INDEPENDENT FILM SHOW 13th Edition

June 27th – June 29th, 2013
STARTING PROJECTIONS JUNE 27th h. 9:00 p.m.
Museo Hermann Nitsch
Vico Lungo Pontecorvo 29/d, Napoli

INDEPENDENT FILM SHOW 13th edition, an international show dedicated to experimental cinema, anticipates the annual event on Thursday 27, Friday 28 and Saturday 29 June, planning the three programs and the two expanded cinema performances on the Museo Nitsch’s belvedere.

The Independent Film Show focuses on the multiple processes that film/video-makers create to give structure to the intense relationships that exist between the devices used for projection and the interpretative participation of the audience. Past editions have often highlighted the special capabilities of experimental cinema, which does not impose a standardised view, but requires the spectator to watch with conscious application, in order to appreciate the intricate formal representations, the complex social codes, and extensive cognitive aspirations that extend beyond the screen. The immersive possibility of establishing direct contact with independent cinematic philosophies and highlighting the alternatives and innovations that subvert the logic of the standard production is the key to the approach required to access these complex visual patterns. The interference of the lights of the milieu, the position of the projectors, the reflective quality of the screen, the line of vision and its position within the field of vision contribute to the creation of the film, and it is at the moment that the viewer becomes aware of the solidity of the photons, which impress upon his gaze and envelop the body, that the cognitive process able to form complex mental structures is activated.

To Lacrimosa by Inal Sherip goes the frères Lumière award for the defense of European traditions through the filmic arts. This award is conferred by the European Academy of Arts, an organization involved in the promotion of artists living in Belgium, thus highlighting the fundamental role of the Independent Film Show as an active platform for presentation and discussion with the protagonists of today’s experimental cinema.

