EFS & purge present Spectators: A Tribute to Frans Zwartjes

Experimental Film Society & purge present
Spectators: A Tribute to Frans Zwartjes

Birds, Spare Bedroom, Spectator & Living by Frans Zwartjes
+  tribute films by Stanley Schtinter, Langan/Le Cain & Rouzbeh Rashidi

6.30 pm, Thursday February 22nd
The Guesthouse, 10 Chapel St., Cork

Frans Zwartjes, Holland’s preeminent experimental filmmaker, passed away at the end of 2017. As a tribute to this great and always radical artist, Experimental Film Society (EFS), in association with purge, presents a screening of four of Zwartjes’ finest films along with three others made in tribute to him.

Zwartjes’ highly stylised, poetically claustrophobic films achieve a unique level of sensual intimacy in their renditions of sexual and domestic tension, and voyeurism. These wordless works draw on performance art but are equally distinguished by their oneiric visuals, disconcerting editing rhythms and hypnotically minimal sound design. Once Zwartjes has caressed the surface of your eyeballs, you will never see cinema in the same way again.

This programme also features Zwartjes, a recent documentary portrait of Frans Zwartjes by Stanley Schtinter, as well two films made in homage to Zwartjes by filmmakers connected with EFS: Rouzbeh Rashidi’s Homo Sapiens Project (113) and the Irish premiere of Vicky Langan & Maximilian Le Cain’s Play Ground.

Schtinter is a Zwartjes collaborator. He was behind major Zwartjes tribute events at such venues as EYE Film Institute in Amsterdam and London’s Whitechapel Gallery. He produced the first ever release of Zwartjes’ music through his label, purge. EFS is an Irish company dedicated to nurturing personal, experimental cinema. Rashidi and Langan / Le Cain acknowledge Zwartjes as a major influence on their work.

Birds (5 mins, 1968)
Spare Bedroom (15 mins, 1969)
Spectator (10 mins, 1970)
Living (15 mins, 1971)

Zwartjes (Stanley Schtinter, 9 mins, 2017)
Homo Sapiens Project (113) (Rouzbeh Rashidi, 16 mins, 2012)
Play Ground (Vicky Langan & Maximilian Le Cain, 16 mins, 2017)

Play Ground was made with the support of Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris.

Stills courtesy of Collection EYE Filmmuseum.

Langan/Le Cain - TULCA Festival of Visual Art, 2017

They Call Us The Screamers 3 November – 19 November 2017

 TULCA Festival of Visual Art, Galway, Ireland

The 15th edition of TULCA Festival of Visual Art – titled They Call Us The Screamers – features artworks by Irish and international artists that are presented across six venues: Galway Arts Centre, 126 Artist Run Gallery, Nun’s Island Theatre, Connacht Tribune Print Works, Barnacles Hostel, and University Hospital Galway. The participating artists are: Fabienne Audeoud, Sam Basu and Liz Murray, Kian Benson Bailes, David Beattie, Oisin Byrne, Ciarán Ó Dochartaigh, Vicky Langan and Maximilian Le Cain, Liz Magic Laser, McGibbon O’Lynn, Yvette Monahan, Yoko Ono, Plastique Fantastique, Richard Proffitt, Bob Quinn, Florian Roithmayr (with Meredith Monk), Kaspar Oppen Samuelsen and Marie-Louise Vittrup Andersen, Lucy Stein

The exhibition takes its reference from a book written by Jenny James, published by Caliban Books in 1980. The book is an account of Atlantis, the commune she established a few years earlier in the Gaeltacht village of Burtonport, County Donegal – promoting an approach of de-programming from the modern world through therapeutic self-development and environmental self-sufficiency.  The book is also a response to the controversies and scandals that embroiled the commune during their first years in Ireland, following accusations of cultish behaviour, kidnapping, and physical abuse. The members of the commune were collectively nicknamed ‘The Screamers’ in a 1976 Sunday World article, referring to their practice of primal scream therapy – an adapted form of psychotherapy developed by Dr Arthur Janov that sought to re-enact the traumas of modern upbringing and thereby reverse the neurosis that follows in later life.

