An essay film analysing the space of the city as a product, its inhabitation – its spatial negotiation, its encoding by racial privilege, and who controls it. The city is Detroit and the economy of the car has been replaced by a spatial economy.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2016 - Experimenta Strand - World premiere
Taking its title from the French Surrealist artist, Claude Cahun’s (1894-1954) incomplete memoir 'Confidences au miroir', Sarah Pucill's film brings life to the photographic and written archive of Claude Cahun amidst a visual extravaganza of costumes and hand-made sets.
Following Cahun’s text, the film includes Cahun’s early and later life and work, including her political propaganda activity and imprisonment in Jersey with her partner Suzanne Malherbe during the Nazi occupation of the island. The tracing of a life is made conscious through the projection of images of the couples' home in Jersey into a domestic London setting.
As a sequel to director Sarah Pucill's previous film 'Magic Mirror' (2013), this film continues her experiment to bring cinematic life to the photographic and written archive of Claude Cahun. In this film Pucill animates re-stagings of Cahun’s black and white self-portrait and still–life photographs with voices from Cahun's text 'Confidences au miroir', collaging and transposing black and white stills and words, into colour and soundscape.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2016 - Experimenta Strand - World premiere
An intimate and vivid account of a young girl’s real and fantastical adventure in a remote forest one evening.
Glasgow-based artist-filmmaker Margaret Salmon's debut feature is not only a loving homage to classic children’s films such as Ray Ashley’s 'Little Fugitive', Jean Renoir’s 'The River' and Albert Lamorisse’s 'The Red Balloon', but draws from nature studies of the past, such as Mary Field’s 'Secrets of Nature' series.
Shot on 35mm in various locations around Scotland, Salmon draws inspiration from a range of cinematic movements as well as wildlife documentaries to produce a lyrical and sensual portrait of a child’s eye perspective on the natural world. (LFF brochure)
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2016 - Experimenta Strand - World premiere
Using double screen, the filmmaker juxtaposes her domestic family history with that of Nelson Mandela prior to his arrest. The artist considers the roles that personal and political histories play in opening up the narratives of a place.
Liliesleaf Farm, located in Rivonia South Africa, was the headquarters of the military wing of the African National Congress, (‘Umkhonto we Sizwe') in the early 1960s. Nelson Mandela lived at Liliesleaf under an alias. ‘Operation Mayibuye’ was an ANC undercover campaign of sabotage intended to bring down the apartheid government.
Ideas for the film originated with 8mm film footage and photographs of
Gaal-Holmes’ immigrant family at Liliesleaf. Her German and Hungarian parents had recently moved to settle in South Africa, and Liliesleaf became their family home for a short time in the late 1960s.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2016 - Experimenta Strand - World premiere
A recreation and contemplation inspired by the 31-mile walk of refugee Abdul Rahman Haroun through the Channel Tunnel. On arrival to the UK Haroun was arrested under an arcane Victorian railway law.
The language in this bylaw, when juxtaposed against the physical and emotional feat of traversing 30 miles of the Channel Tunnel supplies the terrain for this film.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2016 - Experimenta Strand
By shooting through the take-up reel of a 16mm film projector, this experimental nature documentary remediates the iconic landscape of the American south-west to unnerving effect.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2016 - Short Film Competition - Experimenta Strand
A mysterious woman travels through the threatening territory of film noir and the enigmas of philosophy.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2016 - Experimenta Strand
A well known gothic horror film is re-appropriated, re-animated and given another life via the filmmaker's 16mm laboratory. Visually hovering between the conscious and unconscious, the film’s frame lines shift between lucid imagery and unfocused narrative.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2016 - Experimenta Strand - World premiere
A classic interview with Helen Mirren from 1975 is performed as a song by Kathryn Elkin, backed by a choir of associates and friends whom she corrals into chanting in loose harmony.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2016 - World premiere
A work about seeing in the dark, but not being able to see the thing in front of you. The piece describes the experience of imaginary colours as events which exceed the rules of language, colour as a space, distinct from tone and light, setting the stage for a psychedelic melodrama played out by two characters.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2016 - Experimenta Strand - World premiere
The absurdity of war told through the irony of a failed Improvised Explosive Device explaining its travails to its maker.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2016 - Experimenta Strand - World premiere
