[LuxWeeklyNews] LUX weekly - EVENTS AND OPENINGS IN LONDON THIS WEEK

[luxweekly at lux.org.uk]

LUX Weekly News: 23rd – 29th October 2006

EVENTS AND OPENINGS IN LONDON THIS WEEK

1. Collected Works – Colour Fields, British Artists' Film and Video  
Study Collection, Lethaby Gallery Private view - Tuesday 24th October  
6 - 8pm

2. Light Reading Series 5, Ian White and Chris McCormack, The  
Kingsgate Gallery, Wednesday 25 October, 7pm

3. ANDY WARHOL: A Documentary Film by Ric Burns
The UK Premiere of 'A 4 Hour Epic', Prince Charles Cinema, Wednesday  
25 October 2006, 6.30pm - 11pm

4. New Semantics: Samuel Stevens & Joyce Wieland, Whitechapel Art  
Gallery, Thursday 26 October, 7pm

5. Avant garde weekend at the London Film Festival, National Film  
Theatre, 28th – 30th October


1.
Monday 23rd October 2006 - Saturday 18th November 2006
COLLECTED WORKS - COLOUR FIELDS
British Artists' Film and Video Study Collection
Lethaby Gallery
Central St Martins College of Art and Design
Southampton Row
London WC1B 4AP
(closest tube: Holborn)
Open Monday - Friday 10am - 8pm, Saturday 10am - 4pm
Private view - Tuesday 24th October 6 - 8pm
telephone: 020 7514 8159
http://www.studycollection.org.uk

includes:
COLLECTED WORKS
exhibition of materials from the British Artists' Film and Video Study
Collection.  A showcase for material from the British Artists' Film &  
Video Study Collection:
posters, photographs, drawings, film strips, press cuttings and video  
material illustrate the ways in which artists have recorded the  
activity which takes place between the conceiving of a work and its  
eventual presentation to a public.

P R E - P R O D U C T I O N
P R O D U C T I O N
P R O M O T I O N
E X H I B I T I O N
D O C U M E N T A T I O N

COLOUR FIELDS part 1
colour in avant-garde film, video and digital media:  
installations,screening and discussion
An exhibition of new and restaged installation works on the theme of  
colour in avant-garde film, video and digital media, including:

Matrix 73 - 06 (1973 – 2006)
Three channel video projection by Malcolm Le Grice
Matrix was first shown in 1973 as a six projector 16mm film  
installation and moving projector performance. The image is a series  
of short loops with each screen split vertically into two equal  
halves of rapidly changing primary colours. The digital version is  
'sharper', without the same
material traces of film and the movements are constructed rather than  
spontaneous. It is thus a new work, but as with jazz musicians  
playing or recording an earlier composition, it is a new performance  
but retains the composition.

Primary Phase (2006)
four channel video projection by Simon Payne
A looping series of red, green and blue ‘wipes’ traverse the  
projected image in vertical and horizontal directions.  The loop  
that each projector shows is a different duration however, causing  
their synchronisation to phase. While the work employs a very formal  
approach to screen space, perhaps resembling the aesthetics of early  
abstract film, the patterns of the piece directly influence what’s  
outside the frame as well: the space between and surrounding the  
colours - i.e. the wall – is made a part of the work; and the  
reflected light simultaneously affects the look of the entire space.

Primary Contrasting Elements (1993)
single channel video by Mineo Aayamaguchi
explores the symbolic relationships between primary forms (the  
circle, square and triangle) and video colours.

Still Life (1976)
single channel video by Jenny Okun
reflects on the mutability of colour in photography, and the  
elusiveness of photographic truth. Resorting to the older medium of  
painting, it explores the impossibility of transforming an image from  
colour negative to colour positive on the same filmstock

2.
Wednesday 25 October, 7pm
Light Reading Series 5
Ian White and Chris McCormack
The Kingsgate Gallery
110/116 Kingsgate Road
London NW6
Nearest tube / overground: West Hampstead
£3 pre-booked / £4 on the door
Places are limited so booking is essential.
To book please call 0207 372 3925, or email courses at nowhere-lab.org
www.nowhere-lab.org
Ian White and Chris McCormack read and discuss selected poems by  
Frank O’Hara – activities that they hope to share. Please respond by  
return of email if you would like to participate by receiving in  
advance of the event copies of those poems to be discussed. Frank  
O’Hara was born in 1926. A friend and collaborator with second- 
generation Abstract Expressionist artists such as Willem de Kooning,
Larry Rivers, Jane Freilicher and Joan Mitchell his poetry is  
characterised by an irrepressible immediacy and an often immediate  
sense of joy discovered in the everyday. He died in 1966 from  
injuries sustained after being hit by a beach buggy on Fire Island on  
his way home from the disco. ‘it is the poem that materialises as a  
sort of monumental backdrop against the random ruminations of a poet  
seemingly caught up in the business of a New York working day or  
another love affair… Half on contemptuously familiar terms with  
poetry, half embarrassed or withdrawn from its strangeness, the
work seems entirely natural and available to the multitude of big and  
little phenomena which combine to make that almost unknowable  
substance that is our experience.’
John Ashbery, Introduction to The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara
Light Reading is an on-going series of critical dialogues that engage  
artists, writers and curators in conversation around a selected  
artists body of work. The final Light Reading for 2006 will take  
place on November 29th and will feature sound artist Peter Cusack in  
conversation with Angela Impey, a doctor in Anthropology and  
Ethnomusicology.

