30 March 2010: More or Less Annihilated by Saccadic Enchainment by the Sea

Film Details

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.

Emtigon

Joe Comerford
1965 | 10 mins | B/W | DV
An elliptical narrative with an injection of perverted Irish humour.

Un Peu Moins

Donal O'Ceilleachair | Konstantin Bojanov
2006 | 6 mins | B/W and Colour | DV
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.

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 by Esperanza Collado

"Since there is no worthwhile commercial cinema in Ireland, all great Irish films come from experimental cinema." -- Maximilian Le Cain 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.