[LuxWeeklyNews] LUX Weekly News 30 April - 6 May 2007 EVENTS AND OPENINGS IN LONDON THIS WEEK

[luxweekly at lux.org.uk]

LUX Weekly News 30 April - 6 May 2007

EVENTS AND OPENINGS IN LONDON THIS WEEK

1. Robert Nelson, BFI Southbank, Monday 30 April, 8.40pm

2. Retrospective- The Subjective Camera: Nina Danino, Greenwich  
Picturehouse, Wednesday 2 May, 6.45pm

3. Select: A Night with Rosalind Nashashibi, Late at Tate Britain,  
Friday 4 May, 8pm

4. This Day: Recent Film and Video from the Middle East, Starr  
Auditorium, Tate Modern, 4 – 13 May

5. Index Generator R 2.2, presented by COGCOLLECTIVE, Candid Arts  
Trust, Sunday 6 May, 4 pm

LUX LONDON EVENTS CALENDAR the most comprehensive daily listing of  
artists' moving image events, screenings and exhibitions in London  
www.lux.org.uk/resources/calendar.htm

1.

Monday 30 April, 8.40pm
ROBERT NELSON
BFI Southbank
Belvedere Road, South Bank, London, SE1 8XT
Nearest Tube: Waterloo / Embankment
Tickets: £5 / £4 concessions
Box Office: 020 7928 3232
www.bfi.org.uk

In May 2006, Robert Nelson went to Oberhausen for the first grand  
European
retrospective of his work and presented five short film programmes. His
sharp-witted and intuitive works always balance formalistic inventive  
talent
with contagious humour. They bear witness to the major role the free  
thinker
Robert Nelson has played in the New American Cinema of the 1960s and  
1970s.

Plastic Haircut, a performance inspired by Dada, is Nelson's first  
film. In
The Off-Handed Jape, we witness a funny lesson in senseless gesture  
acting.
Deep Westurn, in contrast, is a slightly impious wake for a friend.  
In both
films Nelson is acting in front of the camera. Oh Dem Watermelons is  
already
a classic of the New American Cinema. It criticises racism by depicting
farcically excessive stereotypes and blending them with found  
footage. And
finally, Bleu Shut starts a communication with the audience,  
undermines its
expectations and plays with it. This 'game' is fun  cinema to join in  
with.

PLASTIC HAIRCUT
Robert Nelson, USA, 1963, 16mm, b/w, sound, 16 min
Dada-inspired performance in which absurd actions take place in an
environment of strange symbols and graphic forms. "None of us knew  
anything about making movies at that time, but we all knew about art  
(namely, that it had something to do with having a good  
time)." (Robert Nelson)

THE OFF-HANDED JAPE
Robert Nelson, USA, 1967, 16mm, colour, sound, 9 min
A humorous lesson in gestural acting from Dr. Otis Bird and Butch Babad,
demonstrating such useful phrases as the verge of remembering and  
letting
your friend know he's forgotten to zip up his pants. "This film can  
be of
immeasurable aid to would-be actors who are weak in the  
jape." (William T.
Wiley)

DEEP WESTURN
Robert Nelson, USA, 1974, 16mm, colour, sound, 6 min
A 'film wake' for a friend who gave free dental care in exchange for
artwork. "Though celebratory in mood, it has a mournful subtext ...  
death
and dying. We dedicated it to Dr. Sam West, departed friend and  
patron of
the arts, trusting that his ghost would approve our hijinx and seeming
irreverence." (RN)

OH DEM WATERMELONS
Robert Nelson, USA, 1965, 16mm, colour, sound, 11 min
Made for the Mime Troupe's performance - Minstrel Show (or Civil  
Rights in a Cracker Barrel), the film challenges racism by presenting  
absurdly
exaggerated stereotypes. The hapless fruits are mindlessly pulped,  
before
turning on their aggressors. Now, follow the bouncing watermelon ...
"Original idea and inspiration from La Course aux Potirons (1907) by  
Louis
Feuillade." (RN)

BLEU SHUT
Robert Nelson, USA, 1970, 16mm, colour, sound, 33 min
"Even when we know the game is an illusion, the experience of Bleu  
Shut is
entirely a pleasure: the 'game' is fun, the Nelson/Wiley debates,
infectiously funny; and Nelson's choice of imagery, quirky and  
amusing. Bleu
Shut reveals, and allows us to enjoy, our gullibility within the  
pervasive
absurdity of modern life." (Scott MacDonald)

A Touring Programme from the Archive of the International Short Film
Festival Oberhausen.

2.