They Call Us The Screamers provides the title and thematic compass for the exhibition, with artworks that are orientated to ideas held together by the historical episode. They include ideas of withdrawal and selfhood (Lucy Stein, Liz Magic Laser, Vicky Langan & Maximilian Le Cain, Richard Proffitt); autonomy and self-sufficiency (Kaspar Oppen Samuelsen & Marie-Louise Vittrup Andersen, David Beattie, Ciarán Ó Dochartaigh, Yvette Monahan); voice and neurosis (Florian Roithmayr, Yoko Ono, Fabienne Audeoud); future culture and community (Kian Benson Bailes, Plastique Fantastique, Sam Basu & Liz Murray, McGibbon O’Lynn, Oisin Byrne). The exhibition also features Bob Quinn’s The Family (1979) – a documentary film on Atlantis that was originally banned by the national broadcast network RTE Television, deemed too disturbing for Irish audiences at the time.

A publication designed by Alex Synge / The First 47 wll be available at all venues. In addition to curatorial texts by Matt Packer, the publication includes three newly commissioned texts by Sue Rainsford that sound the primal scream through the narrative forms of lyric essay, transcription, and testimony.

They Call Us The Screamers is an exhibition that does not aim to illustrate Atlantis in Ireland, nor attempt to redress their controversy. Instead, the story gives way to a broader framework of practice-related ideas that develop from the countercultural psychology of the 1970s, seeking to reclaim an alternative future for self and society in today’s perspective.

Curated by: Matt Packer

Maximilian Le Cain and I will also be doing a live performance at TULCA on November 4th and are delivering an artists' talk on the 13th.

Experimental Film Society at ULTRAcinema Mexico

A programme of Experimental Film Society will be screening in the sixth edition of annual ULTRAcinema festival November 30 – December 3, 2017 in Puebla, Mexico. Venue: Sala 9 2 Norte #1205-A San Juan Aquiahuac San Andrés Cholula, Puebla 72810 Mexico. Details of the programme:

1_Impulsive Film (2016) By Jann Clavadetscher / 2Minutes / Ireland
2_Play Ground (2017) By Vicky Langan/Maximilian Le cain / 16Minutes / Ireland
3_Homo Sapiens Project (161-170) (2013) By Rouzbeh Rashidi / Ireland / 8mins
4_The Family Vault of James Hyland (2017) By Michael Higgins / 14Minutes / Ireland
5_Refining the Senses (2017) By Atoosa Pour Hosseini / 13Minutes / Switzerland-Ireland

Total running time: 55minutes

More info HERE 

Facebook HERE

Wilderness Notes (Experimental Film Society & Kirkos Ensemble)

Wilderness Notes

Kirkos Ensemble and the Experimental Film Society are proud to present Wilderness Notes, an exciting collaboration bringing together two of Ireland’s most innovative contemporary arts group from the fields of music and film.

19.30, Fri-Sat 01-02.09.2017 :: Filmbase, 2 Curved Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2

Wilderness Notes will feature premieres of 3 new films by EFS filmmakers Rouzbeh Rashidi, Maximilian Le Cain and Vicky Langan, and Atoosa PourHosseini, created in tandem with new compositions by young Irish composers Barry O’Halpin, Seán Ó Dálaigh, and Robert Coleman which will be performed live by the Kirkos Ensemble.

The three films that comprise Wilderness Notes all explore psychic, territorial and technological margins. Isolated characters, all somehow locked into masks or fixed personae, navigate desolate zones between dimensions where a sense of being physically adrift and at risk is mapped onto a corresponding inner state. But they are not only adrift in space, they are equally adrift in time. Making experimental use of several outdated moving image formats, notably Super-8 and VHS, Wilderness Notes summons up ghosts from an abandoned future, taking its cues from the western, the nightmare of nuclear holocaust and the masks of ancient theatre.

All three of Wilderness Notes’ musical compositions were written to complement EFS’s filmmaking approach. Barry O’Halpin’s is derived from the electromagnetic spectra of 5 chemical elements, resulting in an ethereal and almost alien set of harmonies and moving parts, while Seán Ó Dálaigh pits the ensemble against undulating sine waves and introduces an element of choice into structural repetitions to create a vibrant microtonal universe. In contrast, Kirkos co-director Robert Coleman’s contribution is a song cycle, setting poetry by American poet Morri Creech for voice, ensemble and electronics, examining the states of consciousness that flash beneath the waking mind.

