Distance Film

A delusional young woman mourning the loss of her cat receives a visit from an unexpected visitor.

This exhibition focuses on Jonas Mekas’ 365 Day Project, a succession of films and videos in calendar form. Every day as of January 1st, 2007 and for an entire year, as indicated in the title, a large public (the artist's friends, as well as unknowns) were invited to view a diary of short films of various lengths (from one to twenty minutes) on the Internet. A movie was posted each day, adding to the previously posted pieces, resulting altogether in nearly thirty-eight hours of moving images.

1981 short film made by Nik Allday, the drummer on Cabaret Voltaire’s critically acclaimed third album ‘Red Mecca’, and features music by Allday and the Cabs’ Stephen Mallinder. The 10 minute abstract film uses raw material of video feedback and some nuclear bomb footage to represent “the cruel chaotic dysfunctional nature of the human condition with all its potential for self destruction”. Allday wanted a soundtrack that complemented the film thematically and approached Mallinder to see if he’d be interested in creating the audio.

Through the uses of kinescope, video, multimedia, and direct painting on film, an impression is gained of the frantic action of protoplasm under a microscope where an imaginative viewer may see the genesis of it all. – Grove Press Film Catalog

First, I wanted to make a kind of reflexively impoverished Busby Berkeley extravaganza. Second, I was interested in juxtaposing two cultural artifacts–which could be schematized as East/West, socialism/capitalism, propaganda/entertainment, as well as image/sound–and see how they reverberated. In other words, I wanted to make an essay out of things, as well as a communist musical. But the question arose–what was the ideology of such film play? Is MISSION TO MONGO aestheticized politics or political art? –J. H.

Several fragments of one day in Leningrad in the autumn of 1989, refracted in the imagination of the artist.

Throughout three decades, Bill Laswell has been a constant innovator, fusing seemingly disparate genres into a whole new sound. Touching upon everything from worldbeat, funk, rock, hip-hop and jazz, there are no limits to his experimental approach. Among his many talents is his ability to bring together well-matched singers and players to create a distinct style that defies easy classification. His Soundstage episode embodies his unique approach, transcending any genre boundaries and delivering an engaging performance. From the World Beat of Tabla Beat Science, to the jazzy flavors of Pharoah Sanders backed by Material, it’s an exciting mix. Other surprises include a rocking Buckethead set that includes a little breakdancing and songs by Praxis. The show culminates with an all-star performance, funked up by Bootsy Collins.

Short experimental film based on the theme of waiting, and how with time good things will come.

Late at night, a man washes his hands. Things go downhill from there.

The short film is a montage of sped up clips of The Ringling Brothers Circus in action set to a musical track. The film is separated into four segments, each segment which focuses on different acts within the circus. The later segments often incorporate clips from earlier segments, mostly as background to the featured acts. The speed of the clips match the tempo of the soundtrack music.

Ten groups of kids from various parts of Finland, aged between 12 and 15, improvise an episode each based on one of the Bible's Ten Commandments.

A roll of super 8 given to a first time filmmaker at the age of 68 by her son in law. She is asked to use the roll to take photos of her garden. She says the following about her film: "What do I see in my garden, through my windows? The plants and flowers that I love and the bird that I admire."

"Caelum mergens sidera" Sound and visual experience around duality. "Immersio" evokes the light / dark, the conscious and the unconscious, the confusion of meaning in a chaotic world and the finitude of being.

Nature and culture. Jesuits and shamans. Exploitation and slavery. Conquerors and colonized. Captains and beheaded. America. Spain. The strategic war games fought by pathogens. The infected frazadas (blankets) which Spaniards distributed to indigenous communities knowing that they would be their end.

It’s New Year’s Eve and while the Brussels’ city streets are teeming with drunken revelers, the paths of two solitary souls will cross. Max, a poor sod, is drowning his existential confusion in alcohol. Julie, a young woman, finds it impossible to reconcile herself with the bitter realities of her life. But on this festive night, they’ll try to put aside their personal mess and painful pasts. Unfortunately, that past remains hot on their heels. Max’s urgent money needs drove him to commit a robbery with a trio of idiots. Juliette missed a meeting with a bottle of sleeping pills and feels the urge to try again if she can’t find anything worth living. The clock is ticking away to midnight. Whatever happens, there will be fireworks!

Lumiere's The Arrival Of A Train in Russian.

Featuring a cast that includes Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore, Mike Watt of the legendary hardcore band Minutemen, and Pettibon himself, this deadpan narrative pays dubious homage to the 1960's radical underground. In this crudely rendered home video of a commune of stoned revolutionaries, the cameras are hand-held, the edits in-camera, and the dialogue is wryly on-target. Pettibon's band of outsiders reenacts a countercultural moment defined by rock music, drugs, and ideological paradox — and in so doing, captures their own late-80's West Coast grunge milieu as well.

“Abigail Child’s series IS THIS WHAT YOU WERE BORN FOR? is one of the most assured and important projects to have emerged over the last decade. Constructing from and subverting a wide galaxy of source materials, these films are archeological digs into the very stuff, the conceptions, we are born into. Child decomposes the materials and gestures that would compose us. The films are charged with a startling and playful musicality and poetic and rigorous compression. Each image and sound cuts deep and works over time containing hidden and unhidden detonations working against the manufactured ambush that images have in store. Agile dances through treacherous debris, they negotiate an obstacle course of polar anatomies zig-zagging with corkscrew twists and nuclear splits -- a gambol against the hazards.

"as work in progress: treasures found in the streams around me."

Safe places to view from.