11: Sylvia Schedelbauer, Mary Helena Clark, Eve Heller, Judith Noble, Tomonari Nishikawa, Ken Jacobs

6 April, 2019 - 17:00
Sphinx Cinema

 

This screening proposes a focus on the work of German- Japanese artist Sylvia Schedelbauer whose hypnotic films use found footage in order to explore personal memory, heightened psychological states and cultural displacement. Her intensely evocative and lyrical work is presented in dialogue with films by Mary Helena Clark, Eve Heller, Judith Noble, Tomonari Nishikawa and Ken Jacobs, highlighting motifs in her practice, as well as an emphasis on the sensorial — the bodily and the haptic.

 

In the presence of Sylvia Schedelbauer

 

Remote Intimacy

Sylvia Schedelbauer
,
DE, JP
,
2008
,
video
,
colour
,
15'

Remote Intimacy is a found-footage montage which combines many types of archival documentary footage (including home movies, educational films, and newsreels), with a seemingly personal narrative, blending various individual recollections with literary texts. Beginning with an account of a recurring dream, the film is a poetic amplification of Memory, and with its associative narrative structure I hope to open up a space for reflection on issues of cultural dislocation.” (SS)

The Glass Note

Mary Helena Clark
,
US
,
2018
,
video
,
colour
,
10'

The Glass Note re-contextualizes seemingly unconnected elements — fragmented bodies, statuary, a beach marred by a storm, a virtual ocean, the phenomena of lithophonic stones, empty bear cages at an abandoned zoo, a chair that served as a hearing aid — to understand the body’s permeability and to extend the sensorial beyond the corporeal. Playing with notions of ‘thrown voice’ and the untrustworthy image, sound and image commingle, animate, and touch each other, exploring cinema’s inherent ventriloquism.” (MHC)

Way Fare

Sylvia Schedelbauer
,
DE, JP
,
video
,
colour
,
6'

A layered tone poem of found images and woven soundscapes renders a shifting psychogram; a nomadic passage across spaces in and out of time.

Behind this Soft Eclipse

Eve Heller
,
US, CA
,
2004
,
16mm
,
colour
,
10'

“I was imagining a collaboration of parallel worlds or a kind of doubled consciousness, a sense of the corporeal and the riddle of absence. The body of the film depends on a spine of interlocking contrasts in the form of negative and positive space, day and night shots, under and above water elements. These are cut on motion and qualities of light that are sometimes gentle and sometimes jarring, to convey the tender labor of hosting a balance. A crossing of paths behind the seen in the wake of one who no longer walks the curve of the world. Eclipse is an elegy for Marion McMahon who co-founded the Film Farm (Independent Imaging Retreat) in Southern Ontario, where it was produced.” (EH)

Red Sea

Judith Noble
,
UK
,
1982
,
16mm
,
colour
,
6'

Spring tides at Ynys Llanddwyn at the full and new moon are compared to the filmmaker’s own ‘body tides’ from dark to light and back again. Like other films by Judith Noble (formerly Higginbottom), Red Sea is concerned with the menstrual cycle, and its relationship to the lunar cycle. Higginbottom and other feminist artists such as Catherine Elwes, Carolee Schneemann and Judy Clark were trying to reclaim menstruation from its negative image and assert it as a source of creative energy. Red Sea is made of 16mm film and 35mm still images, re-worked and over-printed.

Sea of Vapors

Sylvia Schedelbauer
,
DE, JP
,
2014
,
video
,
colour
,
15'

“A cascade of images cut frame by frame flow into an allegory of the lunar cycle.” (SS)

Lumphini 2552

Tomonari Nishikawa
,
TH
,
35mm
,
colour
,
3'

“It was shot through a still camera at Lumphini Park in Bangkok, Thailand. The hand-processed visual shows the organic patterns found in this monumental park, constructing the systematic yet emotional rhythm and pace on the screen, accompanied by the sound from the visual also captured through the still camera on the optical soundtrack. Lumphini is named for Lumbini, a Sanskrit word of the birthplace of the Buddha in Nepal, and 2552 is the year on the Buddhist calendar for 2009.” (TN)

Flo Rounds a Corner

Ken Jacobs
,
US
,
1999
,
video
,
colour
,
3'

“The eponymous Flo moves slanted and enchanted down a street in Taormina, Italy — as casual, momentous and as ‘on time’ as the Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat that rounded the corner of another century. A landmark work.” (Mark McElhatten)

Wishing Well

Sylvia Schedelbauer
,
DE, JP
,
2018
,
video
,
colour
,
13'

“Gushing colours. A time disjointed, yet synchronous. A transcendent turn, a quest for agency, a reunion with currents of the forest.” (SS)