Mónica Savirón makes 16mm films that engage with the poetics and disappearing histories and practices of analogue film production. Her mesmerizing work stems both from a lyrical mode and a structural impulse. As a curator and writer, Savirón has championed the legacy of under-represented artists, particularly women. In this program, co-curated with Savirón, her two celebrated shorts are shown in the company of films by other female avant-garde filmmakers, proposing points of connection and dialogue, as well as a community of works, filmmakers and ideas.
In the presence of Mónica Savirón, Ute Aurand & Barbara Meter
Mainly made with images from the January 1st issues of The New York Times since its beginning in 1851 to 2013, Broken Tongue is a heartfelt tribute to avant-garde sound performer Tracie Morris and to her poem Afrika.
“This film was made by superimposing in the camera six takes of myself playing the flute in six different positions around a circle. With each shot I randomly began playing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”. The resulting film shows a unique rendition of this classic round.” (JO)
“A man and a woman converse wordlessly. An essential film dialogue. The accompanying sound was created by playing a chord from a Mahler symphony through two ‘reel-to-reel’ tape recorders and editing it.” (BM)
Julia Heyward’s contribution to Jean Dupuy’s Three Evenings on a Revolving Stage (1976), a performance event at Judson Memorial Church for which artists were invited to perform a short piece atop a two-foot diameter revolving stage. Dressed in a stylish gown, Heyward performed Shake Daddy Shake, a stirring invocation of her father, a Southern preacher with palsy.
All episodes: Ironing to Greenham, Much Madness, No. 8 Bus, Petal for a Paragraph, Pink Patterns, Pornography, Swing Song, Tiger Lily, Washing Up, White Words, Winscale, Words and Wealth, Goose and Common
Thirteen 1 minute films which grew out of a series of short poems written by Lis Rhodes, reflecting on the traditional patterns of oppression in women’s lives (pornography, violence, nuclear weapons) and the many forms that resistance takes. Made with the artist Jo Davis and commissioned by Channel 4 for television broadcast.
In Susan Stein’s early film, G, her interest is language and work and how the two are connected. Experimenting with the conjunction of images and sound, she shows a typewriter from a variety of angles, punctuating the images with the almost abstracted sounds of a clock, typing and a monologue. The result is a reflection on both the material and artistic processes confronting an author. “Thinking about writing and hearing and writing of the film, the same alphabet which has been shared by many women.” (SS)
A new short film portrait, which, as is often the case in Ute Aurand’s work, was filmed over the years and in different locations, here Germany and Japan. “Filming portraits allows me to emphasize private gestures and moments beyond narration and documentation.” (UA)
A woman remembers her past by faces she sees while travelling on the Underground in London. She begins to believe that these people, like her, have all taken part in the same event which took place in the family home in Pakistan. The story takes the form of a letter to her friend Fatima. A personal documentary around journeys, memories and watching, watching while journeying and remembering while watching — travelling through memories, places and events and documenting them into consciousness. The story is spoken in Urdu and although there are English subtitles, they do not always appear in conjunction with what is spoken, producing a layered, ephemeral, and fragmented experience. Alia Syed, born in Swansea to a Welsh mother and an Indian father, expresses the dislocation of the diasporic experience while questioning the role of language in structuring power relations between class, race and gender.
Film created in contact printer with material which had gone through a process of deterioration in a projection event.
Answer Print is made with deteriorated 16mm colour stock, and it is meant to disappear over time. Neither hue nor sound has been manipulated in its analogue reassembling. The soundtrack combines audio generated by silent double perforated celluloid, the optical tracks from sound films, and the tones produced by each of the filmmaker’s cuts when read by the projector. The shots are based on a 26-frame length: the distance in 16mm films with optical tracks between an image and its sound.
Chameleon proposes a visual dialogue between the seen, the recognised and the unrecognised. A woman searches through an interior landscape, a space where she is both trapped and contained. Her dress, a projected image of femaleness, becomes her vehicle of expression. Through rhythmic intercutting the film moves silently toward the point of confrontation; the woman opens the door to the outside world. This moment of violent interaction is shockingly emphasised though the film’s only sound.
