Film

Body Talk

From the award-winning documentary series Body Talk made for ITN;
Director: Mike Christie
Dancers: Biljana Lipic & Benny Bartels

A short film by Martin Pickles

[2008: 60 sec: 16mm]

– in which choreographer Biljana Lipic dances with a hand-cranked camera as her dance partner. Cameraman John Adderley selectively under- and over-cranks with the result that Biljana speeds up and slows down as she spins around on the spot.

The film was under-exposed with the result that, once “pushed” in developing, it became very grainy, an effect that was then exaggerated for effect. This graininess adds to the sense of intimacy.

This film was compiled from outtakes and material from Martin’s earlier film Camera Obscura.

Dancer: Biljana Lipic
Director of Photography: John Adderley
Director and Editor: Martin Pickles
Film Laboratory and Telecine: Soho Images
Location: Royal Geographical Society
Hand-built 16mm camera kindly lent by George Duck

SCREENINGS

Screened in Kerry Baldry’s ‘One Minute – Volume 3’ film programme of one-minute shorts at: Marseille Project Gallery, Marseille, France, 19th September 2009; Contemporary Art Ruhr, Zollverein World Cultural Heritage Site, Germany, 5th – 7th June 2009; Apollo Home Entertainment, 29 Norwood Road, Herne Hill, London, UK – 3rd June 2009; Big Screen in Hull, Yorkshire, UK, 29th May – 31st July 2009;

A short film by Martin Pickles

[2006: 3 mins: 16mm & 35mm]

A man sits at a typewriter in a little dark room, waiting for inspiration, but is distracted by the sound of the telephone ringing and a daydream of a woman dancing.

Camera Obscura is Martin Pickles’ first year film on the Animation course at the Royal College of Art. It stars Neil Edmond and Biljana Lipic and was photographed by John Adderley.

For more information on this and other Martin’s films visit: http://www.gmfilm.co.uk

Love Is…

A short art film by Biljana Lipic

Presented first time at the curator’s edition of Transition ’08, Newlyn Art Gallery – as part of Amanda Lorens’ live art project, Buenos Aires Social Club

With Heartfelt Gratitude For The Painless Treatment

Art film and installation by Anya Lewin [2008; 24 mins]

With Heartfelt Gratitude for the Painless Treatment developed from an inherited and unexplained collection of autographed photographs of 1920s film and theatre stars that frequented the Berlin dental practice of Anya Lewin’s grandfather, Dr Ignatz Lewin. A Jewish Polish family, they fled to the USA in 1938, soon after Krystallnacht and just before Hitler invaded Poland.

With Heartfelt Gratitude for the Painless Treatment is a blend of the historical with the imaginative and theatrical. The story is full of holes, the evidence a group of glamorous photographs, a set of crystal dishes engraved with a Jewish star and a few mythical tales passed down through generations. This work does not try to sew together the pieces to tell a complete story, but to understand history as fragmentary and as a place for the imagination. The film travels through the Wiener Library archive to discover the original Berlin address of the dental office to reveal a film within a film – a re-imagining, shot with a nod to silent German Cinema, of the dental practice and its fascinating patients.

What a respite from the growing political mayhem did the internal space of the dental office offer? Imagined scenes of slapstick dental exams, aural and textual elements of the work which acknowledge the growth of Nazi power during the period. The obvious constructed set of both the film and the installation underline the fictional nature of the work while the archival material plays against this questioning.

SPACES OF PALPABLE MEMORY: SOMEWHERE BETWEEN THE CINEMATIC AND THE PHOTOGRAPHIC – essay and art critique of the film by Gillian Wylde