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OtherFilm

www.otherfilm.org

Otherfilm is a collective based in Brisbane, Australia, dedicated to avant-garde, experimental, abstract, expanded and other film. We express this dedication through screening programs, performance events, exhibitions, workshops, articles, research, discussions and arguments.

Abject Leader is a cine-sound organ based Brisbane, Australia performing with cinematic materials and apparatus, slipping between materialist investigation, sculptural forms, darkroom composition and bodily intervention.

A massive update of activities spread far and wide including imminent San Franciscan avant-garde adventures, steadily approaching sonic delights in Brisbane, and a mega list of horizon-dwelling OtherFilm events including two special IMA projects with luminaries Anthony McCall and Ken Jacobs. read on....

Imminently in San Francisco, USA

A series of engagements with the SAN FRANCISCO CINEMATHEQUE

1. Abject Leader (Sally Golding and Joel Stern) perform two sets of expanding cinema and 16mm colour cannibalism as part of...

APPARENT MOTION
A Celebration of Projection Arts
presented by SAN FRANCISCO CINEMATHEQUE
in association with the Illuminated Corridor and the San Francisco Bay Guardian

Saturday 20-February & Sunday 21-February
Victoria Theatre, 2961 16th Street (near Mission St.), San Francisco
all details at www.sfcinema.org

Apparent Motion celebrates the art of live image projection—the cinematic exhibition apparatus exposed as a primal light and sound machine, an invention without a future, ripe for rediscovery. Working with modified or distressed film projectors as if they were musical instruments or with live manipulation (even mutilation) of projected film (or even directly with the exalted beam of light itself), the artists presented over this weekend fuse image and sound into profound site-specific (yet cinematic) experiences—dazzling light works suggesting a paradoxically concrete form of sound/image synesthesia. With Abject Leader (Sally Golding & Joel Stern); Sandra Gibson and Luis Recorder (with local sound artist Adam Sonderberg); Karl Lemieux and Hyena Hive; and Bruce McClure, who will each present multiple works in the company of local artists CinePimps (Alfonzo Alvarez & Keith Arnold); Kerry Laitala and Michael Proft; Paul Clipson and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma; and Keith Evans.

2. Australian Avant-Garde Film Art at the SAN FRANCISCO CINEMATHEQUE
Another outing for this historic program curated by OtherFilm; Sally Golding, Joel Stern & Danni Zuvela

Tuesday March 2, 7:30pm
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
701 Mission Street, San Francisco

Australian avant-garde film history is characterized by formal investigation into themes of landscape, alienation and perception. While their works are in conversation with contemporaneous European and American filmmakers, experimental filmmakers in Australia have worked largely in isolation to produce highly developed experiments with split screens and mattes, optical sound, collage animation and optical techniques (such as colour separation processes). Using the landscape as motivation or a formal premise as a starting point, the films in this program reflect the iconic aesthetics and innovative approaches that shape Australian avant-garde film history from the early-1960s through the 1990s. The rare 16mm prints in this program are provided either directly from the filmmakers themselves or from the National Film & Sound Archive in Canberra, Australia.

full program here!

3. OtherFilm at ODDBALL FILMS.

Date: Thursday February 25th, 2010 at 8:30PM.
Venue: Oddball Films, 275 Capp Street, San Francisco

Join us for this rambling, evolving collaboration with the amazing oddball archive, featuring an UBU moment with films by David Perry, Albie Thoms, and Aggy Read (in tribute to the ailing Tuli Kupferberg).... Dr Albert P. Little's amazing educational 'Introduction to Optics' (1959, 20min, B&W)....
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Who’s Oscillating?
2 installations by Abject Leader
Real-time colour separation explorations for multiple 16mm projectors arranged in infinite oscillating phase cycles of saturated image and sound.

Four-Dimensional Nightmare (2009)
3x 16mm B&W film loops with RGB filters, optical sound & electronic soundscape
Conceived in the week of J. G. Ballard’s earthly demise, in tribute to German comic cosmonaut Perry Rhodan (b.1961), on the 40th anniversary of the moon landing; a dystopian space opera printed in lurid ‘Golding-colour’, with materials gleaned from the remnants of a deceased estate.

Domestic Abyss (2009)
3x 16mm B&W film loops with RGB filters, electronic & analogue soundscape
Antique postcards of domestic Victoriana, re-filmed and re-composited through multiple projection. Cinema as séance; extending and exposing latent, subversive messages fossilised since the 1920’s. The editing structure conforms to a secret mathematic phase formula.

phew,,, see you in SF

Of course, it's not all about SF. Our hearts are with you Brisbane, Brisbane, Brisbane

in 2010 the Institute of Modern Art and OtherFilm embark on a series of collaborative projects incorporating lectures, screenings, exhibitions and performances..

Anthony McCall - in person lecture and discussion
Institute of Modern Art
420 Brunswick Street, Fortitude Valley, Brisbane. AUSTRALIA
Thursday 11 Mar 2010, 6:00 pm, FREE

Anthony McCall is, without question, one of the seminal artists of American avant-garde cinema. His films and installations from the seventies such as Line Describing a Cone, Long Film for Four Projectors, and Four Projected Movements, represent an extraordinarily corporeal and sensuous meditation on the medium of film and the politics of the audience's physical and conceptual relationship to it. All of these works took as their starting point the irreducible, necessary conditions of cinema: projected light, and real, three-dimensional space. (text Sean Kelly Gallery) Thanks to Adam Art Gallery, Wellington.

