Exploring Experimental Film: January Workshop Series
Every Wednesday, Jan 10, 2018 – Jan 31, 2018, 6-9pm at BEEF, The Brunswick Club, Brunswick Square, St. Pauls, Bristol BS2 8NX
Tickets £10 per event or £30 for all four – advance tickets via Eventbrite HERE
Workshops exploring the field of experimental film through a series of engaging lectures, seminars and screenings.
The events are for anyone with who wants to find out more about the world of experimental film.
With screened examples by leading practitioners and with reference to contemporary discourse, the following questions will be explored:
> What is experimental film?
> In which ways is it relevant today?
> What is its relationship to artists moving image?
Session 1, Wed Jan 10: Experimental film overview Led by Dr. Vicky Smith
The origins of experimental film and its relationship to the avant-garde and to the underground will be examined. We will consider key areas of experimental film enquiry, such as form, the medium, reflexivity and the importance of process and procedure. Vicky Smith is an experimental animator whose work has screened internationally. She has co-edited a book with Nicky Hamlyn, Experimental & Expanded Animation due early 2018. She is lecturer at The University for the Creative Arts.
Session 2, Wed Jan 17: Expanded cinema Led by Collective-iz Download reading material for Session 2 here
Expanded cinema is just one of the approaches taken by experimental film-makers as a means through which to resist narrative, stressing instead physicality and presence and creating cinema in which nothing is fixed, projections are intercepted, making and screening are one event, and soundtracks/scores become a live event. Collective-iz is a collective based in London working within the context of experimental film/video and expanded cinema.
Session 3, Wed Jan 24: Experimental sound Led by Shirley Pegna
Experimental film emerged from a visual arts practice and, with a few exceptions, whereby sound is used as image or as a structuring device, enquiry into filmic audio has been under developed. Expanded cinema, for one, has challenged that hierarchy and filmmakers today are collaborating in more active ways with sonic artists. Shirley Pegna’s artistic research and practice is concerned with sound as material. Her works enable audiences to perceive the resounding physical properties of our environment. She is part of SARU (Sonic Arts Research Unit) at Oxford Brookes University and has given talks there and at De Montfort University.
Session 4, Wed Jan 31: Experimental animation Led by Dr. Vicky Smith
Animation has a special capacity for bridging film and the graphic arts, a facility that is made particularly apparent in the hand-made or camera-less film. Experimental animation typically emphasizes perceptual thresholds, continuity, the single frame and flicker. Much contemporary experimental animation marries such formal enquiry with personal or political concerns.
Photo Credit: Man with Mirror, 1976 by Guy Sherwin. Photo by Ben Dowden.