3.
Wednesday 25 October 2006, 6.30pm - 11pm
ANDY WARHOL: A Documentary Film by Ric Burns
The UK Premiere of 'A 4 Hour Epic'
Presented by Artprojx and Gagosian in association with The Royal Academy
Artprojx at Prince Charles Cinema
7 Leicester Place
London WC2
www.princecharlescinema.com
Box Office: 020 7494 3654 (open 1-9pm)
Tickets £10 (tickets include a beer and popcorn)
There will be an interval of 20 minutes
For Artist and Student Half-Price ticket discount information
visit www.artupdate.com/artprojx or quote 'Artupdate' at Box Office

4.
Thursday 26 October, 7pm
New Semantics: Samuel Stevens & Joyce Wieland
Whitechapel Art Gallery
80 - 82 Whitechapel High Street
London, E1 7QX
+44 (0)20 7522 7888, Info at whitechapel.org
£5.50/£3.50 concs & Members
www.whitechapel.org
Film programme
Samuel Stevens recorded the soundtrack for Sin Papeles four years to  
the day before filming any images of the church in Barcelona in which  
a group of migrant workers went on a hunger strike that climaxed in  
March 2001. Sound remains radically split form image in the final  
film that is both a political document and a rigorously elegant  
personal expression. It is shown alongside three films by Joyce  
Wieland, each employ sensory deception or deprivation for the similar  
purpose of political expression.
This programme is part of a series of three screenings presenting and  
contextualising the first public showing of brilliant new work by  
three young contemporary artists working in London.
Samuel Stevens, Sin Papeles, 2006, 16mm, 10mins
Joyce Wieland 1933, 1967-8, 16mm, 4mins
Pierre Vallières, 1972, 16mm, 30mins
Solidarity, 1973, 16mm, 11mins
Curated by Ian White

5.
28-30 October 2006
THE TIMES BFI 50th LONDON FILM FESTIVAL
AVANT-GARDE WEEKEND
The Times BFI London Film Festival presents its fourth annual  
Experimenta Avant-Garde Weekend from 28-30 October 2006, featuring a  
concentrated, international programme of artists’ film and video.  
This is a unique opportunity to survey some of the most original and  
vital work by international artists, presenting a diversity of  
observations, personal statements and technical innovation. We  
anticipate that many film-makers will be in attendance to introduce  
and discuss their work.

National Film Theatre
South Bank
London SE1 8XT
TICKETS
Standard ticket price is £8.50
BOOKINGS
By post to the NFT from 18 September (priority to NFT members)
In person at the NFT Box Office from 29 September
By telephone on 020 7928 3232 from 29 September 09.30 - 20.30 daily  
Online at www.lff.org.uk from 21 September
If all advance tickets for films are sold out, try again after 9 October
when all remaining seats will be released. A few tickets or returns  
may also be available on the day of the screening.
Avant-Garde weekend texts below by Mark Webber unless otherwise  
indicated all quotes by the film-makers