Ken Jacobs: Ontic Antics - Stroboscopic Videos 2007-2009
Institute of Modern Art
420 Brunswick Street, Fortitude Valley, Brisbane. AUSTRALIA
Saturday 27 Mar - Saturday 29 May 2010. Opening 27 March 6pm.

New York artist Ken Jacobs’ remarkable anti-career in moving images spans over 40 years, charting a pioneering contribution to film, video and expanded cinema performance. He is widely acknowledged as ‘one of the most important experimental filmmakers of all time’. Jacobs’ contemporary video experiments explore perception, technology and the history of photography through intricate, intense deconstruction of nineteenth and early twentieth century stereoscopic photography – an antique 3D format based on the simultaneous binocular perception of slightly deviating images. These startling works expose an uncanny duplicity between two-and three-dimensionality, stillness and movement. Jacobs describes the stroboscopic effect as "necessary to create 'eternalisms': unfrozen slices of time, sustained movements going nowhere and unlike anything in life."

Heathen Skulls and OtherFilm present
JANDEK!!!
Saturday 27 March and Sunday 28 March 2010

still a bit tight lipped on this one regarding details,,, but yes, this iconoclasitc figure, described by David Keenan as"one of the greatest artists of the modern era" is definately coming to town, with two performances and an accompanying film program

OtherFilm events around Australia

Kinetic Carnival
Perth, Various Venues April 1-4 2010

OtherFilm present an avant-garden of delights with a tangy short film program for this new festival celebrating all things kinetic in the Wildflower State. Kinetic Carnival is a diverse event that focuses on exhibiting innovative works and present new screening concepts. The carnival will operate unlike traditional film festivals by utilizing unique spaces in various locations in the city.


Brisbane Experimental Super 8
Melbourne, Ian Potter Museum, Friday 23 April 2010

Between 1979 and 1983, the energies animating the post-punk movement generated an amazing slew of artworks, albums, performances and films in Brisbane. OtherFilm will be participating in the landmark Queensland Art show at the Ian Potter Museum curated by David Pestorius and featuring rare and beautiful Super 8 films by Gary Warner, John Nixon and Janelle Hurst made in Brisbane over this tumultuous period.


Ultimate Timelapse Megamix as part of Next Wave 2010
Melbourne, Federation Square, 13-30 May 2010

Next Wave 2010 will present two all-night video-art marathons featuring cutting-edge works by artists aged 30 and under from around Australia and Asia - including a prgram curated by OtherFilms' Danni Zuvela! Deckchairs and heaters will be set-up on both nights, enticing viewers to Federation Square at different times throughout the night.


and some sonic delights to behold...

Disembraining Machine #5
Sunday February 21 at Tidy Space / Alchemix Studios (29a Logan Rd, Woolloongabba)
Return of the monthly open noise and projection soiree for twenty ten, best year ever.
Guest programmed by Andrew Tuttle for maximum summer bliss...
w/ Tom Hall, Robert Curgenven, The Deadnotes, and Yout Dem

Lost Weekend Festival
March 6-7, River Stage Brisbane
Holy Shit! 2 day indie rock jamboree with an experimental Oto Stage curated by Lawrence English featuring ABJECT LEADER, BLANK REALM, JUSTICE YELDHAM, JAMES BLACKSHAW, DEERHOOF, TIM HECKER etc etc... Oh yeah, DINASAUR JR, WOODEN SHJIPS, JEFFREY LEWIS, DIRTY PROJECTORS, THE DRONES rockin the main stages..

 




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SMACK BANG
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2 NIGHTS OF ALIVE FILM SOUNDTRACKS AND EXTREME AUDIO VISUAL EXPLORATION
FROM 8PM SHARP - - - - - -JAN 29 & 30 2010
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THE RED RATTLER THEATRE 6 FAVERSHAM ST. MARRICKVILLE NSW 2204 AUSTRALIA
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TICKETS $15 FOR ONE NIGHT, $20 FOR BOTH
TICKETS ONLY AVAILABLE AT THE VENUE! GET IN EARLY!
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ARTIST BIOS, PICS AND TID BITS HERE
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(There will be popcorn)
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FRIDAY JAN 29
7.30 DOORS OPEN, 8pm PERFORMANCES BEGIN

DAVID STRATTON: MINI LECTURE ON WHEN SOUND MET CINEMA & THE DEATH OF THE SILENT FILM
The man who put Australian cinema on the world map, and World cinema in the Australian consciousness delivers a Mini-Lecture that will include some rare glimpses into the first ever sound film experiments

JACK LADDER
Performing a live soundtrack of song with his distinct sense of swagger, sanguine and a touch of raunch to 16mm film by Paul Winkler.

LOUISE CURHAM 3 PART HAND-PAINTED AND FOUND SUPER 8 FILM & ALISTER SPENCE, LIVE RHODES ORGAN SOUNDTRACKS
Louise Curham (Canberra) is a woman who believes that every super 8 projector deserves its own eco-system. Alister Spence (Sydney) has long been one of the leading lights in contemporary original jazz and improvised music in Australia. Together – they will present an extraordinary found and handpainted Super 8 film through paper pyramids, perspex screens and prepared surfaces with an exquisite Rhodes organ live soundtrack.

BOTBORG
Proving that the future of television is bleak, but scintillatingly beautiful.
Feedback video and sound massive from Brisbane.

