More or Less Annihilated by Saccadic Enchainment by the Sea
March 30th 2009, 20h
The Working Men’s Club, 44-46 Pollard Row, E2 6NB, London. Ticket: £5/£3 Close-Up members
Doors open at 7.45 pm
Presented by Close-Up and curated by Esperanza Collado

Film Samuel Beckett | Alan Schneider 1964 | 17 mins | B&W | 16mm

A man carefully blots out all external reality. A philosophical principle prevails -George Berkeley’s Esse est percipi- while the film contains elements of comedy.

Emigton Joe Comerford 1965 | 10 mins | B&W | Digibeta, Shot on 16mm

An elliptical narrative with an injection of perverted Irish humour.

Un Peu Moins (A Little Less) Donal O’Ceilleachair | Konstantin Bojanov 2006 | 6 mins | B&W and Colour | DV, Shot on Super8

Somewhere between innocence and eroticism, between geography and stasis.

She Had Her Gun All Ready Vivienne Dick 1978 | 22 mins | Colour | 16mm

This film noir/melodrama set in the Lower East Side is a study of women’s anger and hatred of women at the crucial moment of overpowering identification and obsessional thraldom.
Performances by Lydia Lunch and Pat Place.

Saint Francis Didn’t Run Numbers Christopher O’Neill 2009 | 4 mins | Colour | DV

Excavates new and surprising spaces from a famous American film of the ‘70s, abstracting a silent, hidden universe from the bustle of narrativity. — Maximilian Le Cain

Sister Mary Or Mary The Junkie Christopher O’Neill 2010 | 2 mins | Colour | DV

One figure is seen in three distinctive images, which have been manipulated and isolated to illustrate a different meaning to its original source material.

After & Before Barry Ronan 2009 | 2 mins | Colour | DV

Superimposition of landscapes shot as an expressionistic canvas with Brakhagean reminiscences.

Making A Home Maximilian Le Cain 2007 | 10 mins | B&W and Colour | DV

A ‘thinking space’ full of possible discoveries dwelling for and from internal desires using the mystery implied by the given architectural space, which fails.

Film From The Sea Alan Lambert 2000 | Variable duration | Colour | 35mm

A strip of corroded 35mm film found washed up on a beach in Valencia, Spain, in 1996.

Programme Notes
On the impossibility of writing about this programme

Since there is no worthwhile commercial cinema in Ireland, all great Irish films come from experimental cinema.

Maximilian Le Cain in Experimental Conversations.

I N V I S I B I L I T Y :

In 1969 Samuel Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in recognition of a circular form of reasoning that implied entrapment in circumstances of one’s own design.

Beckett’s Film (1964): the best film you never saw in your life, or, as Gilles Deleuze put it, the greatest Irish film.

Beckett’s film can be seen as the tale of George Berkeley who has had enough of being perceived and of perceiving. The role, which could only have been taken by Buster Keaton, is that of Berkeley, or rather it is the passage from one Irishman to another.

The attempt to communicate through silence is no deprivation. All depends on the nature of this silence - not a cancelling, static silence, but verbal ‘mutism’. Beckett doesn’t verbalize chaos; he summons it: chaos cannot be depicted but visualized.

I M P O S S I B I L I T I E S :

Inexistence
of Irish cinema industry,
of Irish experimental cinema,
of thematic concerns common to these works,
of Irishness as a main feature present in these works,
of linking threads connecting Irish experimental films,
of formal concerns perceived as common to these works,
of linking thread connecting the works on this programme

?

P O S S I B I L I T I E S :

When Bob Quinn was born, S. Beckett was 29 y.o.
When V. Dick was born, Bob Quinn was 15 y.o.

When F. Daly was born, V. Dick was 11 y.o.
When P. Jolley was born, F. Daly was 3 y.o.

When D. O’Ceilleachair was born, P. Jolley was 4 y.o.
When A. Lambert was born, D. O’Ceilleachair was 2 y.o.

When C. O’Neill was born, A. Lambert was 6 y.o.
M. Le Cain was born, C. O’Neill was 3 y.o.

When B. Ronan was born,
M. Le Cain was 7 y.o.