From: Steven Ball (email suppressed)
Date: Sat Aug 26 2006 - 03:27:54 PDT
COGCOLLECTIVE
presents
INTIMATE JOURNEYS
curated by Lynn Loo
Films suggesting journeys independently travelled and intimately
filmed. This programme brings a variety of ideas and expressions unique
to each individual filmmaker's experience, on the theme of a personal
journey.
Films and videos by Gad Hollander, Jeroen Kooijmans, Lynn Loo, Paul
Martin, Ruth Novaczek, Ooni Peh, Jean-Gabriel Pierot, Guy Sherwin, Anna
Thew and Victric Thng
4:00pm
Sunday 3rd September 2006
basement of CANDID ARTS TRUST,
3 Torrens St,
London, EC1V 1NQ
(behind Angel Underground station)
£5/£3 (concs)
http://www.cogcollective.co.uk
Programme:
Floating (3 min, 2005, DV, USA/Singapore)
Lynn Loo
Always moving, not belonging to one place. A short film put together
with the super-8 footage I have filmed during my cross-country journey
from the East of USA to the West. It is a diary, told in the form of
images without dialogue - Lynn Loo
The Thames from Charing Cross Bridge - A Study (6 min, 1993, silent,
super-8, UK)
Paul Martin
The film shows the view from the train out of Charing Cross Station
looking over the Thames. The filming is repeated over and over, over
time so we get differing views: boats turning etc. It was inspired by
my journey to teach at Goldsmiths College. Now I would like the process
to be repeated over and over ad infinitum, perhaps the finished film
could be projected onto the side of the Royal Festival Hall, journey's
end? - Paul Martin
"Shot on Super 8 film in subtle greys, black and white. We are on a
train crossing Charing Cross railway bridge. Steel girders flash by in
dynamic rhythm; it's a journey that London commuters make every day.
The film also repeats - each time with variations: a heavy barge moves
slowly upstream, a patch of sun lights up the carriage, we glimpse a
reflection of the filmmaker.
There are similarities in train and film. The carriage window is the
frame. Marks and scratches on the glass are also on the film surface.
Huge girders shut out our view, releasing patches of river, and we have
to construct its image from fragments.
The film is in part homage to things mechanical - the train, the
bridge, and the physical medium of film."
- Guy Sherwin
Story of Lovers on a Train (3 min, 2005, DV UK)
Gad Hollander
The predominant image of this work is a night-time view of a landscape
shot through a train window. A series of inter-titles and a selection
of cutaway shots from various sources combine to create the “story” of
the title. A different set of inter-titles over the same image-sequence
would produce a different story; conversely, the same inter-titles
superimposed on another sequence of images would give us virtually the
same “story” but in a different setting. Either way, the story is
neither explicitly seen nor told but is a construct of our imagination
that takes place off-camera and between the lines. What we see, hear
and read is a collection of audio-visual elements rhythmically edited
to suggest a plausible drama – a passion, a romance, a tragedy or even
a farce.
Most of the footage was shot on DV in eastern Europe in the spring of
2000. The rest was shot on out-of-date B&W Super-8 stock as well as on
DV in various locations including Moscow, London & Israel. Some of the
edited material has been used in other recent works: Black Love and
Midnight Horse (both 2005). - Gad Hollander
In Transit (6 min, 1994, super-8, Australia) Ooni Peh
Shot on super 8 in and around a busy intersection. Journeys traced in
light, puncturing the dark.
Soundtrack: Steven Ball
"The film begins with a stream of traffic emphasized by the soundtrack
like river flowing. Images of plastered poster walls by the side of the
roads and arches under a train bridge. The occasional cars are
secondary to the visual melody of lines on the streets.
Lights from the street lamps and vehicles come alive in the film. It is
as if they scratch over the soundtrack, creating delays and stretching
it.
Filmed at night, in black and white, this motorway reveals itself
enigmatically through a personal point of view."
- Lynn Loo
Moonly (3 min, 2003, DV, Singapore) Victric Thng
"Crescent Moon.
To run after that which one cannot catch up with.
Loneliness.
Resurgence of the memory.
The fantomatic presence of the absent one.
To be fulled by silences and quietly.
To be empty of other's presence.
To be fulled up by absences.
The absence of the other which gave meanings of the everyday life.
The absence of the other that give meanings of the everyday life.
The impossibility of the mourning.
