TERRA COGNITA: FACE|OFF
I SPY WITH MY UK EYE: THEM! BY JENNET THOMAS AND PAUL TARRAGÓ
Sept. 21 | 5:30pm | The Hideout (downstairs theater)
INTROPIECE: super 8 (projected)
KINGDOM PROTISTA
U.K. | 16mm | 5:30min
DIR Andrew Kotting MOD / ANM Andrew Lindsay MUS / SND Toby McMillan
Probing into the lonely domain of the fierce gland through tricky and visceral prosthetic puppetry and computer animation. Phallic and testicular nightmares pump iron under the microscope of fantasy fertility science. Andrew Kotting is a prolific, well-established London-based filmmaker who has made two highly original, but shamefully hard-to-see feature films.
ELIPTICUS
U.K. | super 8 | 3:40min
DIR / MUS Emma Adams
An affecting and cyclically structured visual poem using home- movie footage and family-album stills, about life, death, home and change. Unbelievably, this is the maker’s first film.
THE MISSING LINK
U.K. | 16mm | 12min
DIR / WR Mark Locke CAM Mark Thompson ED Sam Hart PROD Guy Powell CAST Mark Cooke and Dean Cole
A savage comedy about a prick of a low-budget 'director' who gets into a spat with a smug businessman about the status of their cars. A fast-paced tale of absurd masculine tics from a prolific writer/director whose first feature crust (starring a life-sized animatronic shrimp) made it to Cannes this year.
THE TRICORN
U.K. | beta | 6min
DIE Martin Fickling and David Ferrone
An imaginative portrait of a futuristic concrete experiment of a shopping centre ('the ugliest building in the world' according to Prince Charles), built in the 1960s coastal town of Portsmouth, England. Loved or loathed, it developed a passionate cult following of artists and skateboarders but has now lost the battle for life. By the time of this screening, it will be ripped down.
NIGHTMARE OF THE VANITIES
U.K. | 16mm | 15min
DIR Steven Santa Cruz Booth
A hugely lovable punk-trash experimental fantasy (to ripping soundtrack) about the goings-on in a perverse beauty parlour ... strange, disorienting pacing and deliciously glamorous low-budget textures deliver the narrative in unexpected ways.
SEARCHING IN SLEEP
U.K. | DV | 4min
DIR Susan Adams
An episode from a longer 23-minute piece excavating the tragic history of the filmmaker’s ancestors, this part is about ghosts of World War I. Featuring an extraordinarily lifelike puppet of an Anglican Clergyman (hand carved by the filmmaker) re-entering the trenches through a war movie on his living room TV. Unusual combinations of the hand crafted and computer generated plus subtle surrealism make this an enigmatic study on the physical reality of memory. Susan Adams is a Wales-based painter/sculptor.
INSTANT PUSSY
U.K. | super 8 | 8mm | 12:30min
DIR Arthur Lager
Soft porn, warm beer, an arm-size cockroach, a hard-boiled egg in baked beans and a dog who loves the taste of her master. Arthur has been making rude films since he was two and a half, and is a red-hot regular in London’s Underground Exploding Cinema scene. He is also the drummer in the band Naked Goat.
SON OF OEDIPUS
U.K. | single 8 (projected) | 12:30min
DIR Duncan Reekie
"You were shackled as a child; why do you want to put your chains back on?" Hand-treated, multiply exposed, trips and scratches the mind through the savage, inevitable tale. Mythology with a message. Duncan is a founder member of The Exploding Cinema in London and performs frequently alongside his projections. He has almost finished a PhD debunking the Avant Garde.
THE PLANETS
U.K. | DV | 4min
DIR Ben Slotover and Paul Elliot
A children’s science demonstration is hijacked by one presenter bullying another, using the distances between the planets as his instrument of torture. Ben and Paul of Blunt Productions are a London-based comedy-writing/filmmaking team.
SIESTA
U.K. | 16mm | 10min
DIR Axe Holland
Uptempo parade of moving image sleight of framery. A möbius strip cycle of cinematic trompes and tricks acted out by a cottage-dwelling couple. Axe come across here like Melies making a series of fidgety tableaux vivants, only filtered through a flamenco tinged sensibility. Gorgeous and mesmeric.
ENDPIECE: super 8 (projected) | 1:30min
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