Past Screenings: Page 17

Past Screenings

For Cultural Purposes Only

Sarah Wood

28 August – 31 August

For Cultural Purposes Only

2009, 8’16”

Courtesy Animate Projects and Sarah Wood.

SYNOPSIS

In an age dominated by the moving image what would it feel like to never see an image of the place that you came from?

The Palestinian Film Archive contained over 100 films showing the daily life and struggle of the Palestinian people. It was lost in the Israeli siege of Beirut in 1982. Here interviewees describe from memory key moments from the history of Palestinian cinema. These scenes are drawn and animated. Where film survives, the artist’s impressions are corroborated.

“When you say to someone ‘you’re history’ it doesn’t mean that you’re part of it; it means that you’re obliterated. That’s what history means.” From For Cultural Purposes Only.

SARAH WOOD ON THE DOUBLE THINK AND THE IMPORTANCE OF THE TITLE

*Dazed Digital: Why ‘For Cultural Purposes Only’?
Sarah Wood: ‘For cultural purposes only, no commercial value’ is the phrase that is written on customs forms when films prints are sent internationally. The declaration is intended to speed a film’s journey through the customs process. Some time ago, I came across an article that the filmmaker Annemarie Jacir had written about her experience of curating a festival of Palestinian film in New York. In the article she talked about the practicalities of curating, and the difficulties of physically getting material across the world to screen in the US. Films sent from Palestine were simply going missing in transit. One film lost in the post might seem like a mistake but after a little detective work she realised films that she was certain had been sent from Palestine weren’t making it through Israeli customs. She realised that what singled the missing films out was their customs declaration. Instead of being something that facilitated movement, the simple statement ‘for cultural purposes only’ was being read and used as a means of gauging the content of the package and preventing their movement out of the country. I was very struck by this story, not only for the inhibition of the movement of art but also the added layer of meaning that the phrase had gathered. One of the striking things about the conflict between Israel and Palestine is the use of language by both sides to blur understanding and control the narrative of the conflict. I’m thinking, for instance, of the use by Israeli officialdom of ‘targeted killing’ to mean an assassination, or the use of ‘martyr’ by Palestinians to describe the same event. Both are euphemisms, both are used to control the effect of the act. Seeing the phrases ‘for cultural purposes only’ reinterpreted in this conflict made me question how hard it would be to create any art in the context of this double-think…”

The full interview can be read here.

Courtesy Dazed Digital.

SARAH WOOD DISCUSSING THE FILM IN THE GUARDIAN

“I am an artist who works with found footage, making films from other people’s films – an act of reclamation and reinterpretation. In the west, this footage is ubiquitous. It wouldn’t be hard for me, for instance, to find an image of the place I come from to show to a stranger; I just have to know where to look. So imagine what it would be like if every image of 1960s London, or of pre-war France, or Soviet Russia, vanished overnight. Imagine there was no footage of your home town. In an age dominated by the moving image, how would that vanishing act make you feel?…”

The full article can be read here.

Courtesy The Guardian.

SARAH WOOD’S 2009 UPDATE: DRAWING REALITY

I’m sitting indoors, looking out of the window at the whited-out world. A sudden snowfall has shocked Britain to a standstill. Everyone’s complaining. Trains don’t work, buses don’t work, things are going wrong. Commentators are scandalized on television as it’s revealed that Britain is running out of salt to grit the roads. More salt will have to be mined! Standstill!

Outside the snow world looks still and calm. Sound is muffled by the snow. Outside sounds like a thud. The language of TV panic seems entirely at odds with this stillness.

It’s only a few weeks ago since I watched Tzipi Livni announce on TV that Israel was to ‘change the reality’ of Gaza. As suddenly as this snowfall altered Britain, the lives and landscape of Gaza were altered by military action. Reality was ‘changed’. The snow has now nudged Gaza off the headlines. TV landscape has been whited out too.

The full update can be read here

Courtesy Animate Projects.

BIOGRAPHY

Sarah Wood has been working for the last ten years in film. Her latest film projects have all been an exploration into ideas of the archive using found footage. I Want To Be A Secretary won best film at the Halloween Film Festival 2007, The Book of Love (2008) tours with a live soundtrack performed by the Exploits of Elaine and most recently The Angel of History (2008) (a collaboration with Jersey Film Archive) played in the Jersey War Tunnels with live soundtrack performed by Zan Lyons, as part of the first Brancharge Film Festival. Sarah is currently in development for Swingin’ Dors a video piece about Diana Dors and the British studio system.