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SATURDAY JAN 30
7.30 DOORS OPEN, 8pm PERFORMANCES BEGIN

CLAYTON THOMAS (DOUBLE BASS) & VICTORIA HUNT (BODY) (BERLIN/SYD) FILMED LIVE BY KIDS WITH CAMERAS
Clayton plays bass like a hobo in a drag race having a fist fight with euro-virtuosos, Victoria is one of the most mind altering body weather performers around. Mix that combo with a few kids with hand-helds, choosing to zoom in on the bits they find fascinating – live.

ABJECT LEADER (BRIS)
Blurring the line between why, when and how using what? A 16mm live film duo that performs live expanded cinema pieces which emphasise the analogue, the handmade, the photo-chemical and the acoustical.

JULIAN HAMILTON (SYD)
One half of songwriting & productions wunderkind duo The Presets - Drum machines are his middle name, Aria winning melodic invention is his game. He’ll be delivering a live electro film soundtrack to experimental 16mm film by Dirk De Bruyn.


FOOD FILM: BRENDAN WALLS & CLARE COOPER (SYD)
Live film soundtrack to 16mm films by Robert Wyatt. Edible, incredible.

Dr. ROBIN FOX (MELB)
Making florescent laser green convolutions the stuff of legend! Presenting an immersive and subversive new work for laptop laser and oscilloscope.

There will be popcorn.
GET DOWN ON IT.

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http://redrattler.org/
http://gutstring.net/
http://www.otherfilm.org/

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FULL PROGRAM HERE

WIRELESS IMAGINATION
DOUGLAS KAHN IN BRISBANE
November 7th and 8th, 2010, FREE ENTRY
State Library of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia,

NOISE ELECTROMAGNETISM GEOPHYSICS DADA CINEMA PERFORMANCE



Black Rain (Semiconductor, UK 2009) screening in THE CINEMA OF TURBULENT TRANSMISSIONS

A whole world of sound that’s “out there”

High-profile American theorist Douglas Kahn is set to unleash his unique mix of ideas about sound, art and the cosmos on Brisbane audiences. Kahn’s cutting-edge work explores the collision between art and technology in sonic practice by placing in the context of modern and postmodern experiment. As the art world marks the 100th anniversary of the Futurist Manifesto, Kahn’s celebrated research into the Futurists, noise, machines, music and electromagnetism resonates with a special significance.

Throughout October and November 2009 Kahn is touring Australia in association with the Australian Network of Art & Technology’s Embracing Sound program to promote the November 09 Sound Art issue of Art Monthly Australia, which he guest-edited. Douglas will share his insights into the relationships between astronomy, cosmology, science, technology, radical aesthetics and the natural noises made by electricity and other elemental energies in our atmosphere.

For the Brisbane leg of this tour, QUT, The State Library of Queensland and OtherFilm have partnered to bring Douglas Kahn to the city for a high-calibre 2-day festival experience, Wireless Imagination. The event will feature informative talks, eye- and ear-opening film screenings, and exhilarating live performances by leading sound artists from around Australia, all addressing the creative themes running throughout Kahn’s fascinating and eagerly sought-after scholarly work. We hope you can join us for this exclusive, evolving multimedia experience.


CURATORS: Joel Stern, Douglas Kahn, OtherFilm
ORGANISING PARTNERS: ANAT, QUT, SLQ / EDGE

www.anat.org.au
www.qut.edu.au
www.slq.qld.gov.au
www.artmonthly.org.auw

ww.otherfilm.org

The AMA November Sound Art edition and Kahn lecture tour is made possible from funding support from the Australia Council for the Arts Music Board and the Visual Arts Board International Strategies Review.

Full program– www.otherfilm.org
Douglas Kahn press - sarah@anat.org
other press – joel@otherfilm.org




Melbourne International Film Festival and OtherFilm present
Cantrills' Expanded Cinema
Saturday August 8th 2009
Carlton Courthouse, Melbourne



‘Cone Screen’, Age Gallery, Melbourne 1971

Melbourne avant-garde film pioneers Arthur and Corinne Cantrill have devoted their artistic careers to the fascinating possibilities of projected light. For over 40 years, they have created film experiences exploring the cinema’s relationship to performance, perception and the film medium itself. This expanded cinema program, the first staged in Melbourne since 1971, offers a unique opportunity to experience experimental cinema in action, and to be inspired by the Cantrills’ remarkable creative legacy.

For one night only, Melbourne audiences have the chance to experience history in the making, with the historic Expanded Cinema re-enactment by Australian film art legends Arthur and Corinne Cantrill. Not seen in Melbourne for over 30 years, the Cantrills’ Expanded Cinema shows are a provocative blend of projected film, art and live performance.

Using specially constructed and sculptured screens, multiple projectors and live performance, the Cantrills created experimental events to ‘expand the cinema’ beyond the traditional arrangements of screen, beam, projector and viewer. Some works involve the use of multi-screen projection to expand the screen itself, while others explore the beauty of the beam of light as it spills over different surfaces. Other performances revolving around the Cantrills’ performance poetry are both a testimony to their roots in Melbourne’s theatrical tradition and an enquiry into the conventions of the film soundtrack.

After experiencing the full force of London in the Swinging Sixties, the Cantrills began exploring in earnest the possibilities of film as a medium for creative expression. In addition to numerous highly experimental short films exploring nature, urbanity and more abstract subjects like film colour, the Cantrills began creating “film experiences” which pushed film – and spectators’ perception – to the very limits.

