Turbidus Film Presents: Rose Lowder
16mm films / lecture / q&a
Friday 22 March 2013, 19h
Fylkingen
Münchenbryggeriet, Torkel Knutssonsgatan 2, Stockholm, Sweden

After training as a painter and sculptor in artist’s studios and art schools in Lima (The Art Center, La Escuela de Bellas Artes) and in London (Regent Street Polytechnic, Chelsea School of Art), Rose Lowder worked in London as an artist while earning a living in the film industry as an editor. From 1977 onwards she concentrated on studying the visual aspect of the cinematographic process, and was encouraged by Jean Rouch and his staff at the University de Paris X to present some of her work as a thesis under the title The experimental film as an instrument towards visual research (1987).Since 1977 Lowder has been active programming rarely shown films. In order to make this body of work available to a wider public, she constituted a collection of films and paper documents, The Experimental Film Archive of Avignon (1981). Since 1996 Lowder is also associate professor at the University de Paris I.

Programme:
- Boucles / Loops (1976-1997, 16mm, 6min)
Before I got a camera I had studied several visual questions, for example by projecting loops made by transparent 16 mm film leader, a perforator and a marker pen. Two discoveries – the first concerning the cinematic effects that can be produced through modulating the attributes of shapes, colors, and properties present on the filmstrip, the other about varying the gap between what can be seen on the screen and what’s visible on the strip, with the use of different elements applied to the series of images – came to constitute the base for the films I’ve composed, image after image, in the camera.
After two decades and numerous screenings, rendering these loops increasingly difficult to project, I have recaptured and transfered a small selection (a series of four loops) into a film, while waiting to continue these experiments through other means.

- Couleurs Mécaniques / Mechanical Colours (1979, 16mm, 16min)
Couleurs mécaniques presents, in the order they were filmed, six different viewpoints of a merry-go-round. In each case the focus is adjusted so as to select, isolate and inscribe parts of the filmed scene onto the film strip in a way that allows elements of color in movement to be recombined in a particular manner during the projection of the film. Couleur mécaniques shares similar concerns to those found in Roulement, rouerie, aubage.

- Rue Des Teinturiers (1979, 16mm, 31min)
In Rue des Teinturiers the focus of each image, recorded frame by frame in the camera, is adjusted so that graphic features of items in the street that gives its name to the film are extracted and inscribed onto the film strip in a way which allows their characteristics to be seen, when projected in succession on the screen, as parts of a spatiotemporal situation stretching from a position on a balcony over a canalized river to the road. The film is composed of twelve reels, each filmed on a different day throughout a six-month period, joined together in a slightly nonchronological order so as to avoid accentuating anecdotical aspects of the scene.

- Certaines Observations / Certain Observations (1979, 16mm, 14min)
(Film for 2 projectors on 1 screen)
Certaines observations is a two-projector-one-screen piece : the two reels – one B/W (positive) print, one W/B (negative) print –, struck from the same negative, should be projected superimposed on a single screen. If the two projectors are not locked in sync, the projectionist may occasionally stop one of them briefly to try to keep the two pictures in sync. The person projecting may also move one projector slightly, placing the two images side by side momentarily. The two reels should be re-superimposed afterwards.
The film’s title stems from Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy where certain observations are used to define notions regarding the appearance of things in true or apparent motion. The material was structured while filming one evening the14th July street celebrations : lights strung across the road, a band, baloons, cars, an ambulance, a horse, fireworks and people dancing on the Pont d’Avignon.

- Beijing 1988 (1988-2011, 16mm, c 12min)
Music François Alexis Degrenier
China seen from Beijing May 1988, a year before the Spring 1989 Tia'nanmen rebellion, where the ancient traditional philosophies and social practices confront the political and economical ideological ambitions of the State.

- Cote Jardin (2007, 16mm, 4.17min)
A quick view of three remarquable organic gardens : Le Tomple and Le jardin du Mas d’Abri in the department of Gard and Le jardin des Sambucs in the department of Hérault. The film goes over their general layout along pathways amongst the vegetation, ponds and people or animals that happen to be there at the time.

- Jardins Du Marais / Marsch Gardens (2010, 16mm, 2.30min)
These magnificent gardens, in the Parc naturel régional de Brière, in the middle of the presqu’ile de Guérande, Loire-Atlantique, in France, covers over a hectare of land. It’s vegetable garden, ornamental garden, small forest and two ponds, make up a continuously evolving space, but also a visual mumble-jumble of wild life that draws one to delve into it in order to explore it cinematographically.

- Sous Le Soleil / Under The Sun (2011, 16mm, c 3.28min)
music: François Alexis Degrenier
In the heat of summer solar panel reflections blend with butterflies on flowers and a little bird eating the mulberries.

- Sources (2012, 16mm, c 5.22min)
music: François Alexis Degrenier
Sources originated from Thomas the Gardener’s wish to celebrate the 30th anniversary of his making vegetable pâté. Leaving urban life behind him in order to renew a relationship with the land, Thomas started up an organic garden in the beautiful area of hot and cold Springs, lakes and rivers, in the upper Aude Valley.
In the middle of making his pâté, the gardener is surrounded, as the water sources of the Aude river rush by, by one of the sources for his recipies, the flowers and spices from his garden.