FILMOGRAPHY

The Angel Of History, 2008
The Book Of Love, 2008
I Want To Be A Secretary, 2006
Surrender, 2005
Manifesto For Love, 2003
Living Space, 2003

LINKS

Sarah Wood’s Website

Dazed Digital Interview

Little White Lies interview

Sight & Sound article

Animate interview

Animate – For Cultural Purposes Only film page

FOR CULTURAL PURPOSES ONLY CREDITS

A film by Sarah Wood

Illustration – Woodrow Phoenix

Animation – Kate Anderson

Photography -Ruanne Abou-Rahme

Cartography – Simon Deeves

Soundtrack – Basel Abbas

Editor -Lucy Harris

Research – Kate Daniels

Camera – Campbell

Online Editor – Sue Giovanni

Sound Andy Coles

Extract from Children Nevertheless © Khadijeh Habashneh

Extract from Far From the Homeland © Kais Al-Zubaidi

Extract from Leaving Jerusalem by Railway (Louis Lumiere, 1897), Courtesy of the Prelinger Archive, (www.archive.org)

Extract from Screen Traveller: Damscus and Jerusalem (1926), Courtesy of the Prelinger Archive, (www.archive.org)

Text – Mustafa Abu Ali, Palestinian Cinema Group Manifesto, Edward Said

Title – Courtesy of Annemarie Jacir taken from her essay of the same name

Executive Producers Jacqui Davies & Gary Thomas

Thank you:
Mustafa Abu Ali, Abigail Addison, Sonia Bridge, Nick Denes, Nicky Haire, Bridget Hannigan, Shadia Nasralla, Idit Nathan, On Sight, Judy Price, Ali Smith

THANKS

Carroll / Fletcher would like to thank Abigail Addison and Animate Projects for their collaboration in the programming of this season of films

Fatima’s Letter

Alia Syed

18 – 27 August

Fatima’s Letter

1992; dv from16mm film; b&w, sound, 4:3; 21 mins

SYNOPSIS

A woman remembers her past by faces she sees while travelling on the London Underground. She begins to believe that these people, like her, have all taken part in the same event. She composes a letter to her friend Fatima – a personal documentary around journeys, memories and watching. The story is spoken in Urdu with sub-titles in English, although the subtitles do not always appear in conjunction with what is spoken.

DIASPORA – Alia Syed on time, memory, and story telling

The near has fallen behind the horizon – reality always juggles with ghosts – the gate of the camera – my net. Deciphering the original intent from the palpable reality of the footage – frames pass me by, London by night. It rains. The metropolis still holds me. I grew up with the hills visible from the skylight in my bedroom – a secret cigarette – our laughter mingling with the soft rain of a suburban Scottish night. I removed myself – the space stifled me. London was negotiated from the tube map. I became Scottish, but suffered from agoraphobia.

From New Cross Gate to Hoxton, seamless, the journey allows me to be somewhere else. Faces take on significance. London has to be traversed across. Recognition comes in bullets. External events collide – in my head – a moment of clarity. I devote time to travelling. We look through siphons; our attempts at observation are attempts to connect. Making becomes an endless process of re-looking, of trying to find meaning – a point where I locate. London is never London, but contains traces of other cities; the poignancy of the landscape lies in its ability to conjure, the sound of a horn – Karachi – one city falls into another. Film time slips – formal tensions reflect more accurately than actuality – a train approaches the platform, the sound quakes – they have bombed another building – the folds of her dress move with the rapidity of falling concrete – nine more children dead – dust – the slabs are to big for them. An empty space.

She writes a letter to Fatima, she speaks of her displacement, tells a story.

We position ourselves in relation to the languages within the film. Discontinuities in narrative, sound and image produce ruptures. Different languages vie for authority – written over spoken, image over text, word image over documentary footage. We become part of a dialogue, we see ourselves within ideology. The static film frame becomes a stage. We become an audience to ourselves.

“But then we had all chosen our parts.Ours was just a different one to the one they thought it was” Fatima’s Letter.

AN ESSAY – Alia Syed by Anna Malik

“Alia Syed’s practice as a filmmaker tests the conventions of writing. Even though her films deploy a narrative structure they do so to unravel the very idea of beginnings and endings that is necessary to the act of making sense. Instead she uses repetition, circularity and the layering of word and image to explore the conditions under which the subject of language and desire is made present but also eludes our grasp.