For Wilderness Notes the Kirkos Ensemble will be Miriam Kaczor[flute], Leonie Bluett [clarinet], Máire Carroll [piano], Jane Hackett, Cillian O Breacháin [violins], Nathan Sherman [viola], Yseult Cooper Stockdale [cello], Barry O’Halpin [electric guitar] and Sarah Thursfield[voice].

The collaboration marks a new frontier in the experimental filmmaking and contemporary music scenes in Ireland, combining both groups’ radical approach to presenting their art and engaging with audiences in challenging and refreshing ways.

Warning :: Will contain some explicit content. Parental guidance for under 18’s is advised.

Wilderness Notes is presented by Kirkos Ensemble and the Experimental Film Society, with support from Ensemble Music and Filmbase, and is funded by Arts Council Ireland.

• Facebook EVENT
• Book tickets HERE
• Trailer HERE

Experimental Film Society at Glass Eye Cine Club, Belfast

A programme of  Experimental Film Society will play @ Glass Eye Cine Club will play at Glass Eye Cine Club on Friday 9th September 2016 – 7pm / Suggested Donation £5 / BYO.

Glass Eye Cine Club, Belfast Barge, Lanyon Quay, Laganside, Belfast. (BT1)

This programme gives an overview of EFS concerns and aesthetics.

1_Sumpf (2015) By Jann Clavadetscher/ 6 Minutes / Switzerland-Ireland
2_Lung (2014) By Jason Marsh / 4 Minutes / U.K
3_Heaven’s Hole (2016) By Michael Higgins / 6 Minutes / Ireland
4_Clandestine (2015) By Atoosa Pour Hosseini / 15 Minutes / Estonia-Ireland
5_The Curse of Johnny Kline (2D) (2015) By Dean Kavanagh / 12 Minutes / Ireland
6_Homo Sapiens Project: Fragment (2015) By Rouzbeh Rashidi / 11 Minutes / Ireland
7_Brine Twice Daily (2015) By Maximilian Le Cain/Vicky Langan / 20 Minutes / Ireland

Total Running Time: 74mins

Brine Twice Daily premiere at the Guesthouse

Wild-screen review in Enclave Review issue 13

“Locally sourced food was provided on-site by Katie Sanderson of Dillisk Project and Vicky Langan played records at the launch of the exceptional book of newly commissioned essays at Joyce's Pub on the Saturday evening. It was one of the many highlights of the weekend to listen to the music she played – the triumphant energy of Flower Travellin' Band, the mellifluous piano of Ethiopian nun Emahoy Tsegué-Mariam Guebrù, the chanty power of Philip Cohran, the disconsolate guttural sounds of Idea Fire Company's 'Open Sesame' etc. - in the context of a traditional Irish pub in the thick of the West of Ireland. As with the weekend as a whole, it brought out new dimensions of what wildness means: the potential it has to generate both euphoria and despondency, but also to bring about autonomy and release. Wild-screen was an important and memorable event, one that should happen again and soon."

Alice Butler reviewing Wild-screen 2015 for Enclave Review issue 13

https://enclavereview.wordpress.com/

Rouzbeh Rashidi's TRAILERS

The production of Rouzbeh Rashidi’s latest feature film TRAILERS has begun, it will be a project that explores the relationship between digital & celluloid images. Seventy per cent of Trailers will be comprised of 35mm film (unearthed archival material & prints of old trailers from a wide range of movies). The remaining thirty percent be various reconstructions of images or moments inspired by the celluloid trailers. This phase of production will be undertaken in a dark studio space where he will deploy stylized and highly artificial effects (using back-projection and chroma key) in a rigorous fashion. The film deals with concepts such as voyeurism and ritualistic perversion in cinema with formalistic austerity favouring science fiction and horror moods of presentation. Rashidi plans to recapture & re-create scenes from this 35mm material and investigate the history of Cinema; drawing narrative suggestions, composing & decomposing genre elements and creating a poetical interaction between sounds & images. This re-animated body of sound and image lived a full and rich life in its original form, so now by resurrecting the fragments in an experimental aesthetic, he intends to exhaust the cinematic potential of the footage by exploring & representing this material as a mental site of extreme formalism and sensory experience.