The Keyboard and the Co-op is a programme on sound, with the music and film selected by Guy Sherwin. Many of these films were shot at the London Film-Makers’ Cooperative, founded in 1966 on the lines of the New York Co-op (1962) by Jonas Mekas, including a laboratory for the development and production of film (built by Le Grice). The ability to print their own films, together with the possibility of seeing the results immediately, favoured the creation of several films. The double projection of the film Love Story 2 (1971) in 16mm, by Malcolm Le Grice, one of the founders of the cooperative and teacher at that time of William Raban, Gill Eatherley and Annabel Nicolson, equates the wavelengths of light with those of sound in a complex temporal dimension. Matchbox, by Wojciech Bruszewski (1975) has a simple, but profoundly musical structure that recalls the first works of Steve Reich, and consists of two short shots artfully mounted to create a subtle drifting in time. The physical property of light, subject to meaningful transformation, acquires a substantial concreteness in the performance, on an abandoned piano outside the LFMC, Annabel Nicolson, documented in Piano Film (1976). In the film A Piece for Sunlight, Piano and 45 Fingers (1979) by Jenny Okun, the sunlight that falls on the piano determines which notes are played. The three films by Guy Sherwin, Night Train that converts the lights of a landscape into sounds, Notes, that uses the camera as a kind of plectrum making the strings of an open piano vibrate, and Da Capo…, that juxtaposes two sets of variations – a replicated train journey and different interpretations of a Bach prelude on the piano – show the intensity of the relationship between image and sound in live footage. The other two films in the programme, Stretto, by Barbara Meter, and Stationary Music by Jayne Parker, both of 2005, play respectively with the music of John Cage and Stefan Wolpe.
The second programme, Light, Colour, Action! edited by Lynn Loo is a celebration of colour wholly in 16mm film, this art is characterised by the shooting techniques, darkroom work, manipulation of material, and attention to the projective event conceived by the film-makers to show that there is still much to discover in the area of film material. Deep Red (2012), by Esther Urslus is an investigation of cumulative colour, made by hand and using a technique of DIY screen-printing mixed on film. Trama (1980), by Christian Lebrat, uses various stripes of colour that dance with alternating broad and close movements to the sound of traditional music from Burundi, completely different from the movie but not contradictory. The film Colour Separation (1974 – 1976), by Chris Welsby, is based on the process of the separation of colours, and resembles a moving impressionist painting in which time has a role in the construction of the image. The two films Bouquets 26-27 (2003) and Voileiers et Coquelicots (2001) by Rose Lowder mix plants, animals and the manual activities of the places shot, illustrating how it takes very little to show the world in a different way. The double projection of Autumn Fog (2011) by Lynn Loo captures the variations in the autumn colours in her London garden and exposes the film to various light sources causing gaseous fluctuations in the colours. Still Life (1976) by Jenny Okun reflects on the mutability of colour and the intangibleness of photographic truth, challenging the impossibility of transforming an image from negative to positive colour in the same film. Hand Grenade (1971) by Gill Eatherley is the result of a laborious but traditional film-making process in which each frame was exposed for several minutes with the shutter of the camera open while Eatherley draws several objects in space, including his own body, using a single torch at low voltage. Island Fuse (1971) by Arthur and Corinne Cantrills focuses on the interaction of projective elements, the camera and its various mechanisms, filters, projector, and film.
The performance Live Cinema Program by Guy Sherwin and Lynn Loo focuses on film as matter and projection as a process; mechanical irregularities and unwanted glow intersect with the sounds produced by light using microphones that capture the oscillations in the projection beam and the optical sounds generated by graphic images or real footage. Up to six 16mm projectors are used as musical instruments, leaving ample scope for improvisation and communication between the performers, and the two films Vowels & Consonants and Bay Bridge from Embarcadero include the participation of the musician Mario Gabola in a feed-back of vibrations and reverberations which bounce back in a new form.
The third programme, Chute, Gravité, Cosmos! Selected by Emmanuel Lefrant addresses the problem of gravity, the attractive energy between bodies which regulates falling, balance, and the cosmos, harnessing man to the weight of things; only art can inject an existential breath to lighten these forces of attraction. Dog Star Man: Part II (1963), by Stan Brakhage, is about the ability to see as a child, looking with an untutored eye, with a simpler, less cultured and more sensitive perception. Terminal City (1982) by Chris Gallagher shows the demolition of the Devonshire Hotel in slow motion as it disappears in a thick cloud of dust absorbed by an invisible force. On the Logic of Dubious Historical Accounts 1969-1972 (2008) by Peter Miller and Alexander Stewart consists of documentation from the twelve Hasselblad cameras dropped by astronauts on the lunar surface so as to reduce weight for the return to Earth. Solar Sight (2011) is the transcendental vision of an alchemic journey on the role of man in the cosmos, created by Larry Jordan through the animation of real images accompanied by the resounding music of John Davis. Stan VanDerBeek, pioneer of the expanded cinema and computer graphics in the film Poemfield # 5: Free Fall (1971) mixes found footage images of paratroopers with the text of the poem Free Fall, making use of the capabilities of the first computers and the optical printer. The three films All Over (2001) by Emmanuel Lefrant, Cosmos Spiritus / Nûr Version 1 (2005) by Olivier Fouchard, and Remains to be seen (1989 – ’94) by Phil Solomon are made by painting on the film itself and alternating images with unexpected mounting techniques, also here demonstrating that only art can elevate the soul of human beings beyond their material condition.
For the first time in Italy, (like many of the films and videos in the programme), Juke Film Boxing by Gaëlle Rouard, film-maker alchemist specialising in the precipitation of silver on film, shows her films manipulating the two 16mm projectors live. Gaëlle Rouard acts directly on the projection of the film, slowing down the flow of the film and bringing the shutter into play, using the sound button and numerous other things which are not seen in performance. These minute actions suggest that the work is as precise as that of a musician who knows how to place a given note at a given time: here it is the particular image of the projector illuminated at a particular time, that creates the effect of a visual score that must have been rehearsed many times and is a source of admiration for so much hard work. The speed of ‘touch’ causes reflections and it models, by intrigue, the infinitude of minute perceptions in combinations that are always unstable. The film proceeds following the irregularities and the dissonances of forces and lights; the image works amid illumination and disappearance, and in switching on the light, the graininess of the image assumes a marked significance, so that the lines of a face and those of a cloud have never been so close in nature. Manipulation rather than editing, double projection rather than superimposition reveal a poetics of gesture on a material as uncertain and fragile as film.

PROGRAM

Thursday, June 27 21:00 Lacrimosa di Inal Sherip – Premio les frères Lumière assegnato da European Academy of Arts

Thursday, June 27 21:30 The Keyboard and the Co-op selezionati da Guy Sherwin

Friday, June 28 21:00 Light, Colour, Action! selezionati da Lynn Loo

Friday, June 28 23:00 Live Cinema program di Guy Sherwin & Lynn Loo

Saturday, June 29 21:00 Chute, Gravité, Cosmos! selezionati da Emmanuel Lefrant

Saturday, June 29 23:00 Juke Film Boxe di Gaëlle Rouard