Inspired by the creative climate of late 1960s and early 1970s experimental film, in which artists deliberately ignored cinema’s conventional storytelling role, the Cantrills pioneered highly innovative approaches which encourage spectators to rethink the film medium, the film projector, its beam of light, and the screen itself. In addition to thought-provoking deconstruction of the cinema, the Cantrills Expanded Cinema shows are also surprisingly beautiful multi-sensory spectacles featuring the brilliant jewel-hues of projected 16mm film. Reflecting the utopian dreams of historic film art, these performances offer a refreshing opportunity for spectators to consider their relationship to cinema. And, as unique, site-specific live events, no two performances can ever be alike.

The Cantrills’ Expanded Cinema works represented the culmination of their time studying in Canberra at the ANU, and were later performed in a landmark exhibition at Melbourne’s Age Gallery. After the Expanded Cinema shows, the Cantrills went on to build a remarkable body of work exploring colour separation and avant-garde film processing techniques, landscape film and experimental documentary. However, until recently, the Cantrills’ highly significant work has been better known overseas than at home. Internationally, their avant-garde films have been celebrated with showings and acquisitions by numerous art and film institutions, including the Pompidou Centre and Museum of Modern Art. Their Expanded Cinema performances have only been performed in Canberra and Melbourne in the early 1970s, and Brisbane in 2006, when Brisbane-based artists’ collective OtherFilm – Sally Golding, Joel Stern and Danni Zuvela – invited the Cantrills to consider re-staging these historic works. Since then, attention has been turning to Arthur and Corinne Cantrill’s extraordinary career.

This Melbourne International Film Festival Expanded Cinema show, co-presented by OtherFilm, represents a unique opportunity to sample the idealist dreams of experimental cinema. You are invited to experience the poetic wonder of projected light, performed by two of Australia’s most important important avant-garde elders.



Arthur Cantrill at work, 1966




‘Calligraphy Contest for the New Year’, Age Gallery, Melbourne 1971



Arthur preparing custom screens at Age Gallery, Melbourne 1971

Curated by OtherFilm for MIFF 2009

http://www.otherfilm.org/
http://www.melbournefilmfestival.com.au/
http://www.innersense.com.au/mif/cantrill.html



The NEW ZEALAND FILM ARCHIVE and OtherFilm presents
This is Experimental: Australian Film Art on tour in New Zealand
June 11-13 2009, WELLINGTON, NZ

Full program at http://www.filmarchive.org.nz/

Thurs June 11, 7pm: Isolationist Eye Openers: Historic Australian Film Art 1962-1998
Fri June 12, 7pm: Retinex Reflux – a performance by Dirk de Bruyn
Sat June 13, 7pm: Light Piercing the Nerve – a performance by Abject Leader

This Is Experimental is an annual festival of experimental and avant-garde film that began at the New Zealand Film Archive in 2008. Following last years screenings by UK and New Zealand film-makers, this years focus is on Australia.

Dirk de Bruyn and Abject Leader are at the forefront of contemporary Australian artists' cinema, bringing performance and improvisation into a medium better known for static, self-effacing projection. Both acts revolve around the multiple projection of 16mm film, and the intervention with an array of lenses, custom-made devices and improvised sonic expression.

This is Experimental 2009 features live performances by both acts and a rare screening of Australian experimental film classics from 1962-1998 entitled Isolationist Eye Openers: Historic Australian Film Art 1962-1998.

All events $8 / $6.

All films from the historical program are shown on 16mm, prints courtesy of the National Film and Sound Archive, and courtesy of the artists.

This is Experimental: Australian Film Art on tour in New Zealand June 11-13 2009 has been made possible with the support of the Australian High Commission

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Live Cinema at Gus Fisher Gallery, Auckland
Event program at Gus Fisher Gallery

Sat June 20, 1pm: In advance of their concert, live cinema artists Joel Stern and Dirk de Bruyn present a workshop on their approach to live sound and vision using projection of found photography and celluloid.

Sat June 20, 7pm:Joel Stern (Brisbane) and Dirk de Bruyn (Melbourne) present a concert of live, expanded and experimental cinema. Organised by the New Zealand Film Archive and Floating Cinemas collective.



attention audio-spectator! 2 fine events in MELBOURNE featuring celluloid experimentation and eardrum exercise.

1.

ACMI, Federation Square, Melbourne Australia
Thu 7 May 2009, 6.30pm Free!
synaesthesia screen sound performance series curated by Eugenia Lim


ABJECT LEADER (Sally Golding + Joel Stern, Brisbane Australia) showcase recent constructions for multiple 16mm projection, film loops, photo-chemical manipulation, optical sound, and confusion; including new works:

Face of an Other (2008)
16mm film reel & loop, body screen
Obsessions with cinematic horror manifest onto the filmmaker’s own body in a bizarre accumulation of unreality.

Composted Memorial (2009)
16mm film reel and loops, 9.5mm archival images, waveforms, insects, obstructions
Photo-sonic film where images literally generate the noise, composed entirely in the darkroom, utilising home movies from 1920s & 1930s Brisbane.

Who’s Oscillating? (2009)
3x 16mm B&W film loops with RGB filters, electronic & analogue soundscape
An experiment in colour separation and ‘phasing’ using re-filmed antique postcards. An additive colour separation process where B&W film projected back though red, green and blue filters produces a heady saturated colour blast. The editing structure conforms to a secret mathematic phase formula.

Four Dimensional Nightmare (2009)
3x 16mm B&W film loops with RGB filters, optical sound & electronic soundscape
R.I.P. J. G. Ballard (15 November 1930 – 19 April 2009), long live Perry Rhodan (b.1961). Dystopian space opera.

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6 x 16mm film program
Lucid Dreams / Lurid Dreams curated by Abject Leader

Mongreloid - George Kuchar, USA, 1978, 10mins
In Mongreloid, Kuchar reminisces with his dog about their great times together.