TRAILERS was kindly funded by Arts Council of Ireland as part of the Film Project Award 2015. The film will be produced by Experimental Film Society and will be completed in 2016.

Vivienne Dick's RED MOON RISING

RED MOON RISING

Director Vivienne Dick
Ireland 2015
15 mins

A celebration of the carnivalesque, through dance, performance and the spoken word. The film reaches towards a renewal of our embodiment with the Earth as a response to a belief in invincibility, and the desire of Man to dominate the planets. A red moon is both a beacon, and a warning.

BRINE TWICE DAILY: New Langan/Le Cain Work Premiering in Berlin

Brine Twice Daily, the tenth film collaboration by Max Le Cain and I, will premiere as part of an Experimental Film Society double-screening in Berlin this weekend. 

regenbogenKINO 5th July 8PM

Full info here

Wild-screen, Connemara →

Max Le Cain and I are showing work as part of Wild-screen this March 7th-8th in the beautiful Inagh Valley in Connemara, Co. Galway. I'll also be playing records at Joyces pub in Recess on Saturday 7th March  to mark the launch of the Wild-screen publication All mountains begin on the ground.

The full programme is published online here: http://www.wildscreenireland.com/programme.html

Wild-screen/Scáil-fhiáin (Irish translation) is a site-specific contemporary art screening featuring a range of international artists working in film as an art medium. Wild-screen is created by artists Louise Manifold and Úna Quigley.  

Through presenting the works in an unusual installation context outside the more expected urban venues and using such sites to platform a critical engagement, the event aims to explore and challenge ideas around wilderness, wildness and the cinematic sublime.  

On the 7th and 8th March 2015 audiences will be invited to take a pilgrimage into the epic landscape of  Connemara for a weekend event. The event will centre on the screening of the artists films over two days. The audience will experience exciting experimental film works from Irish and international artists in an industrial space, the Inagh Hatchery designed by Irish modernist architects Scott Tallon and Walker.  

Situated in a secluded location in the epic Inagh Valley, the artists Quigley and Manifold have responded to the site of Connemara, one of last wildernesses left in Ireland, in terms of the artists they have invited to screen their films, alongside their own new works that they filmed in Connemara as part of the project.  

Wild-screen is supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, Galway County Council, Údarás na Gaeltachta, and The Galway Arts Centre.

Maximilian Le Cain & @vicky_langan 'Dirt' 2012 @ Wild-screen weekend of international art film #Connemara 7-8 March pic.twitter.com/ZzuYQphujg

— Wild-Screen (@Wildscreen2015) February 2, 2015

Experimental Film Society at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios

Monday 24th November | 6pm

Studio 6 | Free admission, all welcome.

The second of six bi-monthly Experimental Film Society (EFS)screenings, taking place at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios under the Studio 6 Open programme, highlights the reach and stylistic diversity of EFS’ international membership. Bahar Samadi’s haunting, gem-like videos make very personal use of found footage to evoke a mysterious sense of loss and memory. Jason Marsh’s Pitpony and Esperanza Collado’s The Illuminating Gas both explore the raw materiality of celluloid but with contrasting approaches to rhythm. An emphasis on hypnotic rhythm and a willingness to tackle darkly erotic material characterizes the two collaborative pieces in the programme, Dean Kavanagh & Rouzbeh Rashidi’s Homo Sapiens Project (183) and Vicky Langan & Maximilian Le Cain’s Desk 13. And the darkness continues into Hamid Shams Javi’s surreal nightmare vision of family life in contemporary Iran, The Hell With It.   

EFS is a not-for-profit entity that promotes, archives and sometimes produces work by a dozen filmmakers operating in several different countries. Although each member has a distinctive vision, they are united by an uncompromising devotion to personal, experimental cinema. They have in common an exploratory approach to filmmaking where films emerge from the interplay of sound, image and atmosphere rather than traditional storytelling techniques. EFS was founded by Dublin-based filmmaker Rouzbeh Rashidi, who continues to curate and run the organization.


