Experimental Cinema

tank tv: January-February 2010

expcinema@expcinema.com (Marcos Ortega) — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 15:19:06 +0000

Online gallery tank.tv beings the new year's programme with the work of Laetitia Benat (Villeurbanne, 1971), a Paris-based artist whose work revolves around photography, video, drawing and also strange figurines in ceramic.. Benat uses the simplest of video techniques to negotiate and toy with the way in which emotion and suspense are implied by images. Simple sounds, shots, sequences and subjects are used to examine the way in which the viewer is triggered into feeling. Allowing the viewer to extrapolate story and feeling from so little Benat's work examines the very building blocks of filmmaking and will be online until the 31st January.

In February tank.tv will be exhibiting a pair of videos from Paul McCarthy. Family Tyranny & Cultural Soup were cut from two days of taped performance at a community television studio in 1987. Featuring McCarthy's fellow artist Mike Kelley, these videos are filled with the disturbing images of familial horror and stomach turning abjection that characterise the artist's renowned body of work. Both works will be available on www.tank.tv from the 1st - 28th February.

This show is held in conjunction with a screening of McCarthy's Contemporary Cure All and F-Fort on the 6th February at 7pm at Tate Modern's Starr Auditorium.

An interview with Matthias Müller and Christoph Girardet

expcinema@expcinema.com (Elena Oroz) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:24:02 +0000

The last edition of the International Film Festival of Gijón devoted a retrospective to the german experimental filmmakers Matthias Müller and Christoph Girardet, an artistic tandem that, in most of their work, use the found footage technique to unravel the male dominant ideology underlying in classical cinema. This interview for Blogs&Docs is the result of a brief chat during the festival and extended later by email.

Pat O'Neill: 4 DVDs

expcinema@expcinema.com (Marcos Ortega) — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 16:03:56 +0000

Filmmaker Pat O'Neill through his company Lookout Mountain Studios, has released a first batch of four DVDs, from his early silent 16mm films to his latest digital works.

- Silent Works presents five films, both 16mm and 35mm, including the installation works Two Sweeps (1979) and Let's Make A Sandwich (1978) presented as continuous loops; plus Screen (1969), Squirtgun/Stepprint (1998) and Coreopsis (1998).
- Five Films centers in his 16mm films from the 70s, with Sidewinder's Delta (1976), Saugus Series (1974), Down Wind (1973), Foregrounds (1979) and Runs Good (1970).
- Trouble includes the 35mm works Trouble In The Image (1996), Horizontal Boundaries (2008) and the 16mm short film Runs Good (1970).
- And last, but not least, Starting to go bad contains three recent digital works, Starting To Go Bad (2009), I Open The Window (2009) and I Put Out My Hands (2009).

NTSC, Region free, 30US$ each, available in his website's store.

By Brakhage vol.2

expcinema@expcinema.com (Marcos Ortega) — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 19:55:24 +0000

Criterion has just announced the forthcoming publication of the second volume of the anthology By Brakhage. Next May 25th will see the release not only of this second volume, but of a 3-disc Blu-ray pack containing all the films in volumes 1 and 2.
The second volume will contain the films The Wonder Ring (1955), The Dead (1960), Two: Creeley/McClure (1965), 23rd Psalm Branch (1966-1967/1979-1980), Scenes From Under Childhood [Part One] (1967), The Machine of Eden (1970), Star Garden (1974), Desert (1976), The Process (1972), The Domain of the Moment (1977), Burial Path (1978), Murder Psalm (1980), Duplicity III (1980), Unconscious London Strata (1981), Arabic 12 (1981), Visions in Meditation 1-4 (1989-1990), Boulder Blues and Pearls And... (1993), The Mammals of Victoria (1994), From: First Hymn to the Night - Novalis (1994), I Take These Truths (1995), The Cat of the Worm's Green Realm (1997), Yggdrasill: Whose Roots Are Stars in the Human Mind (1997), Ellipsis Reel 5 (1998), Persians 1-3 (1999) and Chinese Series (2003) with new high-definition digital transfers and many extras, including a booklet featuring film program notes by Marilyn Brakhage and write-ups of the films by Brakhage expert Fred Camper. Both packs are available for preorder. By Brakhage vol.2, 3 DVDs, Region 1, NTSC, 454 min., 39.95 USD. By Brakhage Blu-ray set, 3 Blu-rays, Region 1, NTSC, 697 min., 79.95 USD

Guy Sherwin: Messages

expcinema@expcinema.com (Marcos Ortega) — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 12:11:54 +0000

LUX has just released a second DVD of Guy Sherwin's films. While the previous volume Optical sound films (1971/2007) collected Sherwin's works dealing with his research on the 'synaesthesic relationship between sound and image manifest in the material of film sound', Messages deals with his more personal and lyrical films.

