By Véronique Martin “Closure of Catharsis” by Rouzbeh Rashidi with James Devereaux, a film inspired by the remodernist manifesto. Shown on Tuesday 11 October 2011 at Café Kino in Bristol (an evening organized by Juan Gabriel Gutierrez). I love ambient music. This may be a strange way to start a movie review, but I promise it has…
By Adrian Martin Adrian Martin has long been one of the film writers most admired by EFS. We invited him to speak at the launch of the book Luminous Void: Twenty Years of Experimental Film Society, which he also contributed to. What follows is the text of the beautiful and insightful talk that he delivered…
By Michael Higgins Some Must Watch, While Some Must Sleep was shot across 25 rolls of Kodak Tri-X Reversal and five rolls of Kodak Vision 3 200T Negative using a SANYO Super 8 camera with automatic exposure settings at 18fps. The shooting took place over a 4 week period in the summer of 2011, and…
By Sarah Hayden & Paul Hegarty Rhythm/ almost tired now the flow returns, another crossing, in sight (is it again? probably the last time), that at least was clear at the time (was it though?), and I say ‘at the time’ but now that it comes around again (again?) that seems more fictional, as if…
By Nikola Gocić Japanese animation most commonly referred to as ‘anime’ has come a long way from the cult status to pop culture phenomenon, noticeably influencing the contemporary live-action cinema, inter alia. Although this may sound like the beginning of an article that will deal with its origins and evolution, let me assure it is…
By Mina Arshakun & Sadeq Yaqubi Prolific experimental filmmaker James Fotopoulos is responsible for some of the most singular cinematic outputs over the past two decades. While a major portion of contemporary experimental film has moved away from conceptual projects in favor of tasteful diaristic recordings and demonstrating alternate viewpoints to the everyday, Fotopoulos has…
By Adrian Martin In theorising off-screen space, it’s easy to overlook the fact that, even when the camera is “in” the scene, it’s almost always back from the shot: the edge of the frame is varying distances from the camera, with an “apron” of hidden space between camera and picture. – Raymond Durgnat, A Long Hard Look at Psycho…
By Nikola Gocić HSP (100) Cogito, ergo sum – the well-known philosophical proposition by René Descartes – could easily be reformulated into ‘I film, therefore I am’, when we’re speaking of Rouzbeh Rashidi (and this very undertaking, in particular). The same applies to his friend and colleague Maximilian Le Cain who shares some thoughts and…
By Nikola Gocić Volume 1 Encapsulated in heavy, bone-chillingly gloomy drones, the first offering in the long, ‘ongoing series of varied short films’ takes the viewer into the kitchen as seen through the eyes or rather, visual receptors of a mysterious being / entity who may be the incarnation of cinema itself. Yes, we do…
By Nikola Gocić If peacocks are bathed in light and strawberries are doubtlessly fresh, is it possible for a shadow to fit into a ground hole that leads all the way to Ghostland? This absurd question kind of alluding to the ‘Why is a raven like a writing desk?’ riddle from Alice in Wonderland, as well as to…
By Nikola Gocić After recently watching the masterful conclusion of Jean Cocteau’s Orphic Trilogy, Testament of Orpheus (originally Le testament d’Orphée, 1960), I realized that the great majority of films born in the maternity hospital of Experimental Film Society (hereafter, EFS) are the said meta-fantasy’s spiritual children, wayward and mischievous, existing in the ashes and…
By Nikola Gocić When it comes to the cine-offerings of multidisciplinary artist and, according to Donal Foreman, the Vagabond of Experimental Film Society Michael Higgins, it is pretty easy to dream yourself into their frames (and get lost out there), to paraphrase the most sincere line of Drifting Cities (2017), especially if you are a…