To remember your birthday.
"happy birthday to you, the one I loved (my fantom) happy birthday to
you, the one I love (my sorrow)""
- Jean-Gabriel Périot
Delhi Express (3 min, 1997, DV, Dutch/India)
Jeroen Kooijmans
I have been traveling a lot and I really love it. In these periods of
traveling I always take a distance from the world and most of all I am
confronted with myself. In Delhi Express I see a projection of myself
on the Indian landscape, with the sun as a gigantic video projector. -
Jeroen Kooijmans
50/50 (5 min, 1998, DV, UK)
Ruth Novaczek
Set in New York and London, 50/50 is about a relationship.
A reflection on love gone wrong and dual responsibility; an argument, a
separation and the nature of love are explored in images and text. Set
to two themes from Thelonious Monk.
50 / 50 chronicles a journey from London into New York City with the
voice-over narration of a failed relationship: "You weren't good to me,
but then I wasn't good to you, if I remember rightly, if I remember at
all ".
"After brief views of leaving London and the flight we see views of New
York from the car ride into the city: bridges, buildings, trucks,
shadows all in a rhythmic sequence. Interspersed we see the two lovers,
in the street, on the subway, close up.
Over the film the narrator tells of their relationship: "we got into
whether you were pushed or whether you jumped or who pushed who first,
if there ever is a first, if it isn't always 50-50". It's a dual
responsibility."I wasn't so good to you, but then you weren't so sweet
to me". The rhythm of the film, the rhythm of the narration, the rhythm
of the music (by Thelonius Monk)." - Paul Martin
Soldier on Leave Travelling Home (6 min, 2004/2006, DV, UK/Taiwan)
Guy Sherwin and Lynn Loo
Shot on a train while traveling from Hua Lian to Taipei, Taiwan.
Dies Irae (10 min, 2005, DV, France)
Jean-Gabriel Pierot
Remember
That I am the cause of your journey
Don't leave me on that way
From an interview: " Dies Irae - is part of a requiem prayer. I used it
because this text is about destruction, the end of the world. The one
who prays ask to another one (god) to rescue him or if not to remember
him. It's for that I used it, because this movie is about destruction,
death, and the need to remember. I used the first sentence, an extract
of the prayer because it contains two people: the one who asks to
remember his death and the one who has to remember.
Like in the film, first we are the one who travels till the deadly end,
and then in a second movement, we are the one looking at the death of
the first, and because we asked why this end, we become a witness." -
Jean-Gabriel Piérot
"Dies Irae - is like of a meditative visual poetry. Static, motion,
stationary, speed, all juxtaposed with one another with haunting music.
A sense of displacement in a visual interpretation of seeking and
searching. A mesmerising lonely journey." - Victric Thng
Fragments of Eye Drift (10 min, Double-screen 16mm, UK)
Anna Thew
Residues of post trauma – places and journeys flicker past like
tattered pockets of memory...
A cut up of fragments from Super 8 diaries spanning over fifteen years.
Opening with waves shot from the window of a moving train, an image of
my daughter holding rowan berries is set against grainy black and white
back lit images of barges in Rotterdam, slowed to 2fps. Blood red
poppies shift to ruins of Dresden's Frauenkirche and whirlpools in the
River Elbe. Crown v. Casson. Charred bodies are strewn on the ground.
Night shots of the 1945 bombing of Dresden and FEUERSTURM ÜBER HAMBURG
(Hamburg Fires) cut in. Station latticework. Flooded fields. The train
leaves Dresden in the evening light. Icy winter branches are
silhouetted against the sky like paint strokes. The trial of the woman
who attacked me is looming. Away from this collective memory and fear,
black and white images from my first Super 8 reel, jostle with colour
images from the present. A child runs past the apple tree in my
mother's garden in winter. Summer fruit ripens on an Italian hillside.
Darryn sleeps. He has diagnosed HIV+. Dark streets of Perugia. He has
his problems. The train to Siracusa. I have mine. Music by Simon Fisher
Turner. World War II archive footage, courtesy of the Imperial War
Museum, London. 7272 print stock donated by Kodak.
The Super 8 diaries and 35mm IWM archive film were optically
re-mastered onto 16mm fine grain internegative for an experimental
feature film, EYE DRIFT, which never got made. - Anna Thew
http://www.cogcollective.co.uk
email suppressed
__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.