Tag Archives: 16mm

Apr15

Little Joe: Projections in a Clubhouse

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The closest I have been to sitting inside a clubhouse was when I was 7. It was a play-date with a friend from school; he was in my class, blue eyes, blond hair, the new kid in school. His house was a classic Greek apartment, with yellow lights, heavy wooden furnitures, pictures of dead people and lace decorations on marble surfaces. His parents left us in the living room, and they went in the kitchen, where they continued the argument they had before my arrival interrupted them. We sat at the couch. It was a greenish shade of grey, and it was made of 6 pillows: 3 on the bottom, and 3 on the back. We were convinced that there was something behind them; so, we decided to take them off.

3 minutes and a bare sofa later, we were bored. We decided to arrange the pillows into a small house. We used them as walls, and went inside, closing the entrance with the last pillow. There, in the dark, we stood still for a second that lasted hours, laughed with secrets that were shielded from the outside world and believed that life could continue hidden inside these fabric walls forever. We achieved the contentment of living a lifetime in a single moment, of being able to forget that life exists outside the confines of a structure, that times moves on even if you don’t.

That was the feeling I had when I stepped into the Little Joe Clubhouse. Hosted in the Rich Mix (one of the most creative social enterprises in East London) café gallery, the clubhouse was a construct to behold: a specially commissioned structural installation, it managed to serve as hideout and a visual playground at the same time, the structure holding the outside world at distance, evoking a feeling of safety; of peace.

The creators of Little Joe, the most interesting Queer & Film culture magazine, worked day and night to create an absolutely amazing program of rare films that were shown as a part of Fringe!, East London‘s Alternative Film Festival. The crowd could just sit back and enjoy the film, engage in discussions with familiar strangers, or just sit still and feel the creativity buzzing through the space and the people.

The clubhouse was taking most of the space, with a really interesting library on the side, covering all things queer, and a fantastic mini shop (ranging from previous issues and the iconic Little Joe badges, to the special limited edition publication, with contributions from prominent artists, filmmakers and writers) making it the central point of the Fringe! Film Festival.

What I found really striking is the you blink and you miss it quality of this experience; the films are not commercially available, ranging from digitised versions of underground masterpieces to 16mm projections of rare gems. It was not only the structure that was fleeting; it was also the feeling it produced, the ephemeral pleasure that hides a pang of sadness in the knowledge that it is finite. Thankfully, Little Joe is full of events, with one of the best Film Clubs in town, as well as a selection of their back issues in their online store; Rich Mix has a variety of new events; and we will have to wait for next year’s Fringe! for more exciting films.

As far as my first ‘clubhouse’ experience, by the time that his parents came back in the room, all the pillows were back on the couch, and we were on the floor laughing, kicking the air, tears coming out. I can not remember what was so funny; just that we were laughing. I do not talk to him anymore.

Love,

G

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Mar18

The memory of Film

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The seat I am sitting on is warm. The leather has formed to accommodate the buttocks of the person that sat on it before me. It demonstrates the memory of his body. The warmth it still retains, the vicarious experience that is still here when he is not.

I am in the Tate Modern Cafe, my frown momentarily broken by a polite smile to the cashier. I am taking my latte and make my way across the room, passing mothers with children and fathers with Blackberries, and find an empty seat next to a couple that will not utter a word to each other for the next thirty minutes.

From all the sights I saw today, the best was not on display. Five men were taking down the giant plinth that Film was projected on. They were standing on a platform, elevated by a crane, the metal rising in braids towards the ceiling. They were deconstructing the giant screen piece by piece, a cheer of excitement filling the Turbine Hall every time one was safely touching the floor. The crowd was clapping. I felt a pang of sadness.

Someone compared the Film project to the monolith in the last scene of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and watching it being deconstructed made me think of that link; of an end; of a memory; of the end of memory.

Art is eternal; film is temporary. Light burning it every time it shines through it, it’s projection the ultimate reason and end. Digital form exists or doesn’t; film deteriorates slowly, having a life of its own, a journey from beginning to end. It is not meant to live forever, but to illuminate a life.