DAY ONE

Sat 28 Oct 14.00 NFT3
GAMES PEOPLE PLAY
YOU MADE ME LOVE YOU
Dir Miranda Pennell / UK 2005 / 4 mins
‘Twenty-one dancers are held by your gaze. Losing contact can be  
traumatic.’
OLYMPICS 2005 TRACK AND FIELD
Dir Shannon Plumb / USA 2005 / 18 mins
 From the opening ceremony to awarding the medals, Plumb plays all  
the characters in this burlesque of the trials and triumphs of the  
summer games. Rooted in silent comedy, its homespun style references  
equal parts Keaton and Riefenstahl, and is the vehicle for a series  
of witty observations.
SWEET NIGHTINGALE
Dir Victor Alimpiev / Russia 2005 / 7 mins
In a theatre, a crowd perform a series of choreographed gestures  
facing the stage. Left unexplained, this mysterious ceremony appears  
more symbolic than absurd.
PROPRIO APERTO
Dir Judith Hopf, Nayascha Sadr Haghighian, Florian Zeyfang / Germany  
2005 /
6 mins
An off-season stroll through the temporary ruins of the Giardini,  
home of the national pavilions at the Venice Biennale.
UNTITLED (FOR DAVID GATTEN)
Dir Phil Solomon & Mark LaPore / USA 2005 / 5 mins
Made as a ‘get well card’ for a friend, this uncharacteristic work  
invokes a sense of absence, and ultimately loss.
BLOCKING
Dir Pablo Marin / Argentina 2005 / 3 mins
By contravening archival guidelines on water damage, the original  
image is erased from a ‘mistreated’ filmstrip, to be replaced by an  
organic explosion of colour.
KRISTALL
Dir Matthias Müller, Christophe Girardet / Germany 2006 / 15 mins
Shards of emotions from Hollywood melodrama are combined in a Chinese  
box of reflection and refraction. Kristall is a cinematic hall of  
mirrors, which ruptures and multiplies the anxieties of narcissistic,  
star-crossed lovers.
CONTEMPLANDO LA CIUDAD [Contemplating The City]
Dir Angela Reginato / USA 2005 / 4 mins
‘Perfectly without affect, a girl sings along with a pop tune,  
transporting herself through space and time to Mexico City circa 1978.’
Total running time circa 65 mins

Sat 28 Oct 16.00 NFT3
DISTANCE AND DISPLACEMENT
LET THERE BE WHISTLEBLOWERS
Dir Ken Jacobs / USA 2005 / 18 mins
Advancing the techniques of his ‘Nervous System’ performances (seen  
here in 2000), Jacobs now treats archival film footage with  
electronic means, shifting his exploration of visual space into the  
digital domain. All aboard the mystery train for a journey from  
actuality to abstraction. Steve Reich’s ‘Drumming’ provides added  
momentum.
UNFINISHED PASSAGES
Dir Brett Kashmere / Canada 2005 / 17 mins
Archival images and a contraflow of texts trace the migration of the
artists’ grandfather from London to Saskatchewan. ‘Using the shadow  
play of light and darkness as a metaphor for human memory Unfinished  
Passages reframes his forced immigration/orphan experience through  
the developing lens of the cinema.’
THIS IS MY LAND
Dir Ben Rivers / UK 2006 / 8 mins
A portrait of Jake Williams, who lives a hermetic lifestyle in a remote
house in the woods of Aberdeenshire. Folk film for the new millennium.
THE OTHER SIDE
Dir Bill Brown / USA 2006 / 43 mins
In this rich and revealing essay film, Brown shares his experiences of
travelling from Texas to California, recounting a history of the  
landscape, its inhabitants and those that pass through. The border  
between Mexico and the USA is crossed by thousands of undocumented  
persons each year, and hundreds do not survive the journey through  
the desert to the other side.
Incorporating a personal voiceover and interviews with migrant  
activists, this visually striking film examines the border as a site  
of aspiration and insecurity.
Total running time c90 mins

Sat 28 Oct 18.30 NFT3
[also Thur 26 Oct 16.15 ICA]
ONE WAY BOOGIE WOOGIE / 27 YEARS LATER
Dir James Benning / USA 1977-2005 / 120 mins
In 1977, concerned about the decaying nature of his native Milwaukee,
Benning shot One Way Boogie Woogie, an hour long film composed of 60  
shots
of industrial urban landscape: smokestacks, sidewalks, three  
Volkswagens, people few and far between, an animal here and there. In  
characteristic fashion, Benning’s apparently simple, static shots are  
exercises in meticulous painterly composition, and their careful  
sequencing ensures that the director’s playful humour is given full  
expression. For 27 Years Later, Benning returned to Milwaukee to  
shoot ‘the same film again’. The shot by shot re-staging uses very  
obviously different stock – the colours are brighter, there’s a  
distinctly modern tone. Buildings are showing their age, or gone;  
people likewise. Seen together, these two films offer a cogent  
illustration of how America has changed in the intervening years,  
fraying in
places, gentrified in others. Benning’s method, and his affinity with  
his
subjects is extraordinary – as if he completely absorbs the landscape,
imbues it with geo-political and cultural relevance, and re-presents  
it to us in a unique mix of formal rigour and mischievous invention.  
(Sandra Hebron)