The publication will be celebrated in a launch event at Cafe Oto on Tuesday 23rd February 2010. Several of Guy Sherwin's films will be screened accompanied by a live soundtrack by John Edwards, Steve Noble and Alan Wilkinson.

The films included in this compilation are Messages (1981-4), Flight (1994-8), Prelude (1980-96), Filter Beds (1990-98) and Views from Home (1987-2005). Includes a small artists’ book and a specially commissioned essay on children and language by writer and critic Nicholas Tucker. DVD, PAL, 70 minutes, Region free, 20 GBP.

Courtisane Festival 2010

expcinema@expcinema.com (Marcos Ortega) — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 11:36:58 +0000

The ninth edition of the Courtisane Film Festival, that will be held next March 17-21 in the Belgian city of Gent promises to be one of the most interesting events of the year. Just the 39 films and videos included in the official competition make it a worthy trip, with the latest works by Ben Rivers, Phil Solomon, David Gatten, Peter Rose, Rosa Barba and many more.

The festival will feature two thematic evenings of performances, installations and screenings: Night Vision will explore 'the dynamics between visibility and invisibility, light and darkness, seeing the night and seeing in the night', with performances by Paul Clipson & William Fowler Collins, Phantom Limb & Earth's Hypnagogia and Pieter Geenen; Surface Tension will investigate 'the folds and fissures between perception and conscience, experience and meaning' with performances by Dominique Petitgand, Karen Mirza, Brad Butler & David Cunningham and Paul Abbott with Seymour Wright & Ross Lambert. The section 'Artist in focus' will invite filmmakers Morgan Fisher, David Gatten and David O'Reilly to present a partial retrospective of their work and a 'carte blanche' programme. Morgan Fisher will also give a master class on the 23rd.

Read the festival's programme for full details.

ATA's travelling selections & Call for entries

expcinema@expcinema.com (Marcos Ortega) — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 10:08:20 +0000

Artists' Television Access will be presenting selections from its 2009 Film and Video Festival at two upcoming screenings:

- Saturday February 20, 8pm, at Millennium Film Workshop, New York

A selection of 12 short films and videos from the festival with works by Sam Barnett, Maarit Suomi- Vaananen, Friedl Von Groller, Carl Diehl, Ariel Diaz, Kerry Laitala, Tommy Becker, Zach Iannazzi, Chris Kennedy, Phillip Widmann, Laida Lertxundi and Martha Colburn.

- March 4th -7th, at La Enana Marrón, Madrid, Spain

Festival shorts programs "Specters & Machines" & "Stories We Tell Ourselves" screen on March 4 & 5, and Other Cinema Digital titles "Rainbow Man" by Sam Green and "Sins of the Fleshapoids" by Mike Kuchar on March 6 & 7.

From Ecstasy to Rapture at Anthology Film Archives

expcinema@expcinema.com (Marcos Ortega) — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 18:52:43 +0000

From Ecstasy to Rapture - 50 years of the other spanish cinema, the travelling programme series that encompasses spanish experimental films and videos from the last fifty years, will be screened at Anthology Film Archives next February 19th-21st. The series features six themed programmes, covering different methods of work and establishing a dialogue between older and recent works. The King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center will host a special panel discussion on From Ecstasy To Rapture on Thursday, February 18.

February 19th, 7:00pm
Program 1: Documents / Itineraries
February 19th, 9:00pm
Program 2: Appropriations / Grand Super-8
February 20th, 7:00pm
Program 3: Animated Experiments: Rhythm, Light, And Color
February 20, 8:45pm
Program 4: Painting / Movement
José Antonio Sistiaga, …ere erera baleibu izik subua aruaren… 1968-70, 70 minutes, 35mm.
February 21, 6:00pm
Program 5: Investigations / Metacinema
February 21, 8:00pm
Program 6: Enraptured
Iván Zulueta, Arrebato 1980, 105 minutes, 35mm. In Spanish with English subtitles.

The series will continue in 2010 with screenings in the National Gallery of Art (Washington, April 3-18), Bass Museum of Art (Miami, April), CCCB (Barcelona, May), MNCARS (Madrid, May) and the Czech Filmotheque (June).

Punto de Vista 2010

expcinema@expcinema.com (Marcos Ortega) — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 18:20:02 +0000

This year's edition of Punto de Vista, one of the most dynamic and interesting documentary film festivals, will be held next February 5-13 in Pamplona, Spain. Among the many highligths of its programme, a near-complete retrospective of the film career of Jem Cohen from his early 1980s films up to his latest works; partial retrospectives of Chick Strand and Lynne Sachs; the latest works of James Benning (Ruhr), Ben Rusell (Let each one go where he may) and the experimental films strand 'La región Central'.