SCREENING: March 2012

After the madness of Christmas and the Oscars the film world has finally calmed down and relinquished some screen space to allow the lustre of some 24 carat screen gems to shine. Unfortunately such a relinquishment means that every independent distributor and his dog has picked the next four weeks to release their films, resulting in a nauseatingly insurmountable glut of excellent offerings (and a slightly reduced description of the contents therein). Let’s not complain though. Let’s just begin.

Michael (from 2nd March)

The influence of contemporary auteur par excellence Michael Haneke is readily apparent in this incredibly subtle, restrained and considered portrayal of the cold, calculated behaviour of a predatory paedophile. Having won worthy praise from some of the country’s leading critics Michael announces director Markus Schleinzer, Haneke’s long-time casting director, as a major figure in modern art-house cinema.

 

In Darkness (from 16th March)

This tale of a sewer worker who hides a group of Jews under the streets of Nazi-occupied Lodz is emotionally fraught, nail-bitingly intense and utterly compelling. Closer to the claustrophobic intensity of Wajda’s stunning Kanal than the maudlin saccharinity of Schindler’s List, this is another example of the ongoing brilliance of Polish cinema.

 

Once Upon A Time In Anatolia (from 16th March)

Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s new prize-winning film is a hallucinatory, mesmerising and totally engrossing neo-noir tale of a police procedural gone wrong that displays his awesome visual flair and rigorous dramatic intent. It’s a fantastic addition to his already impressive canon.

 

The Kid With A Bike (from 23rd March)

As with Ceylan’s Anatolia, the Dardennes brothers’ new picture comes laden with critical acclaim and supported by the flawless mark of its brilliant creators. Poignant, touching and quietly astounding in its heartfelt yet totally unsentimental humanism, this is the greatest example of contemporary Bressonian cinema.

 

Corpo Celeste (from 30th March)

A beautifully shot insight into the mysterious world of a young girl’s religious development, this elliptical film is a challenging look at the structures of belief, individuality and the search for truth in a complex, ineffable world.

 

This Is Not A Film (from 30th March)

Under house arrest since September 2010, Iran’s leading and most influential filmmaker, Jafar Panahi, has held up a banner to the ruling party by creating a film that constitutes none of the criteria set out in his cinematic sanctions. Celluloid protest at its most raw, powerful, original and personal.

 

Ordet (at the BFI from 9th-23rd March)

Carl T Dreyer’s magnum opus is rightly hailed as one of the greatest achievements of one of cinema’s brightest leading lights. Beguiling, enigmatic and daringly original, Ordet’s influence has stretched throughout the history of film, most notably in Carlos Reygadas’ Silent Light.

Kusama’s Self-Obliteration (at the Tate Modern until 5th June)

One of the crowning moments of psychedelic cinema, Jud Yalkut’s portrait of the life and work of the visionary Yayoi Kusama is an astute depiction of a conceptual artist’s work and an incredible insight into the spirit of the 1960s. You can watch the first part of the film below, but head over to Tate Modern to experience her work in full (it’s well worth it).

SCREENING: January 2012

Much in the tradition of new year’s resolutions, the bloated self-indulgence of December’s blockbuster fare has been cast off and replaced with a healthy salad of crisp and fibrous new releases, each loudly espousing their restorative properties this January. Whilst this obviously has more to do with the upcoming Oscars (shudder) and much less an attempt at cleansing, focussing and reinvigorating filmic output on the part of the industry, it’s nonetheless highly welcome. You can already taste those celluloid vitamins slipping down your greasy gullet.

However, many of these awards-worthy contenders will be little more than re-hashed, pre-packaged dross from which we would advise the avid cinema-goer to steer well clear. So, blinker yourself to the yards of column inches, starlit names and swollen marketing budgets and instead sign up to our New You 2012 Best Results Ever Screen Diet Plan with this quick round-up of the most exciting films out this January. Don’t you feel goooood.

Shame (13th January)

If you’re not excited about Shame then there’s something wrong with you. Hunger, the previous outing for McQueen and Fassbender, was so good it made me think I was having a heart attack. I don’t really have anything more to say on the matter.

 

A Useful Life (13th January)

A bizarre, witty and charming film about a cineaste’s love of film and the importance it plays in the meaningfulness of his life. Its inherent tragedy should also serve as a timely reminder in our times of financial austerity towards funding for the arts.

 

The Nine Muses (20th January)

John Akomfrah’s investigation into the mentality of immigration uses Homer’s The Odyssey as a structuring device and sits somewhere between documentary, film essay and cine-poem. It’s daring, original and shot through with incredible intellectual rigour. Destined for the subject of post-film, caffeine-fuelled debate.

