Ludo Is Fantastic screening w/ Q&A

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LUDO IS FANTASTIC
Directed by Willie Stewart
2018
Belgium/Ireland
Digital format
70 minutes

Post-screening Q&A with director Willie Stewart and Vicky Langan.

Thursday, December 13, 2018 at 7:30 PM – 10:30PM - The Guesthouse, Cork

Since the early 1960s, wildman Ludo Mich has been actively operating on the fringes and the fringes of the fringes of the Antwerp underground art scene. Ludo exists inside the ‘M Dimension’ the world of his own creation in which he has produced a significant body of work across visual art, holographic sculpture, fluxus film, performance, Avant Garde science and philosophy. The core of his work is always the same: a need to stay pure to his own beliefs, regardless of the consequence. His family and friends know Ludo to be full of love and generosity. Devoted fans know him as a performer who continues to surprise and astonish. But despite 50 plus years of production, Ludo remains practically unknown outside of Belgium. ‘It is his curse to be an outlaw, always,’ remarks his housemate Frank. Ludo has been banned from numerous bars and cafes in his home town due to arousals of raucous happenings and incidents of nudity. In 2014, the Royal Academy of Fine Arts threatened to sue Ludo over a claim that a performance of his instigated the audience to mishandle works from the Academy’s collection. The police have been called to his home/studio on numerous occasions by neighbours complaining that Ludo’s loud barbarous joyful laughter had been going on for just too long. Now in his 70’s, Ludo’s work continues to gain integrity as he ignores conformity, financial gain and stays one step ahead of conventional and conservative art. Through a mix of archival footage, interviews with family and friends and fly on the wall footage, Ludo Is Fantastic immerses us in the world of the ‘Mich Dimension.’

Luminous Void Film Festival

Experimental Film Society will present the first edition of the Luminous Void Experimental Film Festival in partnership with The New Theatre this November. This two-day event, taking place in Dublin’s Temple Bar, will showcase recent work by filmmakers associated with Experimental Film Society.

Films to be featured are Inside (Vicky Langan/Maximilian Le Cain), Drifting Cities (Michael Higgins), Kino Hospital (Jann Clavadetscher) and Sisyphus Condition (Ieva Balode). Filmmaker and critic Maximilian Le Cain will deliver an artist’s talk that will use his recent work as a springboard to explore wider ideas about the moving image in the current historical moment. Each screening will be accompanied by a Q&A.

View Full Programme

Experimental Film Society (EFS) is an Irish company dedicated to the production and distribution of experimental cinema that grew out of the Experimental Film Society collective. It was founded and is run by Rouzbeh Rashidi. It creates radical, visually intense films that are distinguished by an uncompromising devotion to personal, formally daring filmmaking. It is central to a vibrant new wave of Irish experimental film. The Luminous Void Festival is the most concentrated example of its longstanding commitment to screening the wayward work that emerges from its filmmakers and likeminded artists from around the world.

EFS is pleased to partner with The New Theatre in launching the Luminous Void Experimental Film Festival. Going forward, this Festival will prove as formally fluid as the work it presents. Occurring irregularly, it will welcome a wider array of filmmakers from across the globe, and film-related live performances that interrogate the nature of cinema. It is Ireland’s only festival wholly dedicated to experimental cinema, and one that has emerged organically from a grass-roots Irish-based film culture.


EFS @ Thai Film Archive

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Experimental Film Society (EFS) is a group of filmmakers dedicated to the creation of uncompromisingly personal, formally challenging filmmaking. Based in Dublin, it has succeeded in forging a new and radically alternative Irish cinema. Its defiantly independent vision, both deeply informed by film history and utterly modern, has animated over five hundred shorts and features over its eighteen-year existence. Its films adopt an exploratory approach to filmmaking and foreground mood, atmosphere, visual rhythms, and the often-startling sensory interplay of sound and image. As EFS filmmakers experiment with cinema, they allow it equally to experiment on them, creating richly experiential works that chart an uncomfortable territory that is at once uncannily familiar and utterly alien.

