AFW + NFSA #69: A Tribute to Malcolm Le Grice

8pm Tuesday 28 January 2025 
The Brunswick Green, 313/315 Sydney Road, Brunswick. 
16mm projection. $10 on the door.  

We begin our screenings for 2025 by commemorating the life and work of the late experimental filmmaker, educator, writer and theorist Malcolm Le Grice, who passed away last December aged 84. Not only renowned for his generosity and comradeship (affectionately described as ‘the Peter Cundall of experimental film’ by Canberra-based media artist Louise Curham), Malcolm Le Grice’s creative output over the latter part of the 20th century was as fertile as that of any British media artist - either before or since. His experimental approach to both analogue and digital forms of filmmaking, and innovations in expanded cinema, have led the BFI to recognise him as ‘probably the most influential modernist filmmaker in British cinema’. AFW wishes to honour Malcolm’s contribution to filmmaking with a retrospective of his early 16mm films, produced during the late 1960s and early 1970s. 

Berlin Horse ‧ 1970 ‧ 7 mins. Soundtrack composed by Brian Eno 
“An exploration of transformation of the image using a piece of early newsreel and a section of 8mm film shot in Berlin, a village in N. Germany. The 8mm footage was refilmed in various ways from the screen onto 16 mm and in turn used for permutative superimposition and colour treatment in the printer.” - NFSA 

Whitchurch Down ‧ 1972 ‧ 10 mins 
“Experiment in perception and in the interaction between subjective time and the real time of the film projection.” - NFSA 

Threshold ‧ 1972 ‧ 13 mins 
“Concerned with the transformations that occur when film images are copied in a printer. There are five elements involved - pure colour, edge-fogged film, a frontier-guardpost, computer generated images and a six frame interchange.” - NFSA 

Blind White Duration ‧ 1967 ‧ 13 mins 
"A faltering, uncertain and primitive attempt to understand the question of concrete duration, the screen and material illumination from the projector” - Malcolm Le Grice 

Little Dog for Roger ‧ 1967 ‧ 12 mins 
“Little Dog For Roger is made from some fragments of 9.5 home movie that my father shot of my mother – myself, and a dog we had. This vaguely nostalgic material has provided an opportunity for me to play with medium of celluloid and various kinds of printing and processing devices. The qualities of film the sprockets the individual frames the deterioration of records like memories, all play an important part in the meaning of this film.” - Malcolm Le Grice