 

House of Tolerance (27th January)

Take a tale about prostitutes in a Parisian fin de siècle brothel, imbue it with challenging existential subtexts and shoot it like Guy Bourdin and you’ve basically got us hook line and sinker. NB: NSFW.

Dara Birnbaum

One of the pioneers of video as an artistic medium, Dara Birnbaum’s manipulated re-workings of found TV footage ritually deconstructed and desecrated the moving image, forcing the viewer into a new relationship with the screen. Two programmes and a multi-video installation celebrating the work of this seminal artist will be taking place at the South London Gallery throughout January.

 

Patience (After Sebald)

A fitting tribute to one of my favourite writers, W.G. Sebald, this experimental documentary about landscape, history, art, life and loss offers a unique insight into one of the most powerful, mysterious and brilliant books of the 20th century. It’s also soundtracked by The Caretaker, aka James Leyland Kirby. Joy.

No trailer is currently available. The film is screening at the ICA from 27th January.

L’Atalante (20th January)

Finally, here’s another fantastic re-release courtesy of the BFI and all your hard-earned tax payer’s money. The only feature-length film that the incredibly talented Jean Vigo was able to make before his untimely demise, the film is a breathtaking marriage of surrealism and poetic realism that ranks among the greatest films ever made.

Sabrina Ratté – Activated Memory

Sabrina Ratté is a Montreal-based video artist. Her work is formed of 2D images and found video footage that is treated with feedback, 3D animation and colour overlays to render a retro-futuristic non-space where only fragments of reality exist in a virtual world of forgotten dreams and consumer-grade nostalgia. We have featured her work before and I can safely say we will feature it again. Because she is one of the best things there is.

Here are two videos that form Activated Memory, a dual installation created for bubblebyte.org, featuring the music of Roger Tellier-Craig. It’s both exemplary of her style and the apotheosis of her technique. In short, it’s bloody brilliant.

Image is by Ira Cohen.

Tomutonttu – Siat Nousevat Vuorelle (Brenna Murphy video)

I was going to jump into this post with an explanation of recent negligence in terms of post capacity, citing various factors such as Christmas partying and… er… well that’s the problem. It’s as far as I got. And it’s not really much of a viable excuse, is it? So I’ll glaze over that tangent and get straight down to business.

This is a video by Brenna Murphy, a Portland-based video artist, for a track by Tomutonttu, the solo project of Finnish sound artist Jan Anderzen (who is also the frontman of Kemialliset Ystävät). Presumably that’s enough information for you to process right now. It’s made me quite tired just writing it. So I’ll resign any attempts at description to the might-do-later bin and just put up the video itself. There.

Image is by Manuel Birnbacher.

SCREENING: December 2011

The holiday period usually means something of a lull in quality cinema, with the focus firmly set on family-orientated adventure romps and action blockbusters to shore up studio bank balances before the all-important end of year reports. However, breathing space for a plucky art-house contender or surprise indie hit can sometimes be found within this bustling arena, and this December looks to hold a fair few well worth your time…

Las Acacias

A sparse and slow yet rigorous and engrossing road movie from first time Argentine director Pablo Giorgelli. Fans of touching, personal films focusing on the intricacies of human relationships (and, as Mark Cousins says, ‘that focus on the human face’), like Central Station or Mid-August Lunch, should take note.

 

Surviving Life

Another foray into the subconscious wonder-realm with cinema’s most ardent surrealist (and one of our personal, long-time favourites), Jan Švankmajer, Surviving Life uses cut-out and stop-frame animation combined with filmed footage to explore the boundaries of dreams, desire and reality. It’s the best kind of weird there is.

 

Another Earth

A harrowing drama about guilt somewhat strong-armed into life as a philosophical sci-fi, this debut feature from writer-director Mike Cahill has drawn comparisons with the luminous films of Kieslowski and Tarkovsky. Despite dividing critics over its message, style and delivery, those two references alone should certainly make it one to watch…

 

Mysteries of Lisbon

A stunningly lavish period drama of epic proportions, this Viscontian pot-boiling melodrama seems to have bowled anyone willing to sit through its six hour running time completely over. It’s been hailed by many as the crowning moment of the late director Raul Ruiz’s career, topping even his seminal adaptation of Proust’s Time Regained.

 

The Artist

Come on now. You’ve heard of this. I don’t need to explain it to you. It’s going to win some Oscars and spur loads of publications to run articles pointlessly considering the plausibility of silent film as a major future genre. It is also going to be very, very good indeed.

