Garden Pieces
London BFI Southbank
14-28 April 2009
From flowers to trees, backyards to gardeners’ gardens, this series of three programmes of archive and artists’ films presents a rare opportunity to see, experience and reflect on the garden. With works from Kenneth Anger, Ute Aurand & Baerbel Freund, Bruce Baillie, Robert Beavers, Stan Brakhage, Rose Lowder, Marie Menken, Percy Smith, John Smith & Ian Bourn, and Margaret Tait amongst others. Curated and introduced by Peter Todd.
Tuesday 14 April 2009, at 6.20pm
Garden Pieces
The shape of flowers – filmed in 1910 by Percy Smith, and in 1999 by John Smith & Ian Bourn – cradle this programme. In between we study a pigeon in a tree, see a garden from the viewpoint of a cat, experience the fountains of the Villa D’Este, are taught How to dig, feel flora and nature projected on to the screen direct in Mothlight, realise the Japanese concept of time/space through the zen garden of Ryoan-Ji, and more.
- Percy E Smith, Birth of a Flower, 1910.
- Bruce Baillie, All My Life, 1966.
- Guy Sherwin, Flight, 1988.
- Anthea Kennedy & Ian Wiblin, Elegy, 2001.
- Kenneth Anger, Eaux D’Artifice, 1954.
- Jack Ellitt, How To Dig, 1941.
- Peter Todd, For You, 2000.
- Margaret Tait, Garden Pieces, 1998.
- Stan Brakhage, Mothlight, 1963.
- Percy Stow & Cecil Hepworth, Alice in Wonderland, 1903.
- Takahiko Iimura, MA: Space/Time in the Garen of Ryona-Ji, 1989.
- John Smith & Ian Bourn, The Kiss, 1999.
Garden Pieces was originally produced in conjunction with the exhibition Other People’s Gardens at Bridport Art Centre curated by Judith Frost, and was first shown at The Lux Cinema in 2001 before touring. With thanks to BFI programme unit, BFI collections, LUX, and ACE).
Total running time approximately 100 mins.
Monday 20 April 2009, at 8.40pm
Trees Plants Flowers – Lives
A portrait of the garden, designed in Potsdam-Bornim in 1910 by gardener and philosopher of nature Karl Poerster, and filmed at monthly intervals to show how it changes over the year, provides a core for a programme in which to experience landscapes including the Hudson River, Mont Ventoux, and fleeting views of flowers in daily life: in an Orkney garden, a London back garden, in Mexico, and also a plane tree viewed from a window. With masterpieces of 16mm filmmaking from Bruce Baillie and Margaret Tait.
- Olivier Bougnot, Tronco Luxurioso, 1992.
- Marcelle Thirache, L’Arbre Bleu, 2001.
- Peter Hutton, Landscape (for Manon), 1986-87.
- Pathe Freres, The Flower Fairy, c1911-13.
- Ute Aurand & Baerbel Freund, Im Garten, 2002.
- Stan Brakhage, The Garden of Earthly Delights, 1981.
- Peter Todd, An Office Worker Thinks of Their Love, and Home, 2003.
- Margaret Tait, Portrait of Ga,1952.
- Ute Aurand & Baerbel Freund, Fur Frau Foerster, 2002.
- Bruce Baillie, Valentin de las Sierras, 1967.
- Rose Lowder, Quiproquo, 1992.
Trees Plants Flowers - Lives accompanied the exhibition Tempered Ground at the Museum of Garden History, curated by Danielle Arnaud, Jordan Kaplan, and Philip Norman in 2004. With thanks to ACE).
Total running time approximately 100 mins.
Tuesday 28 April 2009, at 6.20pm
Glimpse Of The Garden
‘Without those who love me and whom I love, these small film could not have existed.’ Marie Menken’s words speak of the work of many film makers and equally of the close relationships with the garden we experience with Anne Charlotte Robertson in reel 80 of her five year 8mm diary (on video), with organic and natural gardening in France in the most recent BOUQUETS of Rose Lowder, and the house and garden of Robert Beavers’ mother. We end with a Navajo medicine man collecting plants.
- Marie Menken, Glimpse of the Garden, 1957.
- Anne Charlotte Robertson, Emily Died, 1997.
- Rose Lowder, Bouquets 21-30, 2001-05.
- Robert Beavers, Pitcher of Coloured Light, 2007.
- Maxine and Maryjane Tsoi. The Spirit of the Navajo, 1966.
Total running time approximately 100 mins.