Issue 31 | Winter 2012: In Conversation
EDITORIAL
A Matter of Time
By Pamela Jahn
In a conversation with Maciej Drygas included in this issue, the Polish filmmaker explains that he has cut out the word "interview" from his personal dictionary. A lecturer at the National Film School in Åódź, he keeps telling his students: "Don't use the word interview. When you meet a person, meet them for a conversation, not an interview." What is crucial to remember when talking to someone, Drygas says, is "the ability to listen to them patiently." There is no script, there are no pre-formulated questions either, all one should do is take some time and "follow a person's history."
Free Radicals
INTERVIEW
A Story of Experimental Film
Part film essay and part tribute to his friends, including Jonas Mekas, Peter Kubelka, Ken Jacobs and Robert Breer, Free Radicals is the result of Pip Chodorov’s personal journey through the history of avant-garde cinema in Europe and the USA.
INTERVIEW
Connecting Movements
By Luke Burton
Since his first foray into filmmaking with a series of single-shot films in the late 1960s, Larry Gottheim has been a driving force in American avant-garde and experimental cinema.
INTERVIEW
At Least I Will Know My Face
Over the course of 20-plus years, Sarah Pucill has created a mirroring universe, that probes the notion of identity and "the Other". In this interview, the artist discusses her new project surrounding French surrealist artist Claude Cahun.
INTERVIEW
As I See You You See Me
By Julian Ross
Considered one of the leading figures of media arts in post-war Japan, Takahiko Iimura has been exploring the conjunctions and the boundaries between film, video and digital platforms in a body of works that comprises screenings, installations and expanded projections.
QUESTION AND ANSWER
Propaganda for the Politics of Joy and Disorder
By Stuart Comer
Wynn Chamberlain’s Brand X is an exuberant testament to both the playfully political approach of the underground and its interface with an increasingly voracious mass media.
Documents: History and Anthropology
QUESTION AND ANSWER
The Patagonian Hare
By Libby Saxton
Following the 25th anniversary screening of Shoah at the Prince Charles Cinema, London, on 18 June 2011, Claude Lanzmann discussed his film in a Q&A with the audience, moderated by Libby Saxton.
INTERVIEW
State of Weightlessness
Maciej Drygas's slim body of work numbering five documentaries, all under one hour long, belie the sheer dedication and effort in their construction. Drygas cuts to the true essence of the forgotten and suppressed not only through the painstaking research for which he is known...
INTERVIEW
Nostalgia for the Light
By Nerina Moris
In his latest film, Nostalgia For The Light Patricio Guzmán continues his work around memory, yet taking his thoughts beyond the facts that are steeped in the history of his country as he relates them to the mysteries of life and the universe.
Censorship and Resistance
QUESTION AND ANSWER
Five Broken Cameras
When the Israeli government began to build the West Bank barrier through Emad Burnat’s village in 2005, the Palestinian farmer took his own course of action by filming the weekly demonstrations.
INTERVIEW
Challenging the Censorship in Iran
By Parviz Jahed
On 20 December 2010, Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi was handed a six-year jail sentence and a 20-year ban on making or directing any movies, writing screenplays, giving any form of interview with Iranian or foreign media, as well as leaving the country.
INTERVIEW
27 Years Without Images
By Julian Ross
With his docu-essay The Anabasis Of May And Fusako Shigenobu, Masao Adachi And 27 Years Without Images as the nebulas, Eric Baudelaire has created an installation of photographs, drawings, newspaper clippings and paintings that surround the film for his first solo exhibition in the UK.
The Politics of Exhibition and Distribution
INTERVIEW
Binka: To Tell a Story About Silence
With themes that are rooted in her home country's history and culture, Elka Nikolova made a number of short films before making her first feature length documentary film Binka: To Tell A Story About Silence, about the pioneering female director Binka Zhelyazkova.
VIDEO
Bite the Beast
By Alongkot | Pamela Jahn
Even after the international success of his latest feature film Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Apichatpong Weerasethakul sees himself confronted with the same problems as before when working outside the strict confines of the Thai film studio system, a system that hasn’t changed much for over a decade.
INTERVIEW
After the Garden
By Julian Ross
Since its conception in 2008, New York's Light Industry has lit up the arts scene of Brooklyn with their weekly programmes of film and electronic arts, becoming a source of inspiration for its curatorial rigour, clarity in vision and slick delivery.
INTERVIEW
Treasures from the Archives
By Parviz Jahed
Programme advisor on the Treasures from the Archive strand of the BFI London Film Festival, Clyde Jeavons is the former curator of the National Film and Television Archive at the British Film Institute.
After the Screenings
QUESTION AND ANSWER
Remake
Adam Roberts's Remake is Georges Franju's horror classic Eyes Without A Face stripped down to the essence of its haunting narrative structure. However, instead of reverting to the French original, Roberts reshoots scene for scene Anton Giulio Majano's Seddok, l'erede di Satana.
QUESTION AND ANSWER
(Wo)Man with Mirror
In November 2009, Close-Up hosted a screening of a selection of Guy Sherwin's silent films from his Short Film Series. Sherwin joined the event to presents his astonishing live performance piece Man With Mirror, where he uses a mirror to interact with a projection of a film of himself.
QUESTION AND ANSWER
Line Describing Your Mom
Michael Robinson made his first short film – a home-movie take on Poltergeist – at the age of 11 and has since worked with film, video and photography exploring the poetics of loss and the dangers of growing up in a mediated world...
QUESTION AND ANSWER
A Little Present to My Friend Columbus
Stephanie Barber's films and videos are concerned with the content, musicality and experimental qualities of language. In Letters, Notes (1997), the artist uses old snapshots overlaid with texts fragments taken from found letters...
Issue 31 - Winter 2012
"A revolution is an organ, a body, a flock of birds flying in the same direction, but there are thousands of birds moving and some leave the flock. It’s like a galaxy moving." – Patricio Guzmán
Editor: Pamela Jahn
Assistant Editors: Michael Garrad, Laura Staab
Commissioning Editors: Robert Chilcott, Julian Ross
Assistants: Charlie Sandford, Tom Chick, Alice Roots, Julia Gelpke, Tanya Morozova-Malachovskaja, Pauline Thiry
Archives
2010
No.29 | Spring
2009
No.28 | November
No.27 | September
No.26 | August
Vol.4 | No.3 | Summer
No.25 | June
No.24 | March
Vol.4 | No.2 | Winter-Spring
No.23 | February
2008
No.22 | December
No.21 | November
Vol.4 | No.1 | Autumn-Winter
No.20 | September
No.19 | August
No.18 | June
No.17 | May
No.16 | March
Vol.3 | No.9 | Spring-Summer
No.15 | February
Vol.3 | No.8 | Winter
2007
No.14 | December
No.13 | November
No.12 | September
Vol.3 | No.7 | Autumn
No.11 | August
Vol.3 | No.6 | Summer
No.10 | June
No.9 | May
No.8 | March
Vol.3 | No.5 | Spring
No.7 | February
Vol.3 | No.4 | Winter
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