Projects matching: George Clark

Synopsis

Exploring the status and potential of unrealised and fragmented histories from the legacy of Chilean filmmaker Raúl Ruiz (1941 – 2011) to animist cinematic traditions in Taiwan. The project takes as its starting point an unfinished film made by Raúl Ruiz in Taiwan in 1995. Based in Paris since the late 1970s Ruiz came to Taiwan to film THE COMEDY OF SHADOWS / LA COMEDIE DES OMBRES with a script inspired by the Taoist philosophy of Chuang Tzu’s' Wandering on the Way' and Luigi Pirandello’s 'Six Characters in Search of an Author'. The project was filmed at Chin Pao San cemetery with a Taiwanese cast and crew but never finished.
The incompleteness of Ruiz’s film is the starting point for DOUBLE GHOSTS, that considers the echoes of this unrealized project to explore cinematic and political phantoms. Drawing on research and diverse collaborations with filmmakers Valeria Sarmiento and Niles Atallah as well as Chilote fishermen, the film is staged as a series of actions seeking to reactivate this lost film. Filmed on 35mm film in Chile and Taiwan, DOUBLE GHOSTS follows traces across the Pacific from Ruiz’s birthplace in Puerto Montt to the mountain cemetery in Taiwan.
Official Selection International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) 2019
Official Selection New York Film Festival 2019 - Projections

Synopsis

Filmed in and around the island of Taiwan, the film is structured around an interview with contemporary artist Chen Chieh-Jen. The film explores the relationship between film, landscape and rural life and the layered histories of these sites as potential places of self-organisation and resistance. Built around the question of translation and the relationship of what we hear to what we see, the film follows Chen's retelling of the farmer's tradition of using film screenings as means of covert political assembly during the Japanese colonial rule of Taiwan.
The title is an English translation of the Chinese term / yúnhai, used to describe the view from Taiwan's highest mountains when everything below is hidden from view by a sea of clouds.
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2016 - Experimenta Strand - World premiere

Synopsis

A feature length film exploring themes of identity, culture and the construction of history. Shot on 35mm film in various Californian deserts that provide a stage in which to re-enact the negotiations of an archaeologist from Cairo with a members of tribe who guard ancient culture hidden in tombs lost in the desert.
The scenario for the film was adapted from the 1969 Egyptian film 'A Night of Counting the Years' directed by Shadi Abdel Salam, creating a layered story that echoes from ancient Egypt to the diversity of desert ecology and recent archaeological digs for lost Hollywood film sets. Working in collaboration with the musician and composer Tom Challenger a new choral composition was created and recorded for the film, drawing on traditional and modern acoustic techniques to reflect the shifting sands of the desert landscapes.

Synopsis

A man is desperately knocking on the front door, in the hallway lies broken crockery and bottles. Steam from a whistling kettle begins to full the kitchen. The bathroom door is ajar and Niall is lying on the floor mumbling incoherently; we enter the world of a tormented soul.