M. Geddes Gengras / Miko Revereza – Refractions

Just to round the day off, here’s a little segment of a new collaborative VHS project between psychedelic electro-wanderer M. Geddes Gengras and lo-fi analogue video artist Miko Revereza. It touches on a lot of the hauntologic, retrograde aesthetics of James Ferraro and Ducktails but with a matching visual athleticism to boot. Check out a sample below and, if you’re feeling flush, pick up a copy here. Preferably to watch whilst driving through a neon desert in your pink DeLorean.

Image is from Jane Thomas’ Flickr stream.

SCREENING: November 2011

Oh, hi. Welcome to the first of a new, monthly feature, in which we’ll be looking at the cinematic highlights of the coming month. Well, we do purport to cover film as well, don’t we? So it only feels proper.

Oslo, 31st August

A beautifully shot, utterly Scandinavian look at the life of a recovering drug addict and the 24 hours in which he returns to Oslo. Expect existential wranglings and steely grey landscapes by the bucket load. Bergman for the 21st century.

 

Weekend

A tender, vivid and breathtakingly honest portrait of a short romantic encounter and its aftermath that features two incredible lead performances and which has taken international festival audiences by storm.

 

Wuthering Heights

This new film from one of Britain’s leading auteurs, Andrea Arnold (Red Road, Fish Tank), is a bold and brutal re-working of Emily Brontë’s classic tale of passion and cruelty. Emotions and characters as bare and raw as the windswept moors they inhabit…

 

Les Enfants du Paradis

The current trend for classic re-releases builds ever stronger with Marcel Carné’s masterful story of unrequited love in a French 19th century theatre. A beautiful, tragic film that anyone who’s been following Mark Cousins’ The Story of Film should make a beeline to catch.

 

Snowtown

There’s been some massive buzz around this new Australian family crime drama. The fact that it looks like Animal Kingdom directed by Harmony Korine and shot by Ryan McGinley is probably why. Massive hopes for this one. Looks fantastic.

 

Take Shelter

Part paranoid psychological drama, part apocalyptic sci-fi, Take Shelter seems to have sprung from nowhere and has generated nothing but hugely positive feedback. Can’t wait to see what the hype is really about.

 

Image is from Tarkovsky’s Stalker, which you can watch for free (along with ALL of his other films!) here.

Patten – Plurals

We reckon Patten’s probably one of the UK’s most exciting indie dance acts currently around. His recent album, the unpronounceably-titled GLAQJO XAACSSO, set our ear-drums ablaze with its churning, disintegrating melodies and half-swallowed, disorientatingly syncopated rhythms. A new video for one of the stand-out tracks, Plurals, has just been posted by his label, No Pain In Pop, and can be viewed below. If you like what you see then make sure you get yourself over to what should be an incredible AV set at the CAMP basement next January.

Image is a drawing (yes, a drawing, made with pencil) by Gregory Brellochs.

Raleigh Moncrief – Watered Lawn

Any Why? fans should prick up their ears at news that Anticon‘s Raleigh Moncrief will be releasing a new album next week. Come to think of it, non-Why? fans should probably do so as well, because it’s shaping up to be a good ‘un. After co-producing Dirty Projector’s fantastic Bitte Orca, a stint playing in Marnie Stern’s band and a couple of cheeky collaborations with the awesome Zach Hill, he’s finally committed himself to a full-length solo album. Replete with laconic, drawling rhymes, glitzy, disintegrating sounds and chattering percussion formed of field recordings and budget drum kits, the whole thing has been balled up into a big balloon of spangly wool and tossed around by dolphins on holiday. Basically it’s bloody lovely.

Peep a teaser for the album here, along with a video made by Mr Moncrief himself. And listen to a few more of the new tracks below.

Image is by Guy Bourdin.

Ghosting Season – Far End of the Graveyard

At four months old Ghosting Season’s Far End of the Graveyard EP – four slick tracks of tribal, industrial inflected techno drenched in melodic drones and classical samples (the Vaughan Williams pilfer is inspired) – isn’t particularly new, but hey, we’ve only just discovered it, so it is to us. The tip-off came from the excellent video by French filmmakers Alex Dallou & Gregory Hoepffner, aka Radius Labs, which surprisingly and serendipitously popped up on the youtube homepage this morning and immediately grabbed our attention. Starting off as an atmospheric yet fairly down-the-line piece of horror-thriller, the film is thrown into complexity by an alienating use of mise en abyme that in turn moves full circle and is inserted into an additional layer of filmic reality. It’s fun, tricksy and very well done – just a shame that it doesn’t last longer.

Check it out here and then stream the EP in full below.

Image is by Wilhelm Sasnal, who will shortly be exhibiting at the Whitechapel Gallery.