Wednesday 2 May, 6.45pm
Retrospective- The Subjective Camera: Nina Danino
Greenwich Picturehouse
180 Greenwich High Road, SE10 8NN
www.picturehouses.co.uk, 08707 550 065
Danino's films draw on personal history as well as literary and  
artistic works, and explore the relationship between image and sound  
that inverts the Hollywood standard of sound being slave to image.  
The structural rigour of her films pushes formalist boundaries to  
produce a new aesthetic that takes on the urgency of female  
subjectivity and desire. The immediacy and unmediated nature of the  
voice is core to the essence of her work, which explores that part of  
being and expression that speaks but is neither material nor literal.  
She always uses her own voice, which is sometimes combined with vocal  
performances by established singers and sound artists. In the films  
selected, a close-up voice meanders rhythmically in time with a hand- 
held wandering camera (or deadly slow pans in First Memory). The  
image is disrupted both through her structural editing process and  
through the intervention of sound. In Stabat Mater and Now I Am  
Yours, Danino draws influence from French feminist theory and the  
aesthetic and cultural influence of her Mediterranean Catholic  
upbringing, and as with all her films we are taken on a journey. At  
the heart of her work is a celebration of the nature of desire; a  
meditative, often incantational filmic and aural flow is exorcised, a  
perpetual state of yearning as ecstasy, the co-existence of suffering  
and pleasure or to quote Helen de Witt, 'the persistence of spirit'.

Nina Danino will be taking part in a Q&A session after the screenings.

FIRST MEMORY (1981, 20 mins, 16mm)
An experimental film ...’constructed in retrospect, using the memory  
as the only source of audio information...’

STABAT MATER (1990, 8 mins, 16mm)
'The songs at the beginning and end are the two pillars of the film -  
the voice of my mother singing two laments - a saeta - a type of song  
sung during holy week to the Mater Dolorosa. It attempts to locate  
that which is lost, contained by the body but outside of  
objectification, absent and unnameable.' NINA DANINO

NOW I AM YOURS (1993, 32 mins, 16mm)
The Ecstasy of St. Teresa by Gianlorenzo Bernini, filmed at the  
Cornaro Chapel, Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome. ‘Nina Danino leads  
us through an unnervingly authentic extreme state of religious and  
sexual ecstasy.' CORDELIA SWANN, LFF

THE SILENCE IS BAROQUE (1997, 12 mins, Beta SP)
Recorded on location in Granada and Seville during Holy Week.
'I tried to make a noisy, lively musical piece around spectacle, the  
music, realism and poetry of the street – the applause for life  
pitted against the celebration of the passion of death.' NINA DANINO

3.

Friday 4 May, 8pm
Select: A Night with Rosalind Nashashibi
Late at Tate Britain
Clore Auditorium, Millbank
Admission free, no bookings taken
Free tickets are available on the night from 18.00 at the Clore Foyer  
desk. Seated on a first-come, first served basis.
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/eventseducation/film/8366.htm

'...the coming together of the elements and apparatus that make film,  
whether sound and picture, projector and screen, or coloured lights  
meeting to make white light; in parallel with the collision of the  
real and everyday against the miraculous that film affects'

Artist Rosalind Nashashibi presents a night of films and  
performances. Including work by Thomas Bayrle, Bonnie Camplin, Morgan  
Fisher, John Smith, Apitchatpong Weerasethakul and performances by  
Sue Tompkins and Will Holder.

Select, a collaboration with LUX, invites artists to choose a  
programme of performance, film and video works and host an evening of  
screenings and talks. Rosalind Nashashibi depicts elements of  
everyday life in the urban world creating poetic, nuanced and magical  
works. Tonight she selects moving images which explore and reflect  
her influences and interests.

4.

4 – 13 May 2007
THIS DAY: Recent Film and Video from the Middle East
Starr Auditorium, Tate Modern.
Bankside
London SE1 9TG
Book tickets online http://www.tate.org.uk or call 020 7887 8888
This Day is a series of short films and video works by international  
artists whose work responds to the cultural, social, historical and  
political contexts of the Middle East.

Nine screenings will present work by more than forty artists from  
Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Palestine and Syria, in addition  
to artists from Europe and the United States whose work relates to  
the Middle East. Featured highlights include an opening performance  
by Rabih Mroué and a survey of work by Akram Zaatari.

The ongoing events in the Middle East produce a flow of images that  
often represent war, destruction and conflict. Channelled through  
television and the internet, this imagery constructs and distorts the  
global understanding of the region, facilitating stereotypes and  
contaminating efforts to reconstruct a collective memory left in  
ruins. This Day hopes to challenge these representations by showing  
moving image work that offers new critical viewpoints onto the  
region’s rich visual culture. More than ever before, film and video- 
making from the Middle East interrogates cineamtic and photographic  
images to consider fundamental ethical and political problems and to  
question the limits of freedom.

Curated by Predrag Pajdic & Samar Martha.

