All Films

Not my first, but quite early animation "test films" realized back in approx. 1985.

A semi-abstract animated stream of consciousness.

A hand-scratched film on light, dark, insects and cinema.

These are six loosely-related anime/live-action music videos from the band Hi-Fi Set. For the most part, they form a story about the love life of two cute dragons who live in a high-tech future city.

The West Highland Extension - the "Road to the Isles" is a masterpiece of railway engineering. When filmed, in 1985, the line was still signalled by semaphores. You will see dozens of trackside and footplate shots, as we make our way from Fort William through Mallaig Junction and along the shores of Loch Eil to the famous Glenfinnan viaduct. At the time of construction this was the largest concrete structure in the World. At Lochailort there is a dramatic change in scenery. This part of the line was the most difficult to build with tons of explosive being the only way to drive the railway through the rock. A hundred years on, it is all the more spectacular for it. At Arisaig (Britain's most westerly station) our "Black 5" heads north across Keppoch Moss until we emerge alongside the Atlantic Ocean for the approach to the fishing port of Mallaig.

Marc Karlin looks at film production in Britain.

This is the first piece shot in Tokyo when Aoi moved from his hometown Kyoto where he had never before left. Responding to the tiniest light, a total stranger in an lien town, Aoi's vision and camera keep on wandering through downtown alleys. By controlling time, he discovers a new way of existence in "light", and his brisk solitude can be felt all over the screen. Aoi's true masterpiece – turning a perfectly ordinary daily scene into a completely extrinsic object, this unique tone and texture have received high praise in and out of Japan.

A castaway on a desert island loses himself in his imagination.

With lovers and violinists hovering overhead and unique colour compositions, Chagall advanced to the greatest art legend of the 20th century. Raised in a Jewish family in White Russia, painting took him out of the poverty-stricken, provincial limitations of his youth and brought him to the Parisian art world. Formed by the Jewish-Russian culture and the influence of the avant-garde in France, he was able to discover his own individual style. The film follows Chagall’s tracks from the viewpoint of an English artist. Starting in the Parisian artist colony “La Ruche”, he takes us on a voyage of discovery to Chagall’s fantastic and mysterious world.

A video of a dance performance by the Karen Jamieson Dance Company.

A sensitive, self-reflexive love poem on film to Grayson Perry, who appears here positively radiating warmth at the camera, wearing make-up and a series of unusual necklaces.

In an apocalyptic future, a couple takes refuge in an abandoned building to protect themselves from an epidemic that has caused the annihilation of much of mankind.

A videotape about places neither here nor there, neither there nor here.

Killing Joke - Live, Alabamahalle, Munich 25 March 1985

The "Films Imaginaires" are made up of only texts, filmed in cardboard boxes for the screen, of various works already shown to the public at the time, and which have been printed here or there, then gathered in the larger edition of my "Œuvres de Cinéma". The simple passage into photograms, then into the projection of these texts, with sound, transforms these "films" into another kind of film creation, even more advanced.

Originally silent but now with sound by Daniel Wilson composed for this film in 2019. A series of images, some double exposed, some in negative. Reeds moving in the wind in Suffolk. A now obsolete car wash near to Smithfield. The metallic prows of gondolas in Venice at night. A detail of a Victorian dam in the Elan valley, Wales.

By using television images as its raw material, Scratch positioned itself, and video more generally, as the medium for a more dynamic, more interactive mode of image-consumption, and even a more networked mode of viewership—as the group Gorilla Tapes later put it, Scratch was a way of “talk[ing] back to television.” Enabled by the development of innovative professional and consumer video technologies, artists like Gorilla Tapes, George Barber, and Sandra Goldbacher and Kim Flitcroft deployed a style characterized by the rapid sampling, editing, and manipulation of dissociated images drawn from video archives and broadcast television. Exploiting this newly available battery of tools, Scratch Video artists warped, composited, windowed, posterized, keyed, colorized, and superimposed these images, exploring uncharted aesthetic terrain that in many ways anticipates, and has strongly influenced, the types of image-manipulation made possible by today’s digital image software.

An eight film series by Lewis Klahr

At the fishing port of Lorient in Brittany, nearly 800 women work, filleters by day, fish sorters by night. Some testify to the conditions in which they exercise their profession, conditions almost unchanged for fifty years: in the cold, humidity and ice, standing, carrying heavy loads, and always without status.

Compilation of early video and film experiments with a live, fried tape manipulation soundtrack by Andrews (The Horse He's Sick, Kurt Volentine, Cut With The Kitchen Knife).