Maya Deren – Ritual in Transfigured Time

The first part of the Maya Deren programme kicked off last night with a series of five shorts, grouped together under the title ‘Chamber Films’. Intimate in their study of identity, rigorous in their construction of space and use of editing and richly analytical of the processes and patterns of movement, they formed a beautiful, mysterious and beguiling hour’s worth of filmic art.

The high point was the magnificent Ritual in Transfigured Time, which crystallized Deren’s  themes and aesthetics into a subversive narrative of cyclical temporality, multiple personae and transubstantiation of myths and realities. It’s a truly remarkable film and one that only increases its power, impact and intrigue after repeated viewings.

Luckily the film is available to watch online, although unfortunately the quality is rather lacking. Still though, it’s really something rather special.

Sabrina Ratté & Le Révélateur

Couple of videos for you here by the excellent Sabrina Ratté. We’ve featured one of her works before – the reverberating neon accompaniment to Boxcutter’s TV Troubles – and are proud to put them up again.

This time around she’s made them for Le Révélateur, the Montreal-based synth wizard on Steve Hauschildt’s (of Emeralds fame) label, Gneiss Things. Both video and music are precisely the kind of things we’re into here – haunting, mesmeric and hypnagogic recreations of distorted throwback sounds and visions – and we hope you like them too.

Image is by Kate Steciw, more of whose rather great digitally distorted works you can see here.

Michael Robinson

Here’s a few little somethings for you to take home for the weekend. Or to help pass the time this afternoon. Instead of just sitting there staring out of the window wishing you were a kid and could just go playing in the beautiful, sunny park rather than having to sit at a bastard desk, freezing under the ramped-up air conditioning unit. Boo hoo hoo.

Anyway. Enough self-interest and pity. Michael Robinson is our ostensible topic, and one which we shall adhere to.

We first came across this experimental filmmaker via Jonathan Caouette (director of the excellent autobiographical documentary Tarnation) and were immediately blown away by his beautiful, hypnotic, mysterious and quite often just downright weird films. Using a diverse range of sources, effects and techniques – collage, archive, distortion, feedback, soundtracking, subtitling – he’s spent the last 11 years creating postmodern dreamscapes; at times nauseatingly kitsch, at others deeply disturbing. Throughout his work though a constant voice can be heard: an exploratory yearning for a lost or forgotten world and, at the same time, the terror of existing solely through a vicarious and pernicious media. He’s strongly influenced by pop art, surrealism and the DIY aesthetic of the mid-90s but has turned these concepts into something startlingly original, albeit an originality that his since been co-opted into something of a trend. A lot of current video artists and music video makers have a lot to thank him for.

Check a selection of his work here. And don’t miss the opportunity to catch one of his works in the Altered States programme, featuring as part of the Experimenta section at this year’s BFI London Film Festival. It should be very good indeed.

Image is by a photographer that we’ve featured before and will probably feature again, chiefly because she’s brilliant: Barbara Crane.

Walls – Coracle

So yeah, Walls were pretty shit hot at the Shacklewell Arms last night. The dark , dingy backroom, flooded with kaleidoscopic neons and packed with sweaty, pulsating bodies, was the perfect location for the set – an engulfing wall of drones, synths and effects, lifted by ethereal vocals and simple guitar chords and forced home with the swallowed thuds of deep house beats. If the quality of the set and the crowd’s subsequent reaction (especially from whom we can only presume was one of the duo’s mums, having the best night of her life right in front of the stage) is anything to go by, they should be set for something big; the next Caribou or Mount Kimbie, perhaps. And we wish them all the best for it.

Check their new single here….

… and then hop over to the Kompakt website to stream the new album, Coracle (and buy it!).

… and check out the full album here! Just posted!

you should still buy it though. From Kompakt. Here.

Image is by Gala Bent.

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma and Paul Clipson at Cafe OTO

As a brief addendum to our earlier post, here’s a video of Jefre Cantu-Ledesma and Paul Clipson’s show at Cafe Oto last Wednesday. Beautiful sounds and visuals to ease you into the week.

Image is by ethereal Japanese photographer Rinko Kawauchi.

Maya Deren – 50 Years On

Here’s a little something to leave you with for the weekend, when you’ve maybe got a bit more spare time on your hands and can commit to the full 14 minutes viewing time. The film is Maya Deren’s ‘Meshes of the Afternoon’ and is one of the most important and influential pieces of artist’s video ever made – up there with ‘Un Chien Andalou’ (at least in my mind anyway). It’s deeply surrealist in outlook, usurping the reality of objects, manipulating space to create a disorientating dream-world and exploring the subconscious hopes, fears, memories and desires that play out to make us who we do not know we are. It also has one of the most mesmerising atmospheres ever created on film and has had a profound effect on the aesthetic of much subsequent art-house cinema – most notably the films of David Lynch.

