Selection 3: Morgan Quaintance (B)

31 March, 2022 - 22:00
Paddenhoek

 

These two programs present a selection of films from one of the most exciting emerging voices in artist-made cinema. Morgan Quaintance is a London-based writer, musician, broadcaster, and curator. All Quaintance’s short films unfold in time — recollection and the connection between the continuously moving present and the past form a common thread throughout his texturally rich work. Most of his short films rely on these temporal relations and add up to an exploration of buried or forgotten histories through memory via the reconstruction of the past through photographs and archive material. On this occasion, he has compiled two programs combining his work with films by others.

 

In the presence of Morgan Quaintance

Cold Open

Seamus Harahan
,
UK
,
2012
,
video
,
colour
,
12'

“De zes korte sequenties van Cold Open, dat deel uitmaakt van een langere reeks, gaan van het indirecte tot het voyeuristische — het ene moment elegisch, romantisch zelfs, het andere ondoorgrondelijk en sinister. De scènes van dit portmanteau project — en ja, het zijn scènes — dringen een verhaal op of staan minstens op het punt er een te vinden, terwijl ze terzelfdertijd elk rationeel relaas van gebeurtenissen weerleggen en de waarde of het idee zelve van een narratief opzeggen.” (Adam Pugh)

Surviving You, Always

Morgan Quaintance
,
UK
,
2020
,
HD
,
19'

The transcendental promise of psychedelic drugs versus a concrete and violent experience of metropolitan living. These two opposing realities form the backdrop for an adolescent encounter told through still images and written narration.

Workers Leaving the Job-Site

Kevin Jerome Everson
,
US
,
2013
,
HD
,
7'

Another take, another era, another factory, shot in Mississippi in summer 2012, this is a riff on the Lumière Brothers classic 1895 film.

Sixth Form Acid

Morgan Quaintance
,
UK
,
2022
,
HD
,
3'

RIP, Rollostraat 18 and Sixth Form Acid are all part of a series of ‘miniature’ films that Quaintance is continually producing. These short films are all under three minutes long and allow the filmmaker to explore a single formal or conceptual idea. The process of realisation can either be loose and improvisatory or time intensive and heavily edited. Each of the films uses either archival material, or footage Quaintance has shot using a DV of High 8 video camera. Using these mediums, instead of 16mm, allows for quicker production and a more intuitive approach.

South

Morgan Quaintance
,
UK
,
2020
,
HD
,
28'

Taking two anti-racist and anti-authoritarian liberation movements in South London and Chicago’s South Side as a point of departure, South presents an expressionistic investigation of the power of individual and collective voice. Interlinked with Morgan Quaintance’s own biography (time spent living in both London and Chicago), the film also considers questions of mortality and the will to transcend a world typified by concrete relations.