1 - Les Yeux Disparus (2012) By Bahar Samadi / France / 10mins
2 - W.E (2013) By Bahar Samadi / France / 5mins
3 - Pitpony (2014) By Jason Marsh / UK / 4mins
4 - The Illuminating Gas (2012) By Esperanza Collado / Spain / 7:30mins
5 - Homo Sapiens Project (183) (2014) By Rouzbeh Rashidi & Dean Kavanagh / Ireland / 21mins
6 - Desk 13 (2011) By Maximilian Le Cain & Vicky Langan / Ireland / 8mins
7 - The Hell With It (2014) By Hamid Shams Javi / Iran / 29mins

Total Running Time: 85mins

Experimental Film Society Website

Experimental Film Society Facebook

Please support Maximilian Le Cain's Cloud Of Skin

My collaborator Maximilian Le Cain is embarking on his debut feature film and needs your support. 

“Ghost love in a haunted landscape: a challenging and darkly poetic experimental feature film.”

— https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/cloud-of-skin

Max Le Cain has made more than eighty short, medium and feature length experimental films and videos over the past decade. He is also a film critic and editor of Cork Film Centre’s online experimental film magazine Experimental Conversations. He regularly programmed experimental film for the Cork-based experimental music/film event Black Sun and has presented avant-garde film events in collaboration with, amongst others, Cork Film Centre and Cork Film Festival, involving filmmakers such as Peter Tscherkassky, Pip Chodorov, James Fotopoulos, Abigail Child and Vivienne Dick.

He is currently working in creative partnership with sound/performance artist Vicky Langan. He collaborates with artist Esperanza Collado as ‘The Consecutive Impostors’ in the multi-disciplinary art project Operation Rewrite and with composer Karen Power on the sound / film / performance project Gorging Limpet. He is a member, with Rouzbeh Rashidi and Dean Kavanagh, of the Cinema Cyanide noise project, and of the Experimental Film Societycollective. In 2011, he received an Irish Arts Council bursary award to develop his practice from video to film-on-film work.

For an in-depth account of his work in the context of contemporary Irish experimental film, see New Voices in Irish Experimental Cinema, an article by Donal Foreman.

As a film critic, his writings have appeared in a broad range of international film journals, most notably Senses of Cinema, and in several books, including The Cinema of Roman Polanski: Dark Spaces of the World (Wallflower Press, 2006).

He is based in Cork City, Ireland.

Official website

EFS @ The Guesthouse Double Bill -The Avant Festival

July 17th, The Guesthouse. 7.30pm. Free

The Cork premiere of two films shot last year involving members of Experimental Film Society in which The Guesthouse is one of the main locations.

Tangled And Far (Vicky Langan/Maximilian Le Cain, 2013, 12 mins)

TANGLED AND FAR

This video is the most recent in the ongoing collaboration between Vicky Langan and Maximilian Le Cain. Drawing on footage of Langan’s performances over the past two years, as well as scenes specifically shot for this video, it foregrounds the overlap between intimate domestic detail and its reflection in Langan’s performance work. The private and public projections of her presence and actions collapse into each other in this phantasmagoric continuum of alternate selves and self-images to form a fractured dream portrait.

Forbidden Symmetries (Dean Kavanagh/Maximilian Le Cain/Rouzbeh Rashidi, 2014, 97 mins)

FORBIDDEN SYMMETRIES

Emerging from a Guesthouse residency, this collaborative feature is an ostensibly science fictional trip, arranged in three half-hour ‘phases’, one by each director. They are three witnesses to the invasion giving three accounts. Are they observing the same thing? Were there any warning signs? And, after all they’ve seen and heard, are they even competent to offer a reliable report? The purpose of this film is to demonstrate that an effort to construct functions known not to exist may on occasion produce interesting frauds.

View trailer here.

Irish Experimental Cinema in St Petersburg, Russia (July-Oct 2014)

Solus Film Collective, in collaboration with Loft Project Etagi, present the second stage of the American/Russian/Irish touring program of 2014. The show will run from July 4th until October 1st at Loft Project Etagi in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Solus & Guests

Exhibition №8

Curators – Masha Godovannaya and Alan Lambert

This video-show «Solus & Guests» presents a selection of new and recent film-works by Irish filmmakers and international collaborators with previous contributors to collective programs. It reflects a current circle that has emerged in recent years in Irish experimental filmmaking and art, particularly in the presence of the Experimental Film Society, many of whose members are represented here. The programme includes artists such as Maximilian Le Cain, Vicky Langan, Dean Kavanagh, Anthony Kelly & David Stalling, Michael Higgins, Esperanza Collado, Aoife Desmond, Rouzbeh Rashidi, Moira Tierney and Alan Lambert.