Supported by Arts Council England, The Henry Moore Foundation, the  
British Council, Visiting Arts, and the Arts Club

For full programme details visit http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/ 
eventseducation/film/thisdayformerlyinfocus.htm

Rabih Mroué: Make me Stop Smoking
Friday 4 May 2007, 19.00
This Day opens with a live performance by renowned Lebanese artist  
Rabih Mroué.

Play
Saturday 5 May 2007, 15.00
Experimental video works by artists Abdullatif Abdul Hamid, Yasmeen  
Al Awadi, Mounira Al Solh, Anthony Abu Khalife and Khaled Hafez.

Travellers’ Tales: Programme One
Saturday 5 May 2007, 17.00
A programme about travelling, migration, borders and checkpoints  
including work by Rowan Al Faqih, Maja Bejevic, Annemarie Jacir &  
Nassim Amouche, Hala ElKoussy, Ayreen Anastas, Sameh Zobi and Enas  
Muthafar.

Travellers’ Tales: Programme Two
Saturday 5 May 2007, 19.00

Breaking News
Sunday 6 May 2007, 17.00
A programme about conflict, war and loss, featuring Ali Cheri, Shadi  
Habib Allah, Mohamad Hjoeij, Hicham Jaber, Diane Nerwen, Jackie  
Saloum and Annemarie Jacir.

5.
Sunday 6 May, 4 pm
INDEX GENERATOR 2.2, presented by COGCOLLECTIVE.
Basement, Candid Arts Trust
3 Torrens Street, London, EC1V 1NQ
Nearest Tube: Angel
Tickets: £5 / £3 concessions
Email: info at cogcollective.co.uk
www.cogcollective.co.uk
This programme is a selection from Index Generator 2, curated by Carlo
Sansolo and Erika Fraenkel for the ReverberAcoes 2006 festival in Sao  
Paulo,
Brazil.
ABOUT A THEOLOGICAL SITUATION IN THE SOCIETY OF THE SPECTACLE
Masayuki Kawai, Japan, 2001, 7 min
TV stars and Mikados are ubiquitous not as a symbol but analogy to be
referred to. The image quoted from Society of Spectacle hallucinates  
us the
ruin of itself by using deliberate imitation of mass-media image.

EXCHANGEABLE CITIES
Kentaro Taki, Japan, 2001, 5 min
Globalization and huge infrastructures result in an equalization of
the world, information and urban space homogenises. Many elements of
the world are assembled into a fake city piece. The
spectacularization of the city as an overflow of images.

DAS KAPITAL VERSION 07
Marcello Mercado, Argentina, 2003, 17 min
Command lines, programming lingo, coordinate instructions and video edit
commands create a fatal illusion of mastery over the screen and its  
embedded
database. The viewer/master in tune with the chaotic flow of capital and
images is never confronted with the impact of this virtual flow on  
the real.

A COPIAEOS DEAJERTADOS
Erika Frankel, Brazil, 2006, 6 min
A video that expiates the abuse in society where constant seduction  
makes
weak. An analysis on the non possibility of todays man to feel at  
home, a
tale about the anxiety of the actual world.

PATRIOTIC
Pascal Lievre & Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay, Canada, 2005, 3 min
The language of anti-terrorism takes an unexpected form in this  
seductive
propaganda video, Pascal Lievre and Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay's first
collaborative work.

OZULAND 001
Carlo Sansolo, Brazil, 2006, 10 min
ozuland001 is a audio/video/text compilation analysing the old suspects:
control - mass media - post industrial capitalism - lack of  
consciousness
and the like.

KYOTO 1
Akiko Nakamura, Japan, 2003, 4 min
Kyoto 1 is a time-based digital urban portrait of a figure. In  
retrospect,
it exudes a very subtle aversive feeling.

HAPPY DAYS
Larissa Sansour, Palestine, 2006, 3 min
Happy Days is a video that exposes everyday Palestinian life under  
Israeli
occupation. The idea is to subjugate international politics to a format
normally associated with entertainment and thereby call attention to the
blurry boundary between the two.

MISHAPEN
Sagi Groner, Israel/Netherlands, 2006, 20 min
A pilot, a DJ, a Kung-Fu master and software developers meet together  
and
enjoy Apples by courtesy of Lockheed Martin. Composed entirely of images
found in the internet, Misshapen is a meditation on vision machines  
and the
philosophy of precision.

ILUVIA DORADA
Andres Senra, Spain, 2003, 3 min
Certain elements of the representation of war in the history of art are
common in different moments and historical contexts, the mass media  
connects
with political power representing the victories of their monarchs. The
hieratic emperor, military power, and the economic power, together  
with the
captured beast and submitted to a medicine on his body.

CHROM
Mylicon/En, Italy, 2004, 5 min
Chrom is an imaginary raid of Mylicon/En into an operating-theatre: an
anaesthetized video/body, a temporary loss of consciousness, a state in
which everything flows and the boundaries between body and space get
blurred.




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