Sat 28 Oct 21.00 NFT3
[also Thur 26 Oct 13.15 NFT2]
JACK SMITH & THE DESTRUCTION OF ATLANTIS
Dir Mary Jordan / with Mario Montez, John Waters, Judith Malina / USA  
2006 /
96 mins
‘The only person I would ever copy. He makes the best movies.’ (Andy  
Warhol) Diving headlong into the exotic world of Jack Smith, this is  
a ravishing celebration of a seminal figure of contemporary art,  
experimental theatre, fashion, film and photography. A devotee of  
‘moldy glamour’, Smith was shooting fanciful tableau vivants in 1957,  
later naming his ensemble the ‘Superstars of Cinemaroc’ way before  
Warhol had a Silver Factory. His ethereal masterpiece Flaming  
Creatures is an epic fantasy, featuring blonde vampires and bohemians  
cavorting amid a tangle of naked bodies. Fêted by
Fellini, but denounced by Playboy for ‘defiling at once both sex and
cinema’, the film was became a totem in the battle against censorship.
Dismayed and resentful, Smith reacted to this unwanted attention by  
never completing another film. To become a product was to be  
embalmed. Returning to the ephemeral medium of performance, he  
appeared amongst piles of meticulously arranged garbage with Yolanda,  
a toy penguin with jewel-encrusted brassiere. Utterly opposed to the  
concept of rented accommodation, Smith railed against ‘landlordism’,  
transforming his dilapidated apartment into an homage to Babylonian  
architecture. This documentary opens up Ali Baba’s cave, mixing  
commentary from friends and enemies with the glistening treasures of  
Smith’s own creation. An abundance of rare photographs, footage and  
audio bear testament to his uniquely
baroque vision.

Avant-Garde weekend texts by Mark Webber unless otherwise indicated  
all quotes by the film-makers

DAY TWO (and bonus!)
Sun 29 Oct 14.00 NFT3
WITHIN YOU, WITHOUT YOU
SONG AND SOLITUDE
Dir Nathaniel Dorsky / USA 2006 / 21 mins
As a guest of the Festival in 2004, Nathaniel Dorsky gave an  
inspirational lecture-screening on ‘Devotional Cinema’. His new film  
is a sombre work, which further refines his vision of an intimate,  
poetic cinema that creates a space for personal reflection. ‘Its  
balance is more toward an expression of inner landscape, or what it  
feels like to be, rather than an exploration of the external visual  
world as such.’
MURIEL’S SONG
Dir Grant Wiedenfeld / USA 2006 / 3 mins
‘A hand-painted, hand-processed film only bent thru the lens of the
projector and your pearly-crowned pair. Never before have light and  
shadow sung so well without a camera.’
ACROSS THE VALLEY
Dir Nick Collins / UK 2006 / 20 mins
Across The Valley is a beautifully photographed response to the  
landscape and environment of the Cévennes Mountains in Southern  
France. Employing time-lapse and other techniques, the film charts  
variations in the distant and immediate surroundings over a range of  
seasons.
KOLKATA
Dir Mark LaPore / USA 2005 / 35 mins
This luminous study of North Calcutta is one of the last completed  
films by the American film-maker who died last year. It combines  
personal and ethnographic elements in an experimental documentary  
that looks at, and into, another culture with empathy and  
fascination. ‘This film searches the streets for the ebb and flow of  
humanity and reflects the changing landscape of a city at once  
medieval and modern.’
Total running time circa 80 mins

Sun 29 Oct 16.00
NFT1
SPECIAL EVENT: KENNETH ANGER 35MM PRESERVATIONS
WITH KENNETH ANGER IN PERSON !
‘Kenneth Anger is a unique film-maker, an artist of exceptional  
talent.” (Martin Scorsese)
Kenneth Anger’s iconic films are an extraordinary demonstration of  
the transformative power of cinema. With support from The Film  
Foundation, the UCLA Film Archive has recently made glorious new 35mm  
prints of four of Anger’s works. This special screening offers  
aficionados and the uninitiated an opportunity to see these landmark  
films as they have never been seen before. We are delighted to  
welcome Kenneth Anger to the Festival to present this screening.
FIREWORKS
Dir Kenneth Anger/USA 1947/15 mins
The rarely seen original version, featuring a spoken prologue by the
film-maker. ‘A dissatisfied dreamer awakes, goes out in the night  
seeking a ‘light’ and is drawn through the needle’s eye. A dream of a  
dream, he returns to a bed less empty than before.’
LA LUNE DES LAPINS [Rabbit’s Moon]
Dir Kenneth Anger/USA-France 1950-71/16 mins
The only Anger film shot on 35mm has never been printed on that  
format until now. This is the longer edit from 1971, synchronized to  
haunting doo-wop ballads.
‘A fable of the unattainable (the Moon) combining elements of  
Commedia dell’Arte with Japanese myth. A lunar dream utilizing the  
classic pantomime figure of Pierrot in an encounter with a prankish,  
enchanted Magick Lantern.’
SCORPIO RISING
Dir Kenneth Anger/USA 1963/29 mins
Immensely influential for its use of pop music, Anger’s ironic  
critique of motorcycle gangs invokes Scorpio, the sign that rules  
machines, sex and death. ‘A ‘death mirror held up to American  
culture’ - Brando, bikes and black leather; Christ, chains and  
cocaine. A ‘high’ view of the myth of the American motorcyclist. The  
machine as totem from toy to terror. Thanatos in chrome and black  
leather and bursting jeans.’
KUSTOM KAR KOMMANDOS
Dir Kenneth Anger/USA 1965/4 mins
A slow and sensuous study of the hot rod craze.
‘To the soundtrack of ‘Dream Lover’ a young man strokes his  
customized car with a powder puff.'
Total running time c90 minutes

