Lis Rhodes 9 - Sandra Lahire

4 April, 2020 - 21:30
Paddenhoek

A trio of films by British filmmaker Sandra Lahire (1950-2001) that have been recently digitized and restored at Elias Querejeta Zine Eskola (San Sebastian), in the context of the research project “Their Past is Always Present”.

Sandra Lahire was a radical lesbian feminist experimental filmmaker who was one of the most prominent and inspiring figures of the London experimental film scene in the 1980s and 90s. Lahire, who also wrote a musical score for Rhodes’ Just About Now, developed a new form of mixed-genre filmmaking. Lahire died in 2001, after a long and persistent struggle with anorexia. She left behind ten experimental 16mm films that offer a profound filmic commentary on anorexia and are prescient of today’s fears of ecological devastation. This selection points to two recurring themes in her work, her anti-nuclear stance and her fascination with Sylvia Plath and her writing.

 

In the presence of Charlotte Procter and Pablo La Parra (EQZE)

Plutonium Blonde

Sandra Lahire
,
UK
,
1987
,
HD
,
16'

Part of a trilogy of films on radiation, this dystopic collage frames the fractured narrative of Thelma, a woman working with the monitors in a plutonium reactor. Plutonium blonde, a color reference usually used in beauty products, becomes the reality of the female body in the chemical factory. Through phonic collages of casual conversations and children’s lullabies that are disrupted by the fumes of factories and the threat of a nuclear war, Sandra Lahire’s film confronts the viewer with difficult questions around the damaged bodies that inhabit a chemical reality and the female identity during such a crisis. (Mariana Sánchez Bueno)

 

Recently digitized and restored at Elias Querejeta Zine Eskola (San Sebastian), in the context of the research project “Their Past is Always Present”.

Night Dances

Sandra Lahire
,
UK
,
1995
,
HD
,
15'

Night Dances borrows its title from the Sylvia Plath poem cited above. An overlaying of light and dark imagery accompanied by a piano creates a visual dance that invites the viewer to meditate on the dualities of darkness and brightness, on love, illness, life, and death. The relationship with a mother and the relationship with a lover becomes a ritual of memory and reality invoked by performance and archival recreation. (Mariana Sánchez Bueno)

 

Recently digitized and restored at Elias Querejeta Zine Eskola (San Sebastian), in the context of the research project “Their Past is Always Present”. 

Johnny Panic

Sandra Lahire
,
UK
,
2000
,
video
,
46'

Johnny Panic draws primarily on Plath’s short story of the same title as well as incorporating texts from Plath’s novel, The Bell Jar, her journals, and poems. Sandra adds to Plath’s short story by staging her own seven dreams. This was the only film she made in a studio with sets and camera crew which gave Sandra the opportunity to explore a different way of working. Her former in-camera super-imposition effects are developed into stage sets with film projections. [ ...] Johnny Panic unleashes an elaboration of pain, fear and loss that is exposed in its raw state. Suicidal desire is extreme. The film brings this into sharp focus. It shocks and disturbs because of its articulation of horror, yet through its formal elegance an authority and dignity is retained that is hauntingly beautiful. (Sarah Pucill)