Millennium Film Journal No. 81 Launch Screening

Since its inception in 1978, the Millennium Film Journal has aspired to provide a space for writers and artists to document and discuss the ever-evolving field of artists' moving image. With its consistent focus on contemporary media, the MFJ is a primary source record of the last 45+ years of the field. Curated by Grahame Weinbren, Vince Warne, and Jonathan Ellis, this programme celebrates the launch of MFJ No. 81 “Dedication”. Reflecting themes of grief and resilience, the screening includes work from recently departed artists who left their indelible mark on experimental film history, alongside new work from emerging filmmakers who push film language to its ecstatic limits.

After Lumière
Malcolm Le Grice,1974, 13 min

Followed by the Lumière Brothers’ L’Arroseur Arrosé (1895)

“Malcolm was always an original. He knew the path ahead and it was his own, though he was happy to share his journey with others. (...) He played jazz guitar. Later he would ‘play’ the film printer and the film projector as if they were musical instruments, albeit heavier and even more temperamental. But performance-instruments they convincingly became (...) He was never in doubt about the importance of his own work and that of those with whom he most closely worked as well as that of a multitude of students whose work was very distant from his own. They all had reason to be grateful for his support – and they loved him, as I did.” – David Curtis

My Name Is Oona
Gunvor Nelson, 1969, 10 min

“Transitions were extremely important to Gunvor. She was always thinking about how to enter the front door of an image and how and when to get out. A shot was like an airport and the arrival and departure times of every single plane were critical. Otherwise there might be too much chaos on the tarmac! (...) Gunvor once explained to me that when you finish editing your film, you will feel ecstatic. Then, there will be a profound sense of loss. To be inside the making of a film is an incredibly consuming fusion of the intellectual and the artistic. No matter what is going on in your home or in the world beyond, you have your film, and that, sometimes, is enough.” – Lynne Sachs

Taller (Workshop)
Narcisa Hirsch, 1974, 10 min

“Narcisa Hirsch, who died last year at 96, had much in common with her generation of experimental filmmakers. She worked at a small scale with practically no money, shooting what was around her, declining to engage professional actors or to write treatments or scripts. Yet her work had a way of diverging from the spare, cerebral style associated with film and performance of the 1970s. A friend who attended her recent retrospective at Microscope Gallery mentioned to me a certain “warmth” in her films, and I knew immediately what he meant.” – Nicholas Gamso

Go Between
Chris Kennedy, 2024, 6 min

“One of the major works from this year’s edition of the TIFF Wavelengths series is Chris Kennedy’s Go-Between, a simple idea turned adroit in the hands of a skillful and imaginative imagemaker (...) Kennedy’s film is simple but fun, its conceit bringing dynamic movement and repetition within a simple scene – cars crossing a bridge suddenly becomes a kaleidoscopic exercise where images and objects appear and disappear and then reap​​pear at random.” – Soham Gadre

Grandmamauntsistercat
Zuza Banasinska, 2024, 23 min

​“Grandmamauntsistercat is a montage compiled from cold-war era films made at the Educational Film Studio of the same institution. Thus, on one level it functions as a retrospective reflection on how attitudes were expressed in film at the time, and which in both manifestations – the original and the re-worked – address questions of formation, self-image and the ideological character of education. (...) the film is focused on the way misogynistic attitudes, expressed in the historical representations of Baba Jaga as hideous and repulsive, persist in the present via the juxtaposition of the myth with the overwhelmingly genteel contemporary material of the film.” – Nicky Hamlyn

WALD - The Forest
Christoph Janetzko, 2023, 13 min

“Shot between 2019 and 2022, his film captures the dying forests of the Harz Mountains, documenting the devastating effects of climate change. (...) The destroyed forest becomes an artistic topos, a symbol of an environmental catastrophe caused by climate change. (...) Through advanced digital editing techniques – masking, selective color extraction, time-based color changes, and compositing – the film mirrors the degradation of nature in the transformation of the film frames themselves. The dying forest becomes an emblem not only of ecological destruction but also of an urgent artistic vision.” – Ulrich Stein

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The Millennium Film Workshop gratefully acknowledges support for the Millennium Film Journal by the following individuals and organizations: Deborah and Dan Duane; Walter and Karla Goldschmidt Foundation; C. Noll Brinckmann, anonymous donors; and New York State Council on the Arts.