Down Wind - Pat O'Neill, USA, 1972, 15mins
Prize-winning cats, cactus, machinery displays, tourist highlights, sports competitions, an old woman sitting on a bench, clouds, a cow, a dog sitting in a car.

Ghosts Before Breakfast - Hans Richter, Germany, 1927, 7mins
The Nazi attempt to destroy the film as "degenerate art" left only a silent version... flying hats settling like a flock of birds, a neck tie refuses to stay tied, windows open & closing as they elect, pistols multiply like mammals. Cinematic surrealism at its most pure and potent.

Our Lady of the Sphere - Larry Jordan, USA, 1969, 10mins
Max Ernst inspired constructions of cut-outs of Victorian engravings generating radical juxtapositions of scale, spatial context and the associative qualities of objects. Featuring a young boy tumbling through the cosmos and a balloon-headed woman.

Atomanu - Toshio Matsumoto, Japan, 1975, 12mins
Legendary visual assault shot frame-by-frame in an increasingly rapid circular motion. Atman is an early Buddhist deity often connected with destruction.

T.O.U.C.H.I.N.G. - (Paul Sharits, USA, 1968, 11 minutes)
"I´d like to give up Imitation and Illusion and I´d like to enter the higher drama of Celluloid, 2 dimensional film stripes, individual images, nature of perforation and emulsion, projector operations ... Light as energy creates its own objects, shadows and textures. If you take the facts of the retina, the flicker mechanism of film projection than you can make films without logic of language.“


2.

Tape Space, 1/81 Bouverie St, Carlton, Melbourne, Australia
Friday 8th May 2009, 8pm sharp, $6/$8

Amusements a la Psycho-Sub-Tropics
Unhinged and uncanny permutations from Brisbane, QLD, Sunshine State.



creatures on display:

This Imperial Can (Music Your Mind Will Love You, BOTOS) psycho-delic noise melter from sunny bleak Toowoomba plays mind altering magnetic signals & electro-ecstatic free form joy.
http://pacificsoma.blogspot.com/

Sally Golding (OtherFilm / Abject Leader) weaves discordant and distant narratives exhumed from forgotten minds. ''Opto-sonic composted film tropicala!" http://www.abjectleader.org

Chloe Cogle flicks the switches on found-fiction analogue slides... with ghastly consequences… treading on lost souls & exploring horrid habitats.

Horris Matrix recites clumsy mythology, flawed anthropology, foe nature, abandoned theme parks, nonsensical and unreasonable creatures. http://www.myspace.com/crouchandpounceplease

plus special Melbournians:

Zoe Scoglio (Tape Projects) drops some ritualistic shape-shifting to make you shiver.
http://www.tapeprojects.org/

A.Wallace And Tom Hall are preparing to time travel with you to a future noisenikpicnic.


OtherFilm and NFSA present
INTERNATIONAL EXPANDED CINEMA EXTRAVAGANZA
National Film and Sound Archive, Canberra, Australia
Saturday 4th April 2009, 7:30pm.

Like Dracula in charge of the bloodbank, we at OtherFilm are overjoyed to be let loose at the National Film and Sound Archive next week, in preparation for a *very* special event. We’ve discovered a rich vein of cine-matter, and we’d like to share it with you. We’re planning a breathtaking evening of live, installed & multiscreen performances featuring some of the most tempting treats of the international expanded cinema, to be experienced for one night only, in our nation’s gracious capital. From London, from New York, from Sydney and even Brisbane, there will be experimental projections in all directions, happening throughout and all about the hallowed halls of the Archive. With crazy multiscreen, psycho-active flicker and an Australian Film Revival-era documentary surprise - all projected on beautiful celluloid film - it is set be historic (and maybe even a little hysteric). We’re shivering in anticipation of the thrills in store for us, and for you. May we present The International Expanded Cinema Extravaganza – a feast for your senses, and ours.

All films from the historical program are shown on 16mm, prints courtesy of the National Film and Sound Archive, and courtesy of the artists. All videos in the contemporary program are presented in digital formats, courtesy of the artists

POINT SOURCE
(Tony Hill 1973, UK, unfixed duration, no screen, lightbulb, torches and various objects)
Expanded cinema as audience participation: creating their own dancing shadows, spectators become artists in this freeform exploration of the nature of projected light.


GOOD AFTERNOON
(Phil Noyce 1971, Australia, 28mins, 2x16mm)
"A radical new departure in documentary filmmaking; two screens bursting with pulsating images overpowering the mind as 10,000 young people and performers do their own thing amidst the antiseptic environment that is our capital city." (Phil Noyce). Australia's counter-culture at play at the Aquarius Festival of 1971 (held right here in Canberra!), & a peek into the underground past of one of Australia's most recognised directors.


FILM BY 15 PEOPLE: A PHOTO-SONIC TORCHLIGHT EXPERIMENT
(ANU students 2009, Australia, 6mins, 16mm)
A collective film produced by ANU photomedia students at a workshop delivered (yesterday!) by OtherFilm, contact-printed by means of torchlight, and made from material sourced from craft stores and recycled photographic negatives and positives. 'Hear' the images as they spill over into the sound track area usually reserved for optical soundtracks! See the birth of a new generation of film artists!


