Project Detail

Uncontrollable Universe

Synopsis

Scans of medical equipment, X-rays and scraps of found material emerge in counterpoint to a fragmentary, manipulated soundtrack led by the human voice. A rumination on the relationship between the body and technology, UNCONTROLLABLE UNIVERSE continues Richards’ investigation into the formal possibilities of collage and an embodied, affective moving image.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2019 - Experimenta Strand

Details

Year
2019
Type of project
Shorts
Running time
4 mins 57 secs
Format
HD video
Director
James Richards
Producer
Adam Pugh, Tess Denman-Cleaver

Production Status

Production Company

Commissioned by Tyneside Cinema as part of the artist programme Projections, using public funding from Arts Council England.

Sales Company

Page updates

This page was last updated on 12th May 2025. Please let us know if we need to make any amendments or request edit access by clicking below.

See also

You may also be interested in other relevant projects in the database.

Fevers Fevers

Director: James Richards

Year: 2026

Taking as his starting point - less by way of invocation than summoning - the text from Marguerite Duras’ 'Les Mains négatives' and Tony Conrad’s 'The Flicker', James Richards weaves together stirring fragments composed from 2022-2026, including repurposed material from friends and collaborators including Steve Reinke. The screen is filled with images and impressions, depicting a frantic yet melancholic quest for meaning between language, gesture, and sensation. Official Selection Toronto International Film Festival 2026 - World premiere

Radio at Night / Raking Light / The Misty Suite Radio at Night / Raking Light / The Misty Suite

Director: James Richards

Year: 2015

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

Face, boy, eclipse A Season in Secret

Director: Matthew Berka

Year: 2027

A SEASON IN SECRET brings together material both close at hand and far away. It is a meditation on things glimpsed at a distance and the limits of perception. What lies behind the screen is hidden and may only be hinted at through the language of visible images and sounds. The film takes some of its cues from the Japanese aesthetic concept of Yūgen, described in part by the 15th-century aesthetician Zeami Motokiyo: “...to stand upon the shore and gaze after a boat that disappears behind distant islands.”