AFW - New selected works @ The Brunswick Green: Experimental from AFW & NFSA

Melbourne - Brunswick Green - 26th April 2022 - Screening #53

Presented by Sebastian Vaccaris
Melbourne: Tuesday, April 26 – 8pm @ Brunswick Green (313/315 Sydney Rd, Brunswick VIC 3056)

Melbourne-based writer and filmmaker Sebastian Vaccaris will present a selection of recent films from the artist-run film lab Artist Film Workshop & a varierty of films from the National film and sound archive (NFSA)

Valpi (Diana Barrie & Richard Tuohy, 2019, 9 min, 16mm)
Valparaiso is a city defined not only by arts and culture, but it is also a marvel of improvised urban design and unique architecture. Also called as “the jewel of the pacific” or “Valparadise”, Valparaiso is composed by more than 200 different hills where some of the most audacious artists inspire to create their art.

Valpi - is horizontally segmented, creating an immersive yet abstracted chronicle of both the multifaceted layers of human life in this place and the politico-cultural fractures hidden beneath the surface. Diana and Richard create their own hills with the use of the optical printer and show us their own “Cerro Alegre” where chileans live their lives, drive their cars, go buy groceries at the local shop, walk up and down mountains to go to work.

A Valparaiso (Joris Ivens & Chris Marker, 1963, 27 min, 16mm)
A travelogue of Valparaiso, Chile, a city built on 200 steep hills. Life is a constant struggle against geography. Neighbourhoods are reached by series of ramps, staircases, and funicular railway elevators. The poorest residents on the hilltops have trouble obtaining water for drinking and washing. There are community dances, a travelling circus, a race course. Boys feed the harbour sealions; a fashionable woman walks her penguin. The ever-present onshore breeze provides fresh air and an ideal environment for kite-flying. The film's second half is in colour, making the switch with the tale of the city's bloody pirate past.

An essay film registered by Joris Ivens & narrated by poet and film maker Chris Marker.

(Review by David Carles - Senses of Cinema)

Mosaic (Evelyn Lambart & Norman McLaren, 1965, 6 min, 16mm)
‘Mosaic (1965) constitutes another exercise in “inhuman” geometric movement – except for its first few frames. In the opening sequence, McLaren appears on-screen to release an elementary particle of animated energy into a void contained by the edges of the screen, rehearsing a classic gesture from the history of animation (e.g., the Fleischer brothers’ Out of the Inkwell series) in which the animator is shown giving life to forms from the flatness of ink. Partly inspired by the logic of Indian classical music, this piece generates a universe from the self-differentiation of a single “cell” or “germ”’

(Review by Bill Schaffer - Senses of Cinema)

Parallel Space: Inter-View (Peter Tscherkassky, 1992, 18 min, 16mm - from 35mm stills)
INTER-VIEW was made using a still camera. The photograph produced by a 35mm camera corresponds exactly to the size of two film frames. If the negative of a photograph is projected sideways, two film frames are seen: first the upper and then the lower half of the original photographic image is projected. Its temporal and spatial unity disintegrates into pieces which then start corresponding with each other.

(Review by Filmmakers coop)

Caterpillareaction (Angus Meckiff, 2022, 7 min, 16mm)
The silent scream of rusting bush metal.

Fireworks (Kenneth Anger, 1947, 15 min, 16mm)
Fireworks is known for being the first* gay narrative film in the United States.

THE INAUGURAL FILM of postwar queer cinema and a watershed event in the history of the American avant-garde, Kenneth Anger’s Fireworks of 1947 is an autobiographical account of the awakening of desire. Shot when the filmmaker was only seventeen years old,1 the film is the sadomasochistic fantasy of a young man, played by the teenage Anger, who dreams he is sexually assaulted by a gang of sailors. Like its young author, the film was precocious. Made in the immediate aftermath of World War II, just as the United States was entering the Cold War, in which it imagined itself to be the policeman of world democracy, Fireworks shocked its audiences with violent depictions of sexual brutality and gang rape by military personnel.

(Review by Ara Osterweil - Art Forum)

About:

Sebastian Vaccaris: Born in Santiago, Chile. Maker of poetry, maker of films.

Artist Film Workshop (AFW) is an artist collective and not-for-profit organisation which provides access to knowledge and resources for filmmakers and artists in Melbourne. AFW holds regular screenings and workshops for people interested in film or working with sound and vision.