From: Thomas Beard (email suppressed)
Date: Mon Sep 28 2009 - 08:35:02 PDT
Light Industry
220 36th Street, 5th Floor
Brooklyn, New York
http://www.lightindustry.org
Close Up
Peter Gidal, 16mm, 1983, 70 mins
Tuesday, September 29, 2009 at 7:30pm
"After three years this film attempts yet again to deal with the
problematising of filmic representation in sound and image: the overt
politically-polemical soundtrack from Nicaragua must not synchronise with
nor must it find an entirely separable continuum of reality away from the
image sequences. Without avoiding the interrogation of
narrative/anti-narrative cinematic structures (the way the images and the
sounds at times hold/do not hold, or the way they attempt to force a
position contradictory to any (imaginary) represented homogeneity of
constructed space, time, ego, language, film) an attempted materialist use
of sound and image must at the same time be an anti-individualist work.
Subjectivities of sound and image, sometimes producing contradiction
(between the two, and within each) must be in constant process with/against
the political polemic(s): the film can not allow for a final exclusion of
either. What is intended is neither some pure formal dialectic. The viewer's
attempts via her/his/the cultural context of meaning making
(political/sexual/narrative) are worked against by this film's process (or
should be).
The work against the capitalist patriarchal position of narrative, in other
words, is (still, and in specificity) the main interest." - Peter Gidal
"In this context, Close Up is a provocative and potentially dangerous
pulling together of two opposing aspects of film form - namely, a
'documentartist' soundtrack comprising interview material with Nicaraguan
revolutionaries on the subject of art, propaganda and imperialism, and an
image track of much beauty, veering toward the abstract as the camera moves
ceaselessly over the objects in the a room, or those represented in the 17
blown up photographs." - Michael O'Pray
Born in 1946. Gidal studied theatre, psychology and literature at Brandeis
University, Massachussets, 1964-68, and the University of Munich from
1966-7. He studied at the Royal College of Art from 1968-71 where he went on
to teach Advanced Film Studies until 1984. He was an active member of the
London Film-makers' Co-operative since 1969, and Cinema Programmer there
from 1971-4. Co-founder of the Independent Film-makers' Association, 1975,
he served as a member of the British Film Institute Production Board,
1978-81.
His films have been screened nationally and internationally, including the
Tate Gallery, the Hayward Gallery, and yearly since 1969 at the Edinburgh
Film Festival and the National Film Theatre. Gidal has had retrospectives of
his films at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in 1983, Centre George
Pompidou, Beaubourg, Paris, 1996, amongst others. International screenings
include several each at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Royal
Belgium Film Archive and Cinematheque, Documenta, Arte Inglesi Oggi,
X-Screen, etc. He is the recipient of the Prix de la Recherche, Toulon 1974.
Gidal is renowned as a writer and theorist, in particular for his highly
influential publication Structural Film Anthology (BFI 1976), other books
include Andy Warhol: Films and Paintings (Studio Vista, 1971, Da Capo NY
reprint. 1991) and Materialist Film (Routledge, 1988). Gidal's writings have
been published extensively in journals including Studio International,
Screen, October and Undercut. He is also known for his research and writings
on Samuel Beckett, including Understanding Beckett: Monologue and Gesture
(Macmillan, 1986).
Tickets - $7, available at door
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