EXPERIMENTAL FILM CLUB PRESENTS
THE STARRY MESSENGER
IRISH FILM INSTITUTE / WEDNESDAY / JANUARY 21st / 6.30pm
Book tickets here
Book tickets here
I only
screen The Starry Messenger publicly on 16mm so that the black is the actual
absence of light, as opposed to the projected black of video. (Marika Borgeson)
This show has evolved from
an interest in the 'perceptual moment' of film, a borrowed phrase that is intended
to position filmmaking and film watching as an expanded way of thinking in a
visual language not limited by strict rationality and simple causality, which
engages with the materiality of film as a manifestly analogue physical and
chemical process. The seven selected artist filmmakers engage with what is made
visible and invisible in the emulsion and grain and lights and darks of each
unique celluloid print, and explore the materiality of the film medium through
physical manipulation of film and alternative processes. This expanded
understanding of the analogue film-making process has run parallel to a growing
awareness that the survival of analogue film-making itself has come to resemble
a campaign for a critically endangered species – as film processing labs are seemingly
no-longer commercially viable and are closing – and so filmmakers, artists, and
critics across the world have had to come together to campaign for
institutional support to safeguard the ability to manufacture, shoot, process,
print, make and project film. At the campaign savefilm.org you can add your support to the call
for national and international organisations to take active steps to protect
the medium of film, and request that UNESCO recognise film, the practice of
filmmaking and film projection as world cultural heritage. (Declan Sheehan,
curator)
Screening order:
1.
ANA VAZ
A Idade da Pedra (The Age of Stone) (2013, 29 min, sound, 16mm & digital transfer/post-production, France/Brazil) – DVD SCREENING
"As artifical as the world must have been when it was created"
A voyage into the far west of Brazil leads us to a monumental structure - petrified at the centre of the savannah. Inspired by the epic construction of the city of Brasília, the film uses this history to imagine it otherwise. "I look at Brasília the way I look at Rome : Brasília began with a final simplification of ruins". Through the geological traces that lead us to this fictive monument, the film unearths a history of exploration, prophecy and myth. (AV)
Ana Vaz born Brasília, Brazil, 1986. Masters in Cinema and Visual Arts at Le Fresnoy, Studio National des Arts Contemporains. Lives and works in Paris.
2.
MICHAELA NETTEL
Garden (2012, 3 min, sound by Tom Simmons, 35mm slides & digital transfer, UK) – DVD SCREENING
Produced during an artist’s residency at Culpeper Community Garden in London. Pairs of 35mm celluloid slides are overlaid and re-photographed to create double exposure effects. These photos are then sequenced to create illusions of movement. The audio is fabricated from soundfield recordings captured over the course of 48 hours in the garden and neighbouring locations. Guided by duration, flicker and time passing in the image, the interleaved sounds reflect the process of double exposure and compose distances between the photography and the bustling city around. (MN)
Michaela Nettel born in Bedford, England, 1983. MA Animation, RCA, 2007. Lives and works in London
3.
TALENA SANDERS
Liahona (20 min extract) (2013, total film 69 min, sound, 16mm transferred to HD, USA) – DVD SCREENING
An experimental documentary, recorded on 16mm film, that examines the culture, history, and lived experience of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; traversing Utah, Nauvoo and Carthage, Illinois and Independence, Missouri, and exploring the balance and the tension between the illogical and the pedestrian, the public face of faith and gaps in accessibility, and how mysticism becomes mundane. (TS)
Talena Sanders born USA, 1983. MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts from Duke University. Assistant Professor of Media Arts at the University of Montana.
4.
MARIKA BORGESON
Eleven Forty Seven (2013, 11 min, silent, HD video, USA) – DVD SCREENING
Granite, metal, conifers, glass, and K-spar crystals. (MB)
5.
REBECCA MEYERS
Murmurations (2013, 6 min, sound, 16mm, USA) - 16MM PROJECTION
Bird calls, a forest muffled with snow, the soughing of willows, the flutter of wings. A reverie wrapped in fur. (RM)
Rebecca Meyers born 1976, New York. MFA in Film & Video Production, University of Iowa 2001. Academic Film Programmer & Lecturer in Film/Media Studies, Bucknell University Pennsylvania.
6.
SAMANTHA REBELLO
the object which thinks us – OBJECT 1 (2007, 7min, sound, 16mm, UK) - 16MM PROJECTION
The work begins, not with a concept, but with one or more mental images and sounds, which are then composed and constructed through recording and editing. The relationship between the object (to be filmed) and the camera irretrievably alters the mental image with which the film began, through becoming something unimagined. Likewise the editing process effectively destroys the initial filmed image through forcing it into relationships (with other images) which fundamentally change the way it is perceived, through the formation of correspondences and potential meaning. The process of perceiving / reading the images - and the mutable space between the film and the viewer - is what the work is interested in exploring. Meaning appears and disappears. The film exists in its rhythms, intensities and signification where one is unable to part one from another. (SR)
Samantha Rebello has been working in film and sound since 2004. She lives and works in London
7.
JANINE DAVIDSON
Two-Fountains, 2014 (2014, 2 mins, silent, un-split standard 8mm ie.16mm, IRE) - 16MM PROJECTION
A visual juxtaposition of two outcomes, each one questioning the validity of the other: is it beautiful? Is it useful? (JD)
Janine Davidson born Belfast, 1974. MFA in Sculpture at NCAD Dublin, 2012. Lives and works in Dublin.
8.
MARIKA BORGESON
The Starry Messenger (2013, 20 mins, silent, 16mm, USA) - 16MM PROJECTION
It takes about 8 minutes and 20 seconds for the light from the sun to reach the earth… A sun print refers to multiple printing techniques which use sunlight as a developing or fixing agent... In the process of making the sun print The Starry Messenger, a black and white 16mm film negative was placed on undeveloped black and white 16mm film print stock and left in the sun for days to weeks and then fixed. The sun was the only developer used in making the film print. (MB)
Marika Borgeson born Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts, Duke University. Lives and works in Los Angeles.
TICKETS - http://www.ifi.ie/film/ifi-experimental-film-club-the-starry-messenger/