DIAGONAL
(William Raban 1973, UK, 6mins, 3-screens, 3x16mm)
Expanded cinema on the diagonal! Hard-edged abstraction from the London Filmmakers Co-op. "I was looking for a pure image, an image which was intrinsic to the medium of film...this film is about the projector gate, the plane where the film frame is arrested in the projected light beam, and the frame whose edges contain and divide the projected illusion from the blacked-out present of the movie theatre." -- William Raban


METEOR CRATER - GOSSE BLUFF
(Arthur and Corinne Cantrill 1978, Australia, 6mins,
3-screens, 3X16mm)
Australian avant-garde legends Arthur and Corinne Cantrill's spatial exploration of a special place the Western Arrente Aboriginal people of the Northern Territory call Tnorala. Tracing the imprint of a celestial body, this is one of the Cantrills' least well-known landscape works from their period of tremendous expanded cinema experiment.


BERLIN HORSE
(Malcolm Le Grice 1970, UK, 8mins, 2-screens, 16mm)
Expanding our sense of colour and time: two fragments of 8mm home-movie footage shot by Le Grice near Berlin, heightened by Brian Eno's 'decomposing' guitar loop (allegedly delivered via phone line!). Sound and image weave together in repeating cycles of action,
temporal manipulation, and distortion.


RAZOR BLADES
(Paul Sharits 1965-68, USA, 25mins, 2-screens, 16mm)
Expanding the limits of seeing and hearing; a foundational work in the 'flicker film' genre: "Paul Sharits consciously challenges our eyes, ears and minds to withstand a barrage of high-powered and often contradictory stimuli...we feel at times hypnotised and re-educated by some potent and mysterious force." -- David Beinstock


 THE BOILING ELECTRIC JUG FILM
(Arthur and Corinne Cantrill 1970, Australia, 8mins,
single screen, 16mm, boiling jug)
Minimalist cinema at its most domestic, exploring the intersection between the real and the projected image. "An exercise in suspense" (Cantrills) which introduces the 'steamy' jug-screen to expanded cinema's array of experimental projection surfaces.


POEM 25
(David Perry and Albie Thoms 1965, Australia, 1.5mins, Digibeta [originally 16mm])
A very early example (the first?) of Australian performed film by the trailblazing Ubu collective, featuring the titular poem by dada master Kurt Schwitters; numerical nonsense; and lots of shouting.
(Performer: Nielsen Gordon).


LINE DESCRIBING A CONE
(Anthony McCall 1973, UK, 30mins, single screen, 16mm)
Expanded cinema as beam-minus-screen; film as sculpture. "It deals with the projected light beam itself, rather than treating the light beam as a mere carrier of coded information." -- Anthony McCall


The National Film and Sound Archive collects, preserves, and provides access to Australia's historic and contemporary moving image and recorded sound culture: www.nfsa.gov.au

OtherFilm - Sally Golding, Joel Stern, Danni Zuvela

OtherFilm is a hybrid arts collective based in Brisbane, Australia dedicated to avant-garde, experimental, abstract, expanded and other cinemas. We host regular screening programs, performance events, exhibitions, workshops, articles, research, discussions and arguments, as well as a bi-annual 'expanded cinema' festival. To find out more, subscribe to
our mailing list at www.otherfilm.org

OtherFilm's visit was devised and produced with the assistance of Quentin Turnour, Cinema Programming, NFSA. Head Projectionist, NFSA: Reece Black


Yebisu International Festival for Art and Alternative Visions 2009 at Tokyo
Metropolitan Museum of Photography
1-13-3 Mita, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 153-0062 Japan
http://www.yebizo.com/?lang=en

OtherFilm presents.
THE AUSTRALIAN AVANT-GARDE

OtherFilm is a hybrid arts collective based in Brisbane, Australia dedicated to avant-garde, experimental, abstract, expanded and other cinemas. We host regular screening programs, performance events, exhibitions, workshops, articles, research, discussions and arguments, as well as a bi-annual 'expanded cinema' festival.

These diverse programs offer up a short but sweet taste of both historical and contemporary movements in the dynamic, demanding, engaging and exciting Australian scene.

All films from the historical program are shown on 16mm, prints courtesy of the National Film and Sound Archive, and courtesy of the artists. All videos in the contemporary program are presented in digital formats, courtesy of the artists.

Feb.22 19:30- Australian Historical Film Art - Theatre Hall 1F
Feb.23 16:00- Australian Contemporary Moving Image - Theater Hall 1F
Feb.24 19:30- Dirk De Bruyn and Joel Stern Performance - Gallery B1F

Dirk-De-Bruyn_LIGHT-PLAY
Dirk-De-Bruyn - LIGHT-PLAY

Program 1 - Australian Historical Film Art

Australian avant-garde film history is characterised by formal investigation into themes of landscape, alienation and perception. While their works are in conversation with contemporaneous European and American filmmakers, experimental filmmakers in Australia have worked largely in isolation to produce highly developed experiments with split screens and mattes, optical sound, collage animation and optical techniques such as colour separation processes. Using the landscape as motivation, or a formal premise as a starting point, the films in this program reflect the iconic aesthetics and innovative approaches that shape Australian avant-garde film history from the early 60s through until the 90s.

Dusan Marek (1926 -1993)
ADAM AND EVE
1962, 10mins, 16mm, Colour, Sound

Synopsis: Animation using cut-outs symbolising the life cycle from creation to apocalypse and rebirth. Czech-born Marek's paintings and films brought a distinctly dark European modernist slant to Australian surrealism.

Biography: In his filmmaking, as in his painting, Dusan Marek believed in the need to be completely free of outside influences, including styles of fllmmaking. He liked to think of working in the film medium as equivalent to a child playing with an object, discovering its properties freshly without being influenced by another child who may be more familiar with the object.