Two EFS programmes in collaboration with Filmvirus Program are screening at the Thai Film Archive, Thailand, 3rd of November 2018.

EFS founder and director Rouzbeh Rashidi’s Phantom Islands (2018) exists at the boundary of documentary and fiction. Directed with Rashidi’s trademark visual intensity, it follows a couple adrift and disoriented in the stunning landscape of Ireland’s islands. Yet this deliberately melodramatic romance is constantly questioned by a provocative cinematic approach that results in a hypnotic and visceral inquiry into the very possibility of documentary objectivity.

EFS Short Film Programme:

1_Universal Film (2018) By Jann Clavadetscher (4min, 2018, Ireland)

  • “The universal film acts upon us as a force, blending and rearranging impossible scenarios served with a dash of ants.”

2_Ghoul (2018) By Michael Higgins (8min, 2018, Ireland) *World Premiere*

  • “The ghosts of a man and his dog haunt a field in rural Ireland.”

3_Double Blind (2018) By Vicky Langan / Maximilian Le Cain (36min, 2018, Ireland) *World Premiere*

  • “Experimental filmmaking / performance duo Langan & Le Cain embrace the mood and iconography of classic Gothic literature and cinema to their raw, mysterious and often erotically charged universe. Two isolated storybook characters wander through the remains of a shattered B-movie found abandoned half-edited on a mouldy VHS tape. This darkly intimate work, suggestive of intensely personal rituals, is at once haunting and discomforting.”

4_Antler (2018) By Atoosa Pour Hosseini (15min, 2018, Ireland) *World Premiere*

  • “Atoosa Pour Hosseini’s work with Super-8 conjures a mysterious territory that exists between memory, subjective perception and the objective materiality of the filmed image. Antler pushes deeper into this realm, seamlessly combining archival footage of animals and reptiles in their habitats with newly filmed material of the artist and an assistant at work in a botanical garden.”

More info HERE and HERE

EFS @ WORM, Rotterdam

Filmwerkplaats: Experimental Film Society Programme

Wed October 31st, Doors: 20:00 (Start: 20:30, End: 23:00)

WORM, Boomgaardsstraat 71, Rotterdam €6.00

A programme of Experimental Film Society films will screen at Filmwerkplaats, WORM in Rotterdam this October.

Experimental Film Society (EFS) is a group of filmmakers dedicated to the creation of uncompromisingly personal, formally challenging filmmaking. Based in Dublin, it operates as a company for the production, archiving and promotion of films by associated artists and filmmakers. EFS filmmakers experiment with cinema and they allow it equally to experiment on them, creating richly experiential works that chart an uncomfortable territory that is at once uncannily familiar and utterly alien. This programme also features a short by The Underground Film Studio, the home of projects by filmmaking duo Daniel Fawcett & Clara Pais.

Filmmaker Maximilian Le Cain will be there in person to give a quick talk and answer questions.

WORM is a physical and mental state of being that offers hangouts that offer a workable alternative to dominant cultural movements. From here they clearly state, and distribute their mission, artistic practice, and legacy. Filmwerkplaats is WORM’s own artist-run film lab. A workspace dedicated to DIY analogue practice, geared towards artists interested in film as an expressive, physical medium. Their screening programme encompasses a wide range of subject matter, showing works by members and guest-filmmakers throughout the year.