Film does not only capture. It creates. It is not a depiction of reality, but a construction of it. I remember a picture I took in Sweden, when on our way to our room, we passed from an open door. I stopped; craned my head to look in. The residents had left, and it was now being cleaned for the next ones. I quickly sneaked my camera out and took a picture, without having a clue how it will come out. When I developed the film back in London, the print looked as if it belonged in someone else’s roll, in someone else’s life.

Sheets on a hotel, laying still, stuck in the moment they were wrestled off the person’s body, stuck in the second after the friction caused them to form swirls of fabric. There is a bleached blood stain, the edges forming a sun of human cells. A life spent on beds, seats, looking up at the ceiling, outside the window, remembering, constructing, recreating, reproducing, looking for memory where there is none.

You walk up the stairs and you fail to notice the beauty around you, because you are so engrossed in what happened today in the office, at work, at the coffee break, at lunch, on TV, on the screen, everything locked inside your head, invisible verses of a poem that you keep reciting, carved in your memory, already forgotten. The words change but it is always the same.

Film is like memory; events are not reproduced; they are reconstructed. The small speckles of light and dust that travel in front of it become a part of the outcome.

The couple next to me left, and a family with two small girls rushed to take the table. The smallest one sat down in a huff, with a handful of crayons from the Tate shop, and started drawing on her place mat. She drew a purple sun and a tree with green apples. And just like that, the sun rose inside the café, and its rays were purple.

Love,

G

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Jan14

The Unilever Series and Tacita Dean’s Film: an analogue marvel at Tate Modern

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The floor of the darkened Turbine Hall in Tate Modern is covered with people lying on their coats, resting their heads on their bags, shifting their bodies uncomfortably before getting lost in the 13 metres screen in front of them. For the next 11 minutes, the reflection on their eyes shows flowers, streaming water, escalators, mushrooms, trees, all framed in strange architectural borders. Children play underneath the screen, interacting with the piece as if it was a game: they run away from the falling objects, or try to catch details that capture their attention. The result is captivating; then again, what would you expect from Tacita Dean‘s Film?

Shot in a 35mm fim, Film is the twelfth piece commissioned from the Unilever Series, and the first to include the art of the moving image. Dean’s main tool has been the 16mm film, a dying medium, in which she captures the architectural beauty of the fleeting moment, not focusing on depiction, but rather on visual representation. Best known for her work surrounding Donald Crowhurst‘s tragic maritime ending (with a variety of material, from the Teignmouth Electron book to the Disappearance at Sea Film), she was nominated for the Turner Prize on 2008.

Dean is also an incredible writer, expressing herself with such immediacy and candour that it is impossible not to get lost in her narration (quite similar to W. G. Sebald’s style). In the Tate Modern Shop, you can find a collection of her books, as well as the latest publication Film: The Unilever Series (edited by Nicholas Cullinan) that looks closer the issues embedded in this piece, with contributions from the most important contemporary voices in art and cinema.

The magnificent part of this work is that it genuinely serves as a visual manifesto of the analogue. In a digital world, film is becoming obsolete, and memories are captured in code on memory sticks, instead of light on film. In Film, there is no post production digital trickery, as all the effects are created either in the studio or in the camera: you witness the combination of different forms, films, colours, techniques (including hand-tinted film), glass matte painting, multiple exposures, mirroring and masking, creating layered imagery and breathtaking sequences, making it impossible not to marvel at the human accomplishment of putting all of this together. This is why Dean transforms film into art, as the virtuosic manipulation of a strip of photosensitive material turns into a depiction of beauty.

Pioneers like Ben Rivers (also working in 16mm film) have shown how film can transcend reality and be elevated to art, by real world creativity. Pieces like Stan Brakhage‘s Mothlight are a testament of taking something and turning it into something else.

The sight of film running through a projector, the sound of the wheels turning, the texture and richness of the image are just incomparable. It is almost as if film is not capturing reality, but depicting life. It is very hard to describe how a space is transformed through the lens of a 16mm camera; how the colours seem distant but inviting, the details blurred but imaginative, the image complete yet distinctly mysterious.

So, in the premature funeral of a medium that breathes its last breath, Tacita Dean is singing the most beautiful and haunting gospel, giving it back the life it so fairly deserves.

If you have 11 free minutes, make sure you spend them in the Turbine Hall in Tate Modern. It is worth it.

Love,

G

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