Against a plain, unchanging blue screen, a densely interwoven soundtrack of voices, sound effects and music attempt to convey a portrait of Derek Jarman's experiences with AIDS, both literally and allegorically, together with an exploration of the meanings associated with the colour blue.
Experimental essay in film history, associating very early archive material (circa 1909) and studio shot footage in an attempt to provide insights into the way in which "film language" developed during the silent era, with emphasis on the process by which spectators came to be increasingly "contained" with the space time of narrative.
The Arts Council commissioned this film to coincide with their major retrospective of Giacometti's work at the Tate Gallery (now Tate Britain) in the summer of 1965. A similar exhibition was held concurrently at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, sealing the artist's reputation as a modern master.
In this film an interior landscape is scrutinised, and an apparent rational calm is revealed as suffocating. Milk and Glass is an evocative journey from surface to interior – a black-coated mirror, the hollow of a bowl, a cavernous throat; a brush demarcates a line of lip on a flat surface, a mouth doubles up with the bowl and is virtually spoon-fed till it chokes.
Remembrance of Things Fast represents the culmination of Maybury's work in video, which has developed alongside the technology itself. Starring Tilda Swinton and Rupert Everett in lead roles, the tape confronts the conventions of world television and satellite broadcast, drawing on the fragmentary nature of the medium and the cliches of the three minute attention span. At the same time, it replaces bland mainstream images with darker, more satirical observations and studies. The environment is surreal, a virtual reality television land of landscapes and imaginary cities, enhanced by Marvin Black's dark, dense soundtrack. It is a cyberspace where the impossible is all too possible. Within this parallel world, a series of archetypes act, observe and comment, informed by a strong sexual sensibility. '..a mesmerising, sometimes hysterically funny, cinematic bricolage with a strong sexual and mostly gay sensibility'. - Cordelia Swann
Documentary on advertising. Investigates the way work has disappeared from advertising images, and traces the phenomenon through archive advertising films from 1897 to 1960. Places advertising in the context of historical events and everyday life, archive material being juxtaposed with contemporary images.
Vertical Features Remake is a film by Peter Greenaway. It portrays the work of a fictional Institute of Reclamation and Restoration as they attempt to assemble raw footage taken by ornithologist Tulse Luper into a short film, in accordance with his notes and structuralist film theory. The footage consists mostly of vertical landscape features, such as trees and posts, shot in the English landscape.
A portrait of Salford-born poet, storyteller and comic, John Cooper-Clarke. His poems, a satirical blend of humour and social comment, are delivered at a fast pace, often with musical backing. His style, and that of his contemporary Linton Kwesi Johnson, have influenced a generation of younger poets involved in a revival of popular poetry in Britain.
A brief look at the life of the Greek poet Constantine Cavafy.
Oscar Wilde’s famous and eloquent defence of love – made while he was being cross-examined at the trial that led to his incarceration and death – is strikingly illustrated, word by word, with Mapplethorpe-like imagery.
Toulouse-Lautrec's sketchbooks are turned into an animated short.
It is night and, in the foyer of a small hotel, a receptionist performs her tasks, unhurried and impassive, her face ghost-white, an emotional mask. Like the camera, she gazes steadily, both silent spectator and vicarious participant in the fantasies played out by the hotel's transient guests. As the night progresses, she answers a phone, hands over a key; guests pass back and forth gradually taking on a dream-like presence. She continues to work and, when morning comes, she leaves, her nightshift over. 'NIGHTSHIFT shows what film can do if the conventional pace of narrative is slowed down and montage diminished. It is not a new idea, of course, but the way it is done here is both absorbing to look at and satisfying from the moral point of view.' (Jill Forbes, Monthly Film Bulletin)
A survey of the painting of Henri Matisse, revealing the development of the idyllic quality in his work. Studies pictures from the beginning of his career, and follows the spontaneous flowering of color.
Introduces the world of painter René Magritte through an assemblage of the painter's images. Includes statements by Magritte about his intentions and anecdotes from his friends Mesens and Scutenaire.
A memory-using location film of a stay with a uranium mining community. Using a kaleidoscopic array of experimental techniques, this film explores uranium mining in Canada and its destructive effects on both the environment and the women working in the mines. A plethora of images ranging from the women at work to spine-chilling representations of cancerous bodies are accompanied by unnerving industrial sounds and straightforward information from some of the women.
Gilbert & George are renowned for presenting themselves as ‘living sculptures,’ fusing their art and identity with the external world. Their exploration of the bleak urban surrounds of 1980’s London, powerfully evoke the desires and tensions of its disillusioned youth alongside their own eccentricities. Poetic narration combines with vivid imagery that moves between the startlingly beautiful, the humorous, and the absurd. Church spires and city streets, youth and drunks, dancing and tea-drinking all take on an affecting symbolism when viewed from the unique perspective of Gilbert & George.
Stabat Mater opens and closes with two sung laments, then launches into a breathless torrent of words and phrases, a re-reading of the eternal feminine of Joyce’s Ulysses, which echoes the exultant/feverish swoop of the camera through a Mediterranean landscape
Stephen Dwoskin brings together members of the Ballet Negres dance company, founded in London in 1946.
A kaleidoscopic celebration of the 1980 Notting Hill Carnival. Arts Council of Great Britain.
Biographical short about the American Pop Artist by James Scott