Sun 29 Oct 19.00
NFT3
[also Fri 27 Oct 13.45 NFT2]
ANGER ME
Dir Elio Gelmini / with Kenneth Anger, Jonas Mekas/ Canada 2006 / 72  
mins
A portrait of Kenneth Anger, legendary pioneer of independent film- 
making. Raised in Hollywood, a spell as the Changeling Prince in A  
Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935) provided his first taste of the  
fantasy world of the movies.
The nine films Anger made between 1947 and 1980 are shown together as  
the ‘Magick Lantern Cycle’, emphasising his belief in cinema as  
magical weapon. An authority on Aleister Crowley, his dazzling  
montage invokes myth and ritual, exploring taboo subjects and popular  
culture with a complex iconography. From the homoerotic fantasy  
Fireworks to the transcendental Lucifer Rising, his influence reaches  
beyond the avant-garde and into the mainstream, touching the work of  
Jarman, Lynch, Scorsese and countless others. Anger’s fascination  
with film history, memorabilia and scandal eventually led to the  
bestseller Hollywood Babylon, a dark exposé of Tinseltown’s seamy  
side. He inadvertently invented the music video with
Scorpio Rising, and his acquaintances ranged from Anaïs Nin and  
Alfred Kinsey to the Rolling Stones. Anger Me takes the form of an  
extended monologue, in which this visionary artist talks at length  
about his extraordinary life and remarkable body of work.

Sun 29 Oct 21.00
NFT3
SHINE ON
SAME DAY NICE BISCOTTS
Dir Luther Price / USA 2005 / 6 mins
A bleak but touching incantation composed from 13 identical prints of  
an early 70s documentary on elderly Afro-Americans. Time has taken  
its toll on the raw material too: now faded and worn, it is steeped  
in pathos.
KRYPTON IS DOOMED
Dir Ken Jacobs / USA 2005 / 34 mins
The original Superman radio play from 1940 accompanies the mind- 
bending ‘Nervous Magic Lantern,’ a filmless projection system that  
twists light into a perpetually throbbing mass of impossible depth.  
Presented by the film-maker as a metaphor for the onset of WWII, the  
apocalyptic narrative could be read as allegory for the present, a  
world of instability with the potential of environmental collapse.
THE COUNTER GIRL TRILOGY
Dir Courtney Hoskins / USA 2006 / 6 mins
In an inventive response to the cosmetics industry, Hoskins has  
created imagery from some unusual materials discovered while working  
as a sales assistant on a make-up counter.
BLAH BLAH BLAH
Dir Dietmar Brehm / Austria 2006 / 13 mins
Hotwiring history, the film-maker excavates his image bank of 16mm  
footage to reveal an archaeology of clandestine pursuits that hovers  
between ennui and agitation. Brehm’s week beats your year.
SURFACING
Dir Barbara Sternberg / Canada 2005 / 10 mins
An exodus of ghostly footsteps pass through the frame beneath layers  
of scratched emulsion, suggesting the transience of being and a state  
of emergence beyond the everyday.
AND WE ALL SHINE ON
Dir Michael Robinson / USA 2006 / 7 mins
‘An ill wind is transmitting through the lonely night, its signals  
spreading myth and deception along its murky path. Conjuring a vision  
of a post-apocalyptic paradise, this unworldly broadcast reveals its  
hidden demons via layered landscapes and karaoke, singing the dangers  
of mediated spirituality.’
Total running time c80 mins



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.lux.org.uk/pipermail/luxweekly/attachments/20061023/442c7986/attachment-0001.htm