico Windhausen

- ONLY AT FIRST
1988-1991 | 16mm | color | sound | 23'00
"Only at First" was shot over several months from the back of my house in Lewes, East Sussex. It records in part the development of a wetland site into a housing development, using a variety of filming strategies including animated permutations of sets of framings, as well as freer sequences that make use of the Bolex camera’s motorised zoom function. A variety of lenses was used, from 10mm wide angle to 300mm tele-photo, which latter compresses the space, and hence the atmosphere, to create ephemeral, unstable shots full of airy ‘noise’. - Nicky Hamlyn

- PISTRINO
2003 | 16mm | b&w | silent | 10'00
"Pristino" is composed of uniformed time-lapse sequences shot in northwest Umbria, Central Italy. Condensing days into seconds, Hamlyn makes use of lap dissolves and time-lapse photography to compress the temporal duration of the Italian landscape. The film invokes some pre-cinematic technologies mainly in the shadow plays where light and shadow manifest as the movement of trees, clouds, and other objects cast by the sun project and dance onto white walls and other surfaces, emulating and interacting with the film’s grain.

- OBJECT STUDIES
2005 | 16mm | color | silent | 16'30
"Object Studies" was shot in northeast Umbria, Italy. It was made in the same location as a number of my other recent films. It is organized around a colour scheme based loosely on the hues of the colour temperature scale; brown, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, white. Time-lapse, interlaced single-frame sequences and overlapping dissolves were deployed to explore densities and translucencies of light and the interactions of different kinds of cast-shadows. The space between the camera and its subject is also explored: Space is flattened, collapsed, expanded and bridged. In each section I tried to establish a relation between camera and subject that responds to the peculiarities of the spatial array in front of the lens, but there is a sense in which, at the same time, I want to challenge formulations like "in front of". - Nicky Hamlyn

- GASOMETERS 3
2014 | 16mm | color/b&w | silent | 13'30
“Gasometers" is a series of films that is focussed on gas holders in North London. Mostly built in the C19 and mostly decommissioned for several years now, they will gradually be demolished apart from a handful of listed examples, such as the ones at The Oval cricket ground and behind Kings Cross station in London. In "Gasometers 3", the relationships between energy systems, localised and national, and the weather with its own structures and rhythms are closely observed. - Nicky Hamlyn

Q&A

Thanks to Cinema Galeries

NICKY HAMLYN is a prolific film and video artist who has over fifty works to his credit since 1975. He has also written numerous essays and reviews on experimental film and video, including his book "Film Art Phenomena" published by the British Film Institute/University of California Press in 2003. He has also co-edited, with A.L. Rees and Simon Payne, a collection of essays on the Austrian film-maker Kurt Kren, "Kurt Kren: Structural Films" (Intellect Books, 2016). He teaches at the University for the Creative Arts (UCA) in Kent and Surrey, and at the Royal College of Art in London.

Venue: 

Cinema Galeries - Brussels, Belgium

Dates: 

Saturday, June 9, 2018 - 19:00 to Sunday, June 10, 2018 - 18:55

Category: 

Dates: 

Saturday, June 9, 2018 - 19:00 to Sunday, June 10, 2018 - 18:55

Venue: 

  • Galerie de la reine 26
    1000   Brussels
    Belgium
    50° 50' 50.8488" N, 4° 21' 16.65" E