Juxtaposing oblique camera angles with written and spoken words, she places the spectator in a position of negotiating and attempting to find points of correlation between two, some times three, registers of language: visual, graphic and aural. Each register offers a different form of narrative that transforms history, be it personal or collective, into myth…”

Courtesy Anna Malik and Lux.

Full essay available here

“It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it.” John Berger, Ways of Seeing .

“The subject position of the migrant woman is now being given voice in all its complexities without having to bear the burden of representation.” Anna Malik

“I am interested in language. We construct ourselves through language; it creates the space where we define ourselves. Film can be a mirror—it can throw things back at us in a way that makes us question the ideas we have about ourselves and through this each other…I [am] interested in what happens when you hold more than one ‘culture’ within you at any given time.” Alia Syed.

BIOGRAPHY

Solo Exhibitions

2012‐13 Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Eating Grass: Alia Syed, Los Angeles, US

2013 Talwar Gallery, Panopticon Letters: Missive I, New York, US

2010 Talwar Gallery, Wallpaper, New York, US

2009 Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain

2009 Talwar Gallery, Elision, New Delhi, India

2008 Talwar Gallery, New York, US

2006 Millais Gallery, Southampton, UK, A Story Told

2005 Arts Depot, 1001100111001, London, UK, Eating Grass

2004 Talwar Gallery, New York, NY, Eating Grass

2003 Institute of International Visual Arts (inIVA), London, UK, Eating Grass

2003 Talwar Gallery, New York, NY, Spoken Diary / Swan

Selected Other Exhibitions / Screenings

2014 Tate Britain Starr Auditorium, London, UK (Upcoming)

2014 Pump House Gallery ,You cannot step twice into the same river, London, UK (Upcoming)

2014 CCA, Glasgow, UK (Upcoming)

2014 Solyanka State Gallery, PARAJANOV, Moscow, Russia

2013 5th Moscow Biennale, Moscow, Russia

2011 Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Ffilm 3, Swansea, UK

2010 The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), On Line, New York, NY, US

2006 XV Sydney Biennale, Zones of Contact, Sydney, Australia, Eating Grass

2005 Hayward Gallery, BALTIC, The British Art Show VI, UK, Eating Grass

2005 Talwar Gallery, (desi)re, New York, NY, US, Eating Grass, Swan

2003 Tate Britain, London, UK, Fatima’s Letter @ A Century of British Artist’s Films

Full biography available here

FILMOGRAPHY

2010‐13 Panopticon Letters: Missive I

2008‐11 Priya

2006‐11 A Story Told

2010 Wallpaper

2005 L A Diary

2003 Eating Grass

2001 Spoken Diary

1995 Watershed

1994 Fatima’s Letter

1989 Three Paces

1989 Swan

1987 Unfolding

1985 Durga

FATIMA’S LETTER CREDITS

Written by Alia Syed

Spoken by Ghazala Shaikh

Translated by Syed Ali Ahmed, Ghazala Shaikh, Samia Shaikh, Alia Syed

Rostrum Sogand Bahram

Art Work Tanya Syed

With thanks to
Syed Ali Ahmed, Sogan Bahram, Noski Deville, Brian Golding, Tim Highstead, Arif Khan, Ilias Pantos, Lis Rhodes, Ghazala Shaikh, Samina Shaikh, John Smith, Tanya Syed, Sarah Turner, the L.F.M.C. Staff

Made at the

Slade School of Fine Art, University College London
London Film-Makers Co-op

Financial Assistance

Julian Sullivan Award, Institute of Contemporary Art
(I.C.A.Cinema.)

INTERVIEWS WITH ALIA (AND AN ESSAY)

Eating Grass – an interview to accompany Alia’s exhibition and screenings at LACMA, September 2012

Flights of Fancy –

Alia Syed A Story Told – and essay by David Thorp

Alia Syed is represented by Talwar Gallery.

Special thanks to Lux.

I Could Read The Sky

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.

Exile is not a word

It is a sound

The rending of skin

A fistful of clay on top

of a coffin

Exile is not a word

It is shaving against

A photograph not a mirror

Exile is not a word

It is hands joined in

supplication

In an empty cathedral

It is writing your own

hagiography

It is a continuing atrocity

It is the purgatorial

Triumph of memory

over topography

Exile is not a word

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

Nichola Bruce’s website

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