Thankfully the BFI have programmed what should be a wonderful season of films to mark the 50^th anniversary of the death of this brilliant filmmaker where you’ll be able to see all of her works on a proper, full-size screen and on proper 35mm prints. Nice.

Barn Owl – Turiya

I’m going to pull out the age-old ‘two buses’ adage for this post, thanks to this beautiful video from John Davis that bears some striking resemblances to yesterday’s selection of films by Paul Clipson. As nice as it is, I may very well not have put it up – out of desire for variety – had it not been for the accompanying song; Barn Owl’s majestic ‘Turiya’. Echoes of Slint and Earth abound in this stoned and heavy-lidded journey through an imagined American pastoral – a sound that’s mirrored exquisitely by the grainy, black and white Super 8 nature montage.

Barn Owl will be playing at the Hoxton Bar & Kitchen on November 19th and have a new album out on Thrill Jockey. Jump on it.

As a special treat, and in a doffing of our caps to the filmmaker, here’s another of John Davis’ films – a mysterious collage of fantastical poetry, found footage and distant guitars. Enjoy.

Image is a painting of Gilbert & George by Gerhard Richter, a retrospective of whose will shortly be showing at Tate Modern.

Paul Clipson

For those that attended the Jefre Cantu-Ledesma gig at Café Oto last night, please forgive us for trying to re-create what happened in this post. We know that all we are able to provide is a cheap facsimile, but providing even a homeopathically-scaled percentage of events is something still totally worthwhile.

For those that weren’t at the Jefre Cantu-Ledesma gig at Café Oto last night, please forgive us for what must seem like a slightly obtuse opening gambit. But bear with us; it’ll definitely be worth it.

Last night, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma’s gig at Café Oto (I suppose you’ve figured that bit out already) was accompanied by the Super 8 projections of Paul Clipson. Or, more accurately – in my mind at least – Paul Clipson’s Super 8 projections were accompanied by Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. He showed some of the most beautifully captured fragments of film that I think I’ve ever seen, all flowing in and out, penetrating deep within, floating on top and swimming around each other in what seemed perfect, serendipitous harmony with the engulfing music. Images ranging from the stark, geometric angles of industrial cityscapes to undulating, amorphous patterns to silhouettes of trees and fences and ghostly apparitions of colourful faces all moving and shifting incessantly with a gurgling, immersive fluidity. The subject – light – was utterly singular, but its treatment through texture, rhythm and pattern was phenomenally complex and it recalled so many of the most powerful and moving video art that’s ever been created (László Moholy-Nagy, Bruce Nauman, Len Lye, William Klein, Kenneth Anger, Fernand Léger – to name a few) whilst being in itself something totally new and, quite literally at some points, jaw-droppingly breathtaking (I think I may have even dribbled).

Unfortunately the excerpts provided below, as stated above, only provide a suggestion of last night’s events. But hopefully some of the effect might rub off and a few people, somewhere, will be persuaded to catch him next time he shows his work. If so, we will see you there.

The Caretaker – I Feel As If I Might Be Vanishing

We like Leyland Kirby a lot, in whatever guise he records under. The new video for the majestically eerie I Feel As If I Might Be Vanishing is taken from An Empty Bliss Beyond This World, an album recorded under Kirby’s Caretaker moniker earlier this year. It’s an eerily majestic piece – drawing you into a sepia tinged nether-world, soundtracked by saccharine strings and haunting horn motifs. It’s only a couple of minutes, but surprisingly effecting. Check the video below and the full album here.

Image is by Terayama Shuji

Quayola – Strata Series / Topologies

Massive thanks to the people at BL NK C NV S for putting on an absolutely brilliant show last night. Highlights were Anne Lanzilotti’s masterful and disturbing treated violin, Mark Fell’s cripplingly intense beat destructions, the hypnotic moving op art – akin to Susan Hiller’s Magic Lantern film – by an unfortunately unknown artist and, of course, the main subject of this post – the incredible video art by London based Quayola.

Quayola’s work investigates dialogues and the unpredictable collisions, tensions and equilibriums between the real and artificial, the figurative and abstract, the old and new. His work explores photography, geometry, time-based digital sculptures and immersive audiovisual installations and performances.

Here’s a short selection of his most recent work. You can see more of it, including excerpts from his immersive installations (featured at last year’s Ether festival), over on his website, here.