Re: Circles and St Jude

From: Freya (email suppressed)
Date: Tue Jan 08 2008 - 14:39:31 PST


Danni I love you! Thanks! :)

I've already learned some intresting things from there
too.

This experimental film thing is certainly a
complicated affair! I never thought when I started
looking into it that I would find out so many things.
I feel a bit like I've fallen down the rabbit hole.

I found that with many things lately, theres always
such a wealth of things below the surface. Some of the
stuff I've stumbled into lately has really shocked me
to the core, so all the experimental film stuff
shouldn't suprise me so much.

I guess I've somehow over the years moved the world
that exists in my imagination, closer to the world the
way I would like it to be, as opposed to the way that
it really is. IYSWIM.

Apart from the David Curtis book, I'm also finding
"Experimental Cinema in the digital age" incredibly
useful. Malcolm Le Grice seems to have sort of
accepted the role of Arch Villan in it all and then
goes about documenting it!

It's really useful because you get all kinds of
different views in one book. Sadly theres not a
feminist critique of Malcolm in there ;) which is why
I'd like to track down some more information about
circles. It seems from the stuff that David Curtis
writes about that there was a whole bunch of stuff
that arose from "Film as Film", it's a shame that
there wasn't a documented debate of some sort.
Obviously that would be out of the scope of David's
book but it would have been so good to have had
something like that in Malcolms book. I imagine that
Malcolm feels like he has been fed to the lions enough
times already however! ;)

I wish I had found Peter Gidal's book at the start of
my research because it's not an easy read (first word
I read was adumbrated) and I'm really feeling booked
out. I'm going to have to find a way to watch MTV for
a couple of days or something to recover! ;) He seems
to be the man to go to if you want a lot of political
theory however. He also seems to be quite a Pan like
figure. Very mischevious. Do you think he called the
book "Materialist film" to annoy the hell out of
Malcolm? ;)

Anyway, it's kind of nice to see all these different
viewpoints and it's really good that they are being at
least partly documented. It's a shame that everyone
can't work together more and make a diverse
alternative cinematic space, (theres so few people
into this stuff already) but maybe that is something
that just needs to evolve over time.

I'm drifting into book reviews almost which I'll save
for another day.

love

Freya

--- Danni Zuvela <email suppressed> wrote:

> Hi Freya
>
> Happily there's recently been some extensive
> research into the history of
> alternative film and video distribution in the UK by
> Julia Knight and Peter
> Thomas. Check it out:
>
> http://alt-fv-distribution.net/papers.html
>
> Book will be too late for you but there are papers
> aplenty here - good luck
> writing yours
>
> danni
>
> On Jan 9, 2008 3:41 AM, Freya <email suppressed>
> wrote:
>
> > I'm presently working on my dissertation which I
> now
> > have less than a week to write! Yay! ;)
> >
> > While reasearching I have frequently come across
> > referances to "circles". The group is mentioned a
> few
> > times in the David Curtis book "A history of..."
> and
> > I've just opened the Peter Gidal book "Materialist
> > Film" for the first time and seen a referance
> there
> > too.
> >
> > From what I can tell neither book seems to have
> any
> > details about the group and so far I havn't
> managed to
> > find any information. Does anyone here know more,
> > either suggested books where I might read about
> the
> > group or even personal experiences of anyone who
> knew
> > anything about the group, or even failing that if
> > anyone who knows of someone who might have been
> > involved who I could contact briefly to chat about
> it?
> >
> > Perhaps if anyone even knows how I could contact
> Lis
> > Rhodes who was apparently a founder according to
> the
> > Lux website?
> >
> > Any information would be welcome. I know virtually
> > nothing about the group, including even if it is
> still
> > going or if not what happened to it. It's
> intresting
> > because I knew quite a bit about the film co-op
> and
> > even a tiny bit about the free cinema movement but
> I'd
> > not even heard about circles till it was mentioned
> in
> > these books.
> >
> > I've come across some amazing and wonderful books
> in
> > my reasearch and will be telling you more about
> them
> > soon when I have a bit of a moment (er now is not
> a
> > good time!) ;) but if I had one big criticism of
> the
> > David Curtis book (which I'm loving actually!)
> it's
> > that it seems to stress the importance of circles
> a
> > few times but then doesn't really tell us anything
> > about it or its history.
> >
> > Also if it's not being too greedy, if anyone wants
> to
> > tell me more about London Video Arts, I'd love to
> hear
> > about it. I know a little but would love to know
> more!
> > That's less important tho, although I guess it
> might
> > also be useful but I'm mostly just really, really
> > curious about it. ;)
> >
> > Hope someone can help in any way. I might just not
> be
> > looking in the right places!
> >
> > love
> >
> > Freya
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
____________________________________________________________________________________
> > Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page.
> > http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs
> >
> >
> >
>
__________________________________________________________________
> > For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at
> <email suppressed>.
> >
>
>
>
__________________________________________________________________
> For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at
> <email suppressed>.
>
>

      ____________________________________________________________________________________
Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page.
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs

__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.