Death to Digital! Long Live Film!

NZFA Media Release

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Death to Digital! Long Live Film!

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Experimental film fans, lovers of analogue and those who just enjoy seeing something a little different will be in for a treat at the New Zealand Film Archive from 11-13 June with This Is Experimental: Australian Film Art.

A three-day festival, featuring the leading lights of Australian experimental film - Sally Golding, Joel Stern and Dirk de Bruyn, made possible with the support of the Australian High Commission, will take place at the Film Archive in Wellington on the corner of Taranaki and Ghuznee Sts.

Film Archive Project Developer Mark Williams says “The aim of this This Is Experimental in 2009 is to remind us that film and digital are distinctly differing mediums. As curators Joel, Sally and Dirk celebrate the best historical works, as artists they keep the discipline of film as art alive, and kicking. It’s important for young moving image makers in New Zealand to understand that digital technology was preceded by celluloid film which remains a medium with it’s own 21st century possibilities.”

Opening on Thursday 11 June with Isolationist Eye Openers: Historic Australian Film Art 1962-1998 viewers will be taken on a journey through the back-catalogue of Australia’s experimental film art by Brisbane-based arts collective OtherFilm ( www.otherfilm.org ). It’s two founders, Sally Golding and Joel Stern have travelled to New Zealand with the programme.

OtherFilm is dedicated to avant-garde, experimental, abstract, expanded and other cinemas. They host regular screening programs, performance events, exhibitions, workshops, articles, research, discussions and arguments, as well as a bi-annual Expanded Cinema festival. These diverse programs offer up a short but sweet taste of both historical and contemporary movements in the dynamic, demanding, engaging and exciting Australian scene. Isolationist Eye Openers: Historic Australian Film Art 1962-1998 features work by a number of important pioneers of Australian experimental film who inspired the Other Film collective such as

Arthur and Corinne Cantrill, the internationally recognised 'elders' of Australian film art and Australian photographer and filmmaker David Perry. He was one of a group of young film-makers who established Australia's first consciously avant -garde filmmaking group, Ubu Films. Another Ubu founder, Albie Thoms, is represented here with Man and his World, an 'expanded cinema film' in which a single-second explosion is elongated to a minute, and re-presented in split-screen format.

On Friday 12 June Melbourne based animator, film maker and artist Dirk de Bruyn performs Retinex Reflux, a live film and sound work for multiple 16mm projectors. Over the last 30 years de Bruyn has made numerous experimental, documentary and animation films and videos. Described as “explosively anarchic” De Bruyns films are cut-up collages that draw on animation, found footage and fragments of dialogue. In a recent essay by Steven McIntyre at sensesofcinema.com the author described a 2007 performance:

“My first reaction upon attending one of de Bruyn’s expanded cinema performances earlier this year was not one of awe at the “bursting, blooming [...] dance of colour” described by Mike Hoolboom, but rather one of dumb shock and surprise at the primal screamings, harsh light flashes, and the general but overwhelming expression of dissonance and rage.”

Dirk de Bruyn’s body of film work occupies a unique place in the history of Australian cinema through his interest in the processes of direct animation. Over a 30-year career, de Bruyn has evolved a highly developed, somewhat obsessive aesthetic involving dyeing, painting, incising, stencilling and collaging the film strip. His interest in material decay, found footage, and expeditions into ‘closed eye vision’ connect with other strands in international avant-garde film practice, while the reworking of his films with bodily, optical-mechanical, and aural interventions in live performances participates in the history of expanded cinema.

Dirk De Bruyn has written about and curated various programs of film and video art internationally and written extensively about this area of arts practice. He is currently teaching Animation and Digital Culture at Deakin University in Melbourne, Victoria. (Burwood Campus).

On Saturday 13 June witness a performance by Abject Leader Light Piercing the Nerve - an ‘expanded cinema’ piece for multiple 16mm projectors, handmade and hand processed film, feedback, noise, sprockets and flicker.

“In the era of digital proliferation, (Abject Leader’s) emphasis on the analogue, the handmade, the photo-chemical and the acoustical, is pleasingly defiant... “ - Danny Zuvela

Abject Leader ( www.abjectleader.org) is an ever–evolving film and music project between Sally Golding (film, projectors) and Joel Stern (concrete sound). Sally Golding is a filmmaker, projectionist and audio-visual archivist whose work moves between abstraction and dreamlike narrative. Using 16mm technologies and photographic darkroom processes, Sally deconstructs cinematic materials and apparatus, creating unique works realised as performed projection.

Joel Stern is a soundmaker, curator and academic who lives in Brisbane, teaching at Queensland University of Technology on sound in experimental and avant garde film. He has designed sound and composed scores for a number of independent film projects.

Together, Sally and Joel formed Abject Leader in late 2004. Alongside their own live performances they created abjectleader cinema; a film society programming screenings of avant-garde, experimental and artist films on 16mm. In 2006 abjectleader cinema morphed into OtherFilm which is now one of Australia's foremost experimental film collectives, and is the only collective focussed on expanded and performed cinema.

All films from the historical program are shown on 16mm, prints courtesy of the National Film and Sound Archive, and courtesy of the artists. All videos in the contemporary program are presented in digital formats, courtesy of the artists.

Tickets to all screenings are $8 Adult, $6 concession.

This is Experimental - Australian Film Art

SCHEDULE

Thursday 11 June, 7.00pm

Isolationist Eye Openers: Historic Australian Film Art 1962-1998

(AU, 1962-1998, 70 mins, Exempt)

A collection of Australian experimental classics from 1962-1998 that explore the nature of film, alienation, the poetics of perception, and the Australian landscape.

Tickets: $8 Public/$6 Concession

http://www.filmarchive.org.nz/index.php?option=com_events&task=view_detail&agid=1138&year=2009&month=06&day=11&Itemid=2

Presented by Other Film http://www.otherfilm.org

Friday 12 June, 7.00pm

Retinex Reflux - a performance by Dirk de Bruyn

(AU, 60 mins, Exempt)

Over the last 30 years Melbourne-based film-maker, writer and academic Dirk de Bruyn has made numerous experimental, documentary and animation films and videos. In his first visit to Wellington he presents Retinex Reflux; a live film performance that uses multiple 16mm film projectors in an explosion of light, colour and sound.

http://www.filmarchive.org.nz/index.php?option=com_events&task=view_detail&agid=1137&Itemid=1

http://www.innersense.com.au/mif/debruyn.html

Saturday 13 June, 7.00pm

Light Piercing the Nerve – a performance by Abject Leader

(AU, 60 minutes, Exempt)

Abject Leader is an ever–evolving film and music project between Sally Golding (film, projectors) and Joel Stern (concrete sound). Based in Brisbane, Abject Leader perform ‘expanded cinema’ pieces with multiple 16mm projectors. They describe the key ingredients of their performances as handmade and hand processed film, feedback systems, incongruous foley noise, sprockets and flicker, trumpets and strings, specially prepared screens and alienated narration.

http://www.filmarchive.org.nz/index.php?option=com_events&task=view_detail&agid=1139&Itemid=1

http://www.abjectleader.org/

The three film makers will also be presenting their work in Auckland at 7pm, Saturday 20 June at the Gus Fisher Gallery/Kenneth Myers Centre, 74 Shortland St with local film makers The Parasitic Fantasy Band and Nova Paul.

In advance of their concert, Joel Stern and Dirk de Bruyn will present a workshop on their approach to live sound and vision using projection of found photography and celluloid.

Organised by the New Zealand Film Archive and Floating Cinemas collective. Entry by koha.

ENDS

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