Projects in genres: Experimental

Synopsis

While investigating her late parents’ involvement with the Anglo Iranian Oil Company (BP), the filmmaker comes across the letters of a petroleum geologist in Iran in the 1930s who was later to embark on a search for the origins of civilisation. 'The Host' sets out on its own exploration, to decipher signs from the fragmented images buried in the BP (British Petroleum) Archive. This journey through the past interweaves a number of stories drawn from both personal memory and the records of an imperial history, which builds a picture of a 20th-century colonial encounter. 'The Host' is a personal essay film about the stories we tell about ourselves and others, the facts and fictions we live by, and their consequences. (LFF brochure) BFI London Film Festival 2015 - World premiere

Synopsis

A special combined presentation of three of James Richards’ recent works (2006-2014) that recycle and adapt a diverse range of material to produce a spectral meditation on the human figure as a space of sensual integration, inspired by the work of the late filmmaker Derek Jarman. Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2015 - Experiementa Strand

Synopsis

Artist Tacita Dean, and actor Stephen Dillane presented a live theatrical happening performed over four nights at the 2014 Sydney Biennial, with two 16mm cameras rolling on each occasion. Dillane changed elements of his appearance each night and, snatching pages from Dean who was seated in the front row, recited Shakespeare, popular texts and personal stories, whilst also announcing adjustments in the camera set-ups and the changing of reels. Dean has returned to this tense scenario and cut into the material according to the systemic logic that emerged over the course of the serialised performance, inscribing changes in time and space, illustrating or actualising a form of deep choreography- LFF Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2015 - Experiementa Strand

Synopsis

Through a series of oral testimonies and carefully composed portraits, Alone Together, the Social Life of Benches explores how individuals and groups spend time in two distinctive public London locations. Made by Esther Johnson as part of an Arts & Humanities Research Council project, this poetic documentary illuminates the thoughts and memories of frequent users of General Gordon Square, Woolwich, and St Helier Open Space, Sutton. Revolving around the micro-space of the humble bench, the film incorporates contributions from a diverse range of visitors. These testimonies highlight themes such as the psychological feeling of being in a space, the rhythm and flow of visitors to a place, the importance of design for everyday street furniture and access to communal outdoor space. The film acts like a stranger who joins you to ‘watch the world go by’, and to break the ice by starting a conversation with their fellow bench user.

Synopsis

From their first conversation the film set out to highlight reaction to unspecified places, as jump off points to something, offering a culture of play in " Ballardian" environments where past planning has lost relevance. Places that induce reaction to the architecture of existence.

Synopsis

A young boy releases a cloud into a church and it builds to a storm. Elwood’s Ark is a poem that challenges notions of religion and redemption. It traces the journey of the water we drink, back 13.8 billion years through time and space to the beginning of the Universe. Spoken in the words of a child, the film warns of a coming apocalypse. It is an apocalypse of our own making - an apocalypse in which divine intervention will not play a part, and only we ourselves may prevent.

Synopsis

Exploring the intangibility of how one experiences and records the present through bodily sensations, referencing Marcel Proust’s notion of ‘Involuntary Memory’. The residual, the soil and stains aren’t mere reconstruction of the past but an attempt to return to ritualise fragments of the absent. The desire to remember, embeds the past involuntarily within the present.

Synopsis

Using the metaphor of the Stoneymollan Trail, a hiking trail out of Glasgow, the film explores Charlotte Prodger’s personal archive, with material from multiple formats that includes an archive of miniDV tapes that Prodger shot between 1999 and 2004, recent footage shot on her iPhone and HD camera, and screenprinted graphic forms. The resulting single-screen video piece is a meditation on memory, subjectivity and desire. BFI London Film Festival 2015 - World premiere

Synopsis

Shot on the otherworldly beaches of Morocco in silvery black-and-white 16mm Scope 'A Distant Episode' transforms behind-the-scenes footage into a dreamy film fragments depicting sci-fi incursions into a mythic landscape. Official Selection Toronto 2015 - Wavelengths

Synopsis

Shot in Paris, São Paulo and Toronto, acclaimed Canadian contemporary artist Mark Lewis’ essay film captures the ever-changing textures of these cities through moving images of glass, light, shadows and reflections. Offering an homage to the city symphony films of the 1920s, whilst juxtaposing modernist architecture with the compositional structures of old master paintings. Toronto International Film Festival 2015 - World premiere

Synopsis

This installation piece is the first major collaboration between British artist Corin Sworn and Canadian artist Tony Romano. 'La Giubba' follows the intersections of five drifters over the course of two summer days in southern Italy. A young Albanian man and his daughter search for a swimming coach who fled their homeland in the 1990s, but instead find an Arbëresh community settled by their countrymen 600 years earlier. Two theatre actors take on a dubious commission to increase audiences in the rural south and traverse the landscape fashioning little theatres of belief, until a Canadian interloper turns up. Employing professional and amateur actors, 'La Giubba' situates its nomadic characters within both the stunning Italian landscape and the history inscribed upon it, visible and unseen. Official Selection Toronto 2015 - Wavelengths

Synopsis

Inspired by William Gaddis’s novel "JR", 'Solo for Rich Man' restages a quintet of performance pieces (including one by Fluxus artist George Maciunas) from a four-day experimental music workshop for children conceived by artist and filmmaker Beatrice Gibson and renowned cellist Anton Likoszevieze. Official Selection Toronto 2015 - Wavelengths