Transparent Things: Mary Helena Clark’s films & influences
Monday 25 March 2013, 20:30h
OFFoff Cinema
Lange Violettestraat 237  9000 Gent, Belgium

“I want to make cinema that is both trance-like and transparent: that operates on dream logic until disrupted by a moment of self-reflexivity, like tripping on an extension cord.”

What are we seeing when watching images flickering on the screen? One could say that the cinematic experience always involves an unique play of imaginary presence (perceptual experiences, fantasies, illusions) and real absence (what is represented but not really there). The act of perception may be real, but the perceived is merely a shade, a phantom, “a hallucination that is also a fact”. It is this fundamental tension between presence and absence, actual and perceptual, the visible and the spectre of the hidden, that is at the heart of Mary Helena Clark’s work. Taking cues from the fantasy and illusion of early cinema as well as the material and formal exercises of the avant-garde, her hypnotic pieces explore cinema’s primitive magic, hurtling us down the secretive rabbit holes of the moving image. After having screened several of Mary Helena’s films in previous years, Courtisane will once again showcase her work during the coming Courtisane festival (17-21 April 2013), with the screening of her latest short film, Orpheus (outtakes). As a prologue to this year’s festival, Courtisane will present at OFFoff six films by Mary Helena Clark together with a selection of works by other filmmakers that have inspired her practice.

Barbara Hammer: Dignity
February 16 - April 13 2013
Open Wed–Sun 12–18h
KOW, Brunnenstr. 9, 10119 Berlin

The experimental filmmaker, documentarist, and visual artist Barbara Hammer, who was born in Hollywood in 1939, has created one of the most influential oeuvres of Queer Cinema. Over the course of a lifetime, the pioneering lesbian film activist has put together a comprehensive manifesto of feminist perspectives. Our first solo exhibition of Barbara Hammer’s work, in 2011, emphasized her contributions to the (self-)representation of lesbian love and sexuality in the 1970s; in this new show, by contrast, we focus on a parallel strand in her oeuvre that commences in the mid-1980s: Hammer’s engagement with illness, aging, and death.

The centerpiece of the exhibition, which was designed in collaboration with the artist, is “Sanctus” (1990). Hammer uses moving X-ray pictures Dr. James Sibley Watson produced in the 1950s that capture—usually female—bodies in motion.(1) Watson had turned his study subjects’ bodies into a spectacle, subjecting them to visualization and medico-technical manipulation that cut to the quick; Hammer exalts these bodies, presenting them now as threatened, now as threatening, restoring their sensual presence. She copies, crops, and cross-fades Watson’s archival footage, painting on it and using chemicals to burn it. Hammer animates a danse macabre of female skeletons. This is more than a feminist and erotic reappropriation of the female body beset by technology and pathology—it is its canonization, supported on the original soundtrack by the composer Neil B. Rolnick’s computer-generated mass “Sanctus.”(2)

Experimental Film Club: Ruins & Entropy Part 2
Part 2 of a two part programme curated by Aoife Desmond.
Tuesday February 26, 18:30h
Irish Film Institute, 6 Eustace Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2)
Introduced by Dr Declan Long (Co-director, MA Art in the Contemporary World, NCAD)

EFC and IFI present Ruins & Entropy Part 2. Part 2 continues the thread explored in Part 1 which focused on Robert Smithson’s art practice and theory. Part 2 focuses on contemporary filmmakers; Emily Richardson, Ben Rivers and Patrick Keiller and their exploration of decay and impermanence within the contemporary landscape. A selection of four films from these filmmakers combines architectural residue and history with a wandering or drifting protagonist and his/her poetic overview. The locations range from Hackney in London and Oxford Ness a disused military site in England to a wide ranging European tour and a fragmented tour of Britain ending up in the Isle of Mull.

Environmental Agency: A Landscape Film Programme
Tuesday March 5 2013, 18:20h
BFI Southbank
Belvedere Road, South Bank, London SE1 8XT

The awe-inspiring power of nature and its associated weather systems as explored across a range of groundbreaking works by renowned artist filmmakers. Subtle shifts in natural light, delicate tidal movements and the terraforming power of seasonal change determine the shape and structure of several of the films here. Others reflect with great beauty on the impact that nature has on our lives as an alchemical, elemental force. A timely programme for today’s changing world.

Breath (1975. William Raban. 16min); Colour Separation (1976. Chris Welsby. 2min); Colours of This Time (1972. William Raban. 4min); Water Wrackets (1975. Peter Greenaway. 12min); Three Short Landscape Films (1979. Renny Croft. 6min); Walk (1975. Jenny Okun. 5min); Bridge (1980. John Woodman. 4min); Aerial (1974. Margaret Tait. 4min); Aspect (2004. Emily Richardson. 9min); Proximity (2006. Inger Lise Hansen. 4min)

Introduced by artist John Woodman and BFI National Archive curator William Fowler.

The programme will be followed by a launch in the BFI Shop of two new LUX titles on DVD: Trilogy (Inger Lise Hansen) and Landscape Films 1977-1982 (John Woodman).