7 – 17 August
Nichola Bruce
2000; dv from 35mm; 86 mins
SYNOPSIS
“But without a past I would have fallen. I thought I had a future too, but I just couldn’t see it.”
Taken from the photographic novel of the same name by Timothy O’Grady and Steve Pyke, I Could Read the Sky tells the story of an ailing old Irish man living out his final days in a bedsit in London. As death approaches, he recalls his early life in the west of Ireland, his first love, emigrating to England, the various back-breaking and low-paid jobs he is forced to take to eke out his meagre living, searching for his brother Joe, who disappeared after he emigrated several years previously, the death of his mother and father whose funerals lured him back to his homeland, his marriage and his wife’s later death,…
“And then I can see it – the absence of others draining the world.”
“The film unravels the strange twisting drama of a working man’s life. It moves from a decaying rural past to a vividly modern present, driven by a dynamic music soundtrack that draws from both, and a simple flowing lyrical story telling. It is the state of memory that the film evokes, not memory as re-enactment but as texture. The film gets to the essence of how we remember. Memory as fragments, as details and layers, memory that comes at you out of the dark. From behind closed eyes, with its abstractions of light and form and sudden moments of precise clarity, taking us on an inward, visually extraordinary labyrinthine journey to the film’s end. ” British Council website.
“No way back now.”
SOME QUOTES AND A POEM USED IN THE PREFACE TO THE NOVEL
“I whispered: memory hurts wherever you touch it.” George Seferis
“In remembrance is the secret of redemption.” Holocaust memorial, San Francisco.
Peter Woods
TIMOTHY O’GRADY ON THE NOVEL
“I Could Read The Sky is a novel which tells its story through words and photographs. The story is that of an Irish emigrant struggling to possess his life in acts of memory. He is old. He is alone. He is lying in bed at night in the darkness remembering a life of dislocation, of loss, of descent into madness and of redemption through music and through the love of a woman. Some of the time he is remembering on prose and some of the time in pictures. Neither is meant to illustrate the other. They are distinct acts of memory in their own right. The act of remembering itself becomes a way of completing his life.”
BIO
From the artist’s website:
“Nichola Bruce works with the moving Image. Her work is primarily about expressing the way the mind composites vision through memory. She films elements of her life almost every day and has an extensive archive of over 25 years of home movie diary.
Born in Bromley, brought up in Kent and London. Nichola went to Hornsey College of Art and then Middlesex Polytechnic where she began making objects and music, and experimenting with film. Her first film, Excuses, led to short punkfiction films on super eight and 16mm – collages of live action, performance and animation – Breath of Air, Boolean Procedure, Clip, Wings of Death, which were then followed by documentaries. Nichola continues to paint and draw as part of her process. Her experimental drama feature, I Could Read The Sky (2000), explored a man alone remembering his past. It was described as “restoring faith in the artistic possibilities of Cinema”.
In 2006 she was awarded a NESTA fellowship to study perception, mentored by RL Gregory, creating a large body of work including 26 short films on the Strangeness of Seeing (with Rebecca E Marshall). Nichola’s work often involves collaborations with other artists, including The Monument (nameless library) with Rachel Whiteread, The Human Face with Laurie Anderson, and Moonbug with Steve Pyke. Her archive continues to inform her latest works, such as Elixir, an elegy made in response to the death of her father, and Pale Shadows an experimental approach to Handels Opera Alcina. Themes that reoccur in her work, as elements of memory and perception, are presence after death, and the tension between the internal world of the mind and external existence.
She exhibits her work wherever she can, as film, Installation, single and multiple screenings at galleries, cinemas, other venues, and online.”
FILMOGRAPHY
2012 Things As We Are
2012 Ingo Maurer (Hong Kong flame)
2012 Binnie Sisters in Sussex
2011 Axis of Light
2010 Moonbug
2010 Look Lock Walk
2010 Dreams Dreams Dreams
2010 Flayed Soul
2009 Rosebud
2009 Unexplained Feelings
2008 Weighing of the Heart
2002-2008 Strangeness of Seeing, 26 Short Films
2003 Corporeal memory
2002 Acts of Memory 0.5
2001 Acts of Memory 1
2001 Laugh
2001 Power to the Pixel
1999 I Could Read The Sky
1997 The Monument (nameless library)
1997 Queen ‘Made In Heaven’ My life has been saved
1997 Tight Roaring Circle Film
1996 The Loved
1996 The Photo Show x 6 (Series Producer)
1995 One man show Dramatic Art of Steven Berkoff
1994 La Difference x 4 (Series director)
1994 Hang on a Second
1993 Blood Of Eden
1991 The Human Face
1989 Club X The Reckitts
1986 No one is too Blame
1986 Wings of Death
1983 Clip
1980 Boolean Procedure
1976 Breath of Air
1975 ExcusesLINKS
CAST
Dermot Healy
Stephen Rae
Brendan Coyle
Maria Doyle Kennedy
Jake Williams
CREDITS
- Director: Nichola Bruce
- Producer: Janine Marmot, Hot Property Films
- Co-producer: Nick O’Neill, Liquid Films
- Editor: Catherine Creed
- Director of Photography: Seamus McGarvey, Owen McPolin
- Production Designer: Jane Bruce
- Sound: Cameron Hills, Dan Birch
- Music: Iarla O’Lionáird, featuring tracks by Sinead O’Connor, Martin Hayes, Liam O’Maonlai
- Writer: Nichola Bruce
British Film Institute, Irish Film Board, Gemini, Real World