les arbres de strasbourg

Retrospective posting, this one, as I have been too busy preparing Bewick’s Mambo, our Sound and Vision phase 2 project, with Paul Miskin and Northern Film and Media.

However, it does give me real pleasure to record that tree stain man had its European premiere last night at the Musee d’Art Contemporain in Strasbourg, France, as part of a carte blanche for the review Dérives.  They also screened two thousand walls. Once again, it’s an honour to share the billing with Philippe Cote and Peter Hutton. I wasn’t able to make the journey, but I was there in spirit.

Next stop: Brussels, again, with screenings of Drying up Palestine scheduled for Saturday 16 and Friday 22 February. More details when I can provide the links to the relevant websites.

and this week’s world premiere is…

2007 has been a busy, and productive, year.

My most recent film, tree stain man (hommage to stan) will have its world premiere this Sunday evening at Eyedrum in Atlanta, Georgia, as part of the Film Love series curated by Andy Ditzler. This is a short experimental work based on footage of trees I shot in New College, Oxford, back in 2001, the week after I bought my first Super 8 camera. I’d been looking for something to do with this footage for a long time, and it finally began to come together last summer – tho as usual, it then took me over a year to consider the work finally abandoned — sorry, ‘finished’. The result is intended as a tribute to the late, great Stan Brakhage — tho the aesthetic debt is more to his later, handmade abstracts, then to his epic visual poem dog star man to which my title alludes.

The screening will be part of a programme, Openings, which is composed entirely of silent experimental films. Roger Ruzow and the Atlanta Fourth Ward Improvisational Ensemble will be on hand to create a live soundtrack. It promises to be a great night — I wish I could be there — so if you’re in the neighbourhood, do drop by!

The show will start at 7pm sharp.

walls within walls

Saw David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises last night, which actually seems appropriate enough: Breather was screened in competition at the Tirana International Film Festival on Tuesday, and next Thursday, two thousand walls will be showing at the Alternative film/video festival in Novi Beograd, which Wikipedia describes as ‘a city within a city’.

So once again, Hugh Purcell’s prediction that I would one day be big in Eastern Europe seems to be inching closer and closer to fulfillment…:)

Paul Miskin was supposed to be in Tirana to do a big street show for the Mayor, but they cancelled on him at the last minute, so there was no one there to tell me how the show went. Shame: I always wanted to go to Albania ‘before it was too late’. But maybe this is a sign that it is too late, already…

Breather wins 2007 Sound and Vision award

On Tuesday 30 October, NFM announced that Breather has won the 2007 Sound and Vision award. This means, we now have £3000 to make another short film together.

So this is where the hard work really begins…

Thanks to everyone who voted for us! And to everyone who helped make Breather happen. You know who you are — and you know how much it cost you. So if you don’t want to get mixed up in the sequel, now’s the time to keep your head down…

breathe on!

Breather is now online!

You can view the film here, leave comments, and even vote for it — if you like it better than the five others! You have till 30 October to make your mind up!

If we win on the clapometer, NFM will give us £3000 to make the sequel. So do you want to know what happens to that stone, or not?!

We have also been selected for Depict! 07, so if voting once isn’t enough for you, you can also vote over there.

We hope you enjoy watching it as much as we did making it!

There are a few other gems on the NFM website: I particularly recommend the wonderfully daft Moon Shot UK by James Harris: Cullercoats will never seem the same again! He needs your votes, too, if he is ever to get to the bottom of Final Fantasy…:)

boston to brussels

Drying up Palestine had its Palestinian premiere on 1 October at Bir Zeit University, as part of a course on Transboundary Water Issues organised in collaboration with the London School of Economics and Oxfam Great Britain. Thanks to Mark Zeitoun, Clemens Messerschmidt and Amjad Aliewi for helping set this up. Drying up then went on to be screened twice as part of the Boston Palestine Film Festival in the same week.

The next screenings will be at the AMAL Film Festival in Santiago de Compostela on 24 October, and at the Brussels Arab Film Festival on 29 October. I will be at the Brussels screening, which is at 7pm, and will be followed by an evening of Palestinian food and music at the Espace Matonge next door. If you’re in town, do come along!

The website is now up in a very provisional form. I hope that this will be functioning properly soon. Work continues on a DVD which will have English, French and Arabic subtitles. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Watch this space!

iowa to arcueil

After Oblo and Antimatter, two thousand walls was shown at the Iowa City Experimental (ICE) Film Festival on 5 October. ICE has taken over from the late lamented Thaw Festival — though metaphorically, that might seem like both a bad idea, and an unlikely proposition, now that even the Arctic seems to be thawing rather than freezing over. Still, if anyone can reverse the course of global warming armed with only a roll of K-40 and a pair of scissors, it is these guys!

