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.

Black Sun Cinema: A Day of Experimental Film at Triskel Christchurch

Presented in association with Triskel Christchurch, Black Sun, Cork’s weirdo/outer limits music/film event, is presenting a day of unsettling experimental film, a host of rare cinematic shadows flickering mysteriously at the darker fringes of the mind. On a Sunday afternoon this August (date will be confirmed next week), adventurous souls seeking haven from the harsh summer light will find sanctuary in Triskel’s Christchurch Cinema as three programmes of hauntingly dreamlike avant-garde visions fall through the church’s muffled darkness to take possession of all present:

- American underground legend James Fotopoulos’ feature The Nest (2003) “offers up a bleak and cryptically funny assault on suburban anomie… Fotopoulos creeps around the edges of character and drama, conjuring moods of paranoia and dread that suggest the carefully ordered routines of daily life are a kind of opiate administered by sinister forces. Shooting in harsh 16mm color, Fotopoulos renders The Nest in a typically Spartan, forbidding style that makes it seem as though he is some extraterrestrial visitor photographing humans for the first time.” (Scott Foundas, Variety) Ideal mind-warping viewing for admirers of David Lynch who think they’ve seen everything...

- Frans Zwartjes is arguably Holland’s preeminent experimental filmmaker. His 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. Black Sun will present a mini-retrospective of five of his most accomplished short films from the late ‘60s and early ‘70s.

 - And three of Ireland’s most uncompromising contemporary experimental filmmakers, Rouzbeh Rashidi, Dean Kavanagh and Black Sun film programmer Maximilian Le Cain, will be on hand to present a series of their more disturbing short films. Strange atmospheres, tense self-portraits, troubled meditations on the ghostly power of cinema itself… Filmmaking at its most eerie and obliquely personal.

 Although best known as an experimental music event, Black Sun is also Cork’s only year-round platform for screening experimental film. For over two years, Black Sun’s film programmes have given Cork an all-too-rare taste of the more far-out side of cinema. It has established an impressive track record of world-class film programming, introducing Irish audiences to the work of several major underground filmmakers for the first time. This is the first of what will become regular Black Sun events devoted exclusively to film.