For full titles and programme info please check the Solus website HERE

For venue info and opening times please check the Etagi website HERE

Solus is an independent film collective and platform for filmmakers working in Super-8mm / 16mm and DV. It has the dual aim of showing Irish short and avant-garde films abroad and international short and avant-garde films in Ireland.

Opening Reception Screening:

‘Absences and (Im)possibilities: Traces of an experimental cinema in Ireland’

This screening of Abscences and (Im)possibilitites is a condensed version of the full four-part programme.

This programme traces a tradition of experimental film-making in Ireland. It is curated by the Experimental Film Club and commissioned by the Irish Film Institute International. It features the work of artists such as the Lumiere Brothers, Norris Davidson, Vivienne Dick, Paddy Jolley, Barry Ronan, Dónal Ó’Ceilleachair and Jesse Jones.

More info HERE

This Solus event is supported by Culture Ireland, the Irish Film Institute and Dublin City Council.

IFI International is supported by Culture Ireland. The Irish Film Institute is supported by the Arts Council.

Langan/Le Cain Event at Microscope Gallery, NY

Still from 'Tangled and Far' -Max Le Cain & Vicky Langan, 2013

Am pleased to announce that Microscope Gallery in Brooklyn, New York, will be hosting a programme of work by Max Le Cain and me this Monday, May 12th. We will both be present for a Q&A after the screening. Full details here.

The programme is:

Evening Ascent
The Mongolian Barbecue
Background
Hereunder
Dirt
Tangled And Far

TANGLED AND FAR, Mind In The Flesh Symposium

Tangled And Far, the most recent collaboration by Max Le Cain and I, will be screened on loop during 'Mind in the Flesh, Female Bodies in Contemporary Performance', an upcoming symposium focusing on female bodies in contemporary performance at Dance Limerick featuring performances, workshops and talks. More details here.

Running from 8th - 10th May MIND IN THE FLESH is a symposium focusing on female bodies in contemporary performance. It incorporates artists’ talks and debates, performance lectures and workshops, alongside evening performances by world renowned artists. 

How do women portray, represent, stereotype, envision themselves today? How aware are we as makers and viewers about the body images and relationships we create and receive in private and public spheres? How much diversity is there really? And, actually, what are female bodies? 

MIND IN THE FLESH, Female Bodies in Contemporary Performance will feature artists' talks and debates, performance lectures and master classes alongside evening performances. 

Australian International Experimental Film Festival 2014

Tangled And Far, my most recent collaboration with Max Le Cain, will play twice at the Australian International Experimental Film Festival this May, once in Melbourne and once in Perth:

Perth: 6pm, Sunday 3rd May
Replants, 96 Wray Avenue, Fremantle

Melbourne: 6pm, Sunday 18th May
Goodtime Studios, basement 746 Swanston Street, Melbourne
(hosted by Artist Film Workshop)

The End Of The Earth Is My Home (2012)

Dominique Monot and Vicky Langan

At an airport on the island of Hai-Wan, a young boy witnesses a failed assassination attempt. The assassin, a young woman called Mei, abducts the boy and brings him to her superior, the Metal Dragon. The Metal Dragon is the last of an old order of immortals living secretly in Hai-Wan. He resides on the top floor of the Gold Hotel, from where, via "all-seeing" security surveillance, he presides over the four dragons of the island's districts. These dragons are mortal men. Despite Mei's objections the Metal Dragon imparts the secret of long life to the boy before banishing him onto the streets of Hai-Wan.

The End Of The Earth Is My Home is a modern fantasy inspired by elements from the traditional Asian Stories of the Monkey King and Bram Stoker's Dracula, combined with the writer/director's travel experience.

The film was made over the winter and spring of 2011 / 2012 with a micro-budget raised by crowdfunding. The film uses very few CG effects, most of the effects being achieved in-camera with back-projections, models and other old studio techniques.

The film has an international cast and an original soundtrack by European Sensoria Band, in collaboration with some of the cast.

Premiered at the Darklight Film Festival 2012 and at the Kerry Film Festival 2012.

Directed by Alan Lambert

www.metaldragon.net/