Looking ahead, the next scheduled screening for two thousand walls will be in Arcueil (Ile de France) at 5pm on 2 November, at Les Ecrans Documentaires. I am particularly honoured to be part of this programme, which is a carte blanche curated by the review Dérives. Not only is Dérives a wonderful initiative (I was very happy to be able to attend their launch at Les Voutes a few weeks ago), but I also get to share the bill with two of my heroes, Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, whose Cinétract — the last film they made before Danièle’s untimely death last year — will close the programme. Many thanks to Damien Monnier and Noria Haddadi for inviting me to take part. I also look forward to, for once, being able to be there in person!

(Spontaneous plug: the other thing I’m really looking forward to in Arcueil is catching the second episode of Emanuelle Moris’s wonderful five-part description of an Alexandrian neighbourhood, Mahfrouza, which is part of the ‘Premier geste’ competition. We saw the first installment this summer in Lussas, and it blew me away. Like Pedro Costa with a sense of humour. If you get a chance to see it, don’t miss it!)

drying up premiere

One thing which you can’t really tell from my website is what else I was doing in Palestine over the last four years.

This mystery is partly solved as of today, with the world premiere of Drying up Palestine, which I codirected with Rima Essa, at the Freedom Film Festival in Kuala Lumpur.

This documentary presents a direct, no-nonsense account of the problems ordinary people have accessing clean water in the occupied Palestinian territories. It was produced for the Ramallah-based NGO, House of Water and Environment, set up by our friend Amjad Aliewi.

There are more screenings already lined up at festivals in Boston, Brussels, and Santiago de Compostela over the next month or two. A website should go live by the end of September, and you will be able to buy DVDs online.

While this film is less personal than the rest of my work, we think this is a strong story, and one which needs to be heard.

Watch this space for more details in the coming weeks.

wall goes underground

“In a world saturated with ephemeral TV images and news reports, Two thousand walls (a song for Jayyous) adopts a distinctive, sensitive approach, which avoids the twin traps of aestheticisation and voyeurism. The way in which it brings together different voices and languages within the same confined, interiorised space, demonstrates what an experimental approach can do for the treatment of topical issues.”

On Sunday 9 September, two thousand walls was chosen as winner of the Oblo Underground Short Film Festival in Lausanne, Switzerland. Many thanks to the team at Oblo who selected me to participate, and to the jury for rewarding my work — both for the honour itself, and for the terms in which it was conceived (see citation above).

Two thousand walls now continues its peregrinations. You can catch it at 7pm on 23 September at the Antimatter Underground Film Festival in Victoria, BC, Canada, as part of a programme called, appropriately enough, ‘Two thousand walls’… Looking further ahead, on 24 November, it will be screened in Nicosia, Cyprus, at the 6th Pantheon Xperimental Film and Animation Festival.

time for a …

Breather finally came together on 7 and 8 August, by which time, Teesside didn’t look anything like the picture in the previous entry! Still, at least this meant that cast and crew could get a nice sun tan…

The shoot went like a dream: in addition to the names checked below, kudos to Tom Evans, 2nd camera assistant, improvised apprentice grip and runner extraordinaire, in particular for his heroic multiple trips to Leeds, and to my mum Joan for some excellent sandwiches. Mark Pinder documented the whole event on digital memory cards, and they are his images (all rights reserved) which you can see in this entry. In fact, we has such a good time up on the moors, that I began to wonder what the final film would be like…

Of course, in the end, I needn’t have worried. Chris’s rock rolled in just the awkward way I had imagined, Scali coped with it manfully but hopelessly (or was that acting?…), and Adam’s photography turned out beautifully. As we moved into post, Bruno Tracq helped me push the images just far enough to get the most out of them, and Ludovic van Pachterbeke found sounds from his travels around the world which miraculously matched the feeling of a brisk August day in County Durham.

The final result is delightful, poignant, and ridiculous in roughly equal proportions — and I can say that because I know how much of that effect is due to the generosity and talent of other people, rather than to any masterplan I may once have had in my head. But why trust me? Northern Film and Media will be putting Breather on the web at the end of September, and then you’ll get the opportunity to judge for yourselves! Watch this space for a link, and more details.