David Perry (UBU) (1933- )
HALFTONE
1966, 1min, B&W, Optical Sound

Synopsis: Explores the abstract graphic potential of newspaper photographs to create a visual score as well as produce optical sound.

Biography: David Perry is an Australian photographer and filmmaker, based in Sydney. During work on the production of The Theatre of Cruelty in Sydney, July 1965, he joined Albie Thoms, Aggy Read and John Clarke in establishing Ubu Films (named after Alfred Jarry's absurdist play Ubu Roi). This was Australia's first consciously avant -garde filmmaking group.

Albie Thoms (1941- )
MAN AND HIS WORLD
1966, 1 min, Colour, Sound

Synopsis: An 'expanded cinema film' in which a single-second explosion is elongated to a minute, and re-presented in split-screen format.

Biography: The success of Ubu Films and the legacy of experimental filmmaking in Australia in the 1960s can be attributed to the significant presence of Thoms, who relentlessly proselytised for avant-garde filmmaking and personally engineered the development of a synergic support network for production, distribution and exhibition of films outside the industrial aegis.

Arthur and Corinne Cantrill (1938- and 1928- )
4000 FRAMES, AN EYE OPENER FILM
1970, 3mins, B&W, Sound

Synopsis: A montage of four thousand single-frame images builds up on the retina to create graphic superimpositions.

Biography: Arthur and Corinne Cantrill have been making films together since 1960. Their film work includes rigorous interrogations of the photochemical nature of film, the poetics of perception, and contemplation of the unique Australian landscape. They have also created a remarkable body of 'live' and 'expanded cinema' performances, and published the avant-garde film journal Cantrills Filmnotes from 1971-2000. They are highly respected, internationally recognised 'elders' of Australian art.

Paul Winkler (1939- )
BONDI
1979, 15min, Colour, Sound

Synopsis: The iconic Aussie beach scene at Bondi Beach is presented in composite images using in-camera matting techniques, dividing the frame horizontally into multiple sections. Amos Vogel has described this manipulation of pictorial space as 'reminiscent of Max Ernst's surrealist collages'.

Biography: Hamburg-born Paul Winkler emigrated to Australia in 1959 and since then has created a remarkable body of unique films. Winkler's films involve the use of specially-created film effects, including mattes and refilming, which result in utterly unique composite images which deconstruct both time and space. Winkler remains the only Australian filmmaker to be given a solo show at a major Australian art institution and his films are held in many important international art collections.

George Gittoes (1949- )
RAINBOW WAY
1977, 11mins, Colour, Sound

Synopsis: An experimental study of the effects of light on water. Lyrical abstract patterns are created through the reflection of sunlight through a number of prisms and lenses.

Biography: Sydney-based George Gittoes is one of Australia's most important artists, as distinguished as a war artist as he is a social documentarian. In the late 1970s and early 1980s George explored some highly creative approaches to the moving image, including holography, underwater photography and multimedia environments involving performance, dance and projections.

Arthur and Corinne Cantrill
WATERFALL
1984, 18mins, Colour, Sound

Synopsis: One of a series of 3-colour separation studies in which the same scene is shot 3 times on B&W negative successively through red, green and blue filters. These three strips are printed onto one strip of colour stock producing both 'strikingly realistic colour' and dazzling artificial multi-coloured tints where there is movement.

Dirk De Bruyn (1950- )
LIGHT PLAY
1984, 7 mins, 16mm. Music by Michael Luck.

Synopsis: An abstract play of light, colour, geometric shapes and patterns synchronised with synthesised music. The image patterns have been created by scratching, drawing, painting and overlaying directly on clear and opaque film, and fragments of photographed positive and negative images.

Biography: Netherlands-born Dirk de Bruyn has made numerous experimental, documentary and animation works over the last 35 years; has curated various programs of film and video art internationally; and written extensively about this area of arts practice. Recently de Bruyn has attracted national and international attention for his highly original expanded cinema performances involving multiple projections, vocal improvisation and live performance.

Gregory Godhard (1966- )
MIND'S EYE
1998, 5 minutes, Colour, Sound

Synopsis: Comprised of over 1200 photographs, this rollercoaster journey through urban Australian environments transports the viewer along the little-used z-axis of pictorial space.

Biography: "Born in Sydney, Gregory Godhard continues to (mis)spend his time as an animator, experimental film-maker and artist. He has produced, directed and animated 12 short experimental 16mm films. His films have screened in numerous festivals around the world, picking up the occasional award and funny-looking trophy." --GG

Total running time 71mins

Program 2 - Australian Contemporary Moving Image

A survey of recent Australian film and moving image art encompassing materialist and handmade film,abstract animation, cracked narratives, and new video work inspired by themes which characterise the qualities of film.

Part 1: Film Artists

Gregory Godhard (1966- )
LIQUIDAMBAR
2003, 3:30 mins, Colour, 16mm, Silent

Synopsis: A self-funded, hand-made, silent experimental animation which uses organic materials to create an Australian floral homage to the late, great Stan Brakhage (1933-2003).

Dirk De Bruyn (1950- )
ANALOGUE STRESS #1, #2, #3
2004, 12 mins, Colour, 16mm, Sound

Synopsis: "Combines reworked and reanimated found industrial and discarded personal footage into something like an audio-visual/filmic version of a scraped back advertising billboard; multiple layers of tattered posters ripped and covered in spray paint, sinking into decay; a chaotic concrete soundtrack reconstructed from scratches, pen marks, Letraset strips and found music and phrases. It is a restless and arresting abstract description of excess and distress." (Steven Ball, 2005).

Biography: Netherlands-born Dirk de Bruyn has made numerous experimental, documentary and animation works over the last 35 years; has curated various programs of film and video art internationally; and written extensively about this area of arts practice. Recently de Bruyn has attracted national and international attention for his highly original expanded cinema performances involving multiple projections, vocal improvisation and live performance.

Louise Curham
CONIMBLA
2007, 8 mins, Hand processed super 8 to digital video, B&W with monochrome colour

Synopsis: "In thinking through the continuing reality in the new world of the southern hemisphere where our cultural phenomena still draw heavily on our European antecedents, I carefully restricted my impressions of the Camonica Valley to drawings and aerial views. A frequent visitor to the arid country of western NSW, the dry, dessicated country around Cowra initially stood in for, but then took over from, the European space of the original." -- LC

Biography: New Zealand-born, Sydney-based Curham is highly regarded for her sensitive explorations of the poetic potential of film material, particularly, the expressive range of hand-processed Super-8 films. She has worked extensively in the production of innovative projections in collaboration with sound artists and dancers and recently completed a residency in Yokohama, Japan.

Sally Golding (1979- )
BLOODLESS LANDSCAPE
2006, 7mins, B&W and Colour, digital screen version. Sound by Joel Stern.

Synopsis: Bloodless Landscape is an exploratory meditation on the visual and aural memory of landscape, and of the filmmakers own previous works. The refraction of vision into dual screens plays the images against each other, creating a juxtaposition of thought and time. The actors are trees, fields, clouds, horses, cows and houses, their intrinsic movements animated and distorted, and shadowed by a hypnotically repetitive sonic subtext.

Biography: Sally Golding (Brisbane) is a filmmaker, projectionist and audio-visual archivist whose work moves between materialist abstractions and dreamlike narrative forms. Using 16mm technologies and photographic darkroom processes, Sally deconstructs cinematic materials and apparatus, creating unique works realised as performed projection.

Pia Borg (1977- )
PALIMPSEST
2007, 10 mins, Colour, Digibeta

Synopsis: With carefully composed montages of old photographs, found objects, human hair, scanned textures, dust or insects on 16mm footage, PALIMPSEST pays homage to photographs of spirits from Victorian times. Characters appear, disappear, then re-appear in a ghostly exploration of time and space.

Biography: Pia Borg's animated film Footnote (2003) was nominated for the Palme d'Or in the 2004 official Cinfondation selection at Cannes. Informed by German Expressionist cinema and utilising traditional animation techniques, each frame is carefully composed from a montage that encompasses old photographs, found objects, human hair, scanned textures, dust, insects and discarded 16mm footage.

Marcia Jane
TIMEBALL
2007, 4 mins, Colour, Digibeta
http://www.permutations.net/

Synopsis: Images from a significant place from my childhood; a beach where I grew up, are ordered and structured in repetitive clusters, each moment in time sliced and woven to form a chaotic, rhythmic mix.

Biography: Marcia Jane is a video and film artist based in Melbourne, Australia. Her current video work involves images of her personal spaces and environments, streets and spaces encountered every day. Intensive editing is a means to process and rethink this material: images are abstracted and structured in new graphic and rhythmic relationships. The effect is kinetic, prismatic, and experiential.

Audrey Lam (1981- )
UNDERDEVELOPMENT
2007, 7 mins, B&W, Digibeta
http://audreylam.net/films.htm

Synopsis: Experimental animation interested in the political constructs and implications of urban sites and spaces in real and imagined contexts. Maps, deeds, plans and photographs become re-presentations of the 'actual' sites; film and camera techniques such as projections and stop-motion photo-collage re-construct settings in an unsettling story of a city under development.

Biography: Audrey Lam was born in Hong Kong and lives in Brisbane. Her filmmaking practice runs concomitantly with her experimentations in photography, printmaking and drawing.

Christina Tester (1985 - )
Gravity Rebels
2008, 4 mins, B&W, Digibeta

Synopsis: Reality is redefined when a collection of unadorned inanimate forms come to life, continuously morphing and moving, free from the limitations of gravity, playfully challenging the laws of nature.

Biography: Christina Tester is a Melbourne-based sound, visual and performance artist exploring everyday materials and the human voice. Her works range from the poetic and sonic (culminating in performances at numerous experimental music events throughout Australia) to the animated and filmic. Her work Come Together featured in Melbourne International Film Festival 2008.

Nylstoch (1979 - )
MISTREATMENT OF MEMORY
2008, 4 mins, DVD
http://www.ventinggallery.com/

Synopsis: Capture the moment, Mistreatment of memory, Lost in translation

Biography: Nylstoch makes short films. Like Bodhidharma and Kren. It is all music. Co-Founder of venting gallery archival laboratory of experimental music and cinema, Nylstoch maintains an index of over 5000 original audio titles in various genres and also video documents outsider and contemporary folk music.

Jim Knox
ASTROLOGY IS RUBBISH
2008, 2 mins, DVD

Synopsis: 35mm original chopped-about to pass though a 16mm projector gate. An ultra-dimensional assault on the physical integrity of the film frame; but not half-as-good as Lynsey Martin's Leading Ladies (to my thinking, the most-destroyed-ever monsterpiece of Aus exp/outsider filmmaking).

Biography: Filmmaker, artist and obsessive, Jim Knox hosted the Articulating Space concert series at his Ignifuge warehouse, Melbourne, managed screen programs for What Is Music? and Meredith Music Festivals, and produced short films by Pia Borg, Callum Cooper and Dirk De Bruyn.