  • 1. Universal Film (2018), Jann Clavadetscher, 4mins, Ireland

  • 2. The Family Vault of James Hyland (2017), Michael Higgins, 14mins, Ireland

  • 3. INT. LANDSCAPES (2018), Daniel Fawcett & Clara Pais, 9mins, Europe

  • 4. Refining the Senses (2017), Atoosa Pour Hosseini, 12mins, Ireland/Switzerland

  • 5. Homo Sapiens Project (161-170) (2013), Rouzbeh Rashidi, 8 min, Ireland

  • 6. Brine Twice Daily (2015), Vicky Langan & Maximilian Le Cain, 20mins, Ireland

More info HERE and HERE

EFS @ Fedaxv 2018

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Experimental Film Society (EFS) is a group of filmmakers dedicated to the creation of uncompromisingly personal, formally challenging filmmaking. Based in Dublin, it has succeeded in forging a new and radically alternative Irish cinema. Its defiantly independent vision, both deeply informed by film history and utterly modern, has animated over five hundred shorts and features over its eighteen-year existence. Its films adopt an exploratory approach to filmmaking and foreground mood, atmosphere, visual rhythms, and the often-startling sensory interplay of sound and image. As EFS filmmakers experiment with cinema, they allow it equally to experiment on them, creating richly experiential works that chart an uncomfortable territory that is at once uncannily familiar and utterly alien. The series of EFS films screening at the Festival de Diseño Audiovisual Experimental de Valdivia, Chile showcases several directors currently producing feature films under the EFS banner.

EFS founder and director Rouzbeh Rashidi’s Phantom Islands (2018) exists at the boundary of documentary and fiction. Directed with Rashidi’s trademark visual intensity, it follows a couple adrift and disoriented in the stunning landscape of Ireland’s islands. Yet this deliberately melodramatic romance is constantly questioned by a provocative cinematic approach that results in a hypnotic and visceral inquiry into the very possibility of documentary objectivity.

Inside (2017) is the first feature to have emerged from the longstanding collaboration between Vicky Langan and Maximilian Le Cain, which has produced numerous short films. It excavates the sensations, desires and elusive chimeras of one woman’s inner life. Taking place in the isolated setting of a remote country cottage, it summons a haunting portrait of a woman adrift in a personal reality formed of her domestic rituals and frustrations. At once lyrical, unsettling and perverse, Inside is a chart of the growth patterns of solitude.

Michael Higgins’ eerie and meditative Drifting Cities (2017) shows two actors playing two lovers before meeting death in a car crash. They drift through muddled memories and moments in search of one another. Italian journal CinePensieri calls the film “evanescent in the widest meaning of the term… Is it the cinema that turns into the world or vice versa? In both cases, in Drifting Cities the two elements fuse together to such an extent that it’s difficult to recognise the border between the reality and the medium that represents it”.

23rd to 25th of October 2018, Valdivia, Chile.

More info disenoexperimental.cl

EFS @ Suspaustas laikas

Experimental Film Society (EFS) is a group of filmmakers dedicated to the creation of uncompromisingly personal, formally challenging filmmaking. Based in Dublin, it has succeeded in forging a new and radically alternative Irish cinema. Its defiantly independent vision, both deeply informed by film history and utterly modern, has animated over five hundred shorts and features over its eighteen-year existence. Its films adopt an exploratory approach to filmmaking and foreground mood, atmosphere, visual rhythms, and the often-startling sensory interplay of sound and image. As EFS filmmakers experiment with cinema, they allow it equally to experiment on them, creating richly experiential works that chart an uncomfortable territory that is at once uncannily familiar and utterly alien.

Two EFS programmes are screening at “Compact time” The Cinematography & Alternative Art Festival, 26th-29th July 2018, Nida Lithuania.

Phantom Islands, Rouzbeh Rashidi (2018, 86mins)

EFS founder and director Rouzbeh Rashidi’s Phantom Islands exists at the boundary of documentary and fiction. Directed with Rashidi’s trademark visual intensity, it follows a couple adrift and disoriented in the stunning landscape of Ireland’s islands. Yet this deliberately melodramatic romance is constantly questioned by a provocative cinematic approach that results in a hypnotic and visceral inquiry into the very possibility of documentary objectivity.

EFS Short Films (58mins):

1_Universal Film (2018), Jann Clavadetscher, 4mins, Ireland
2_The Family Vault of James Hyland (2017), Michael Higgins, 14mins, Ireland
3_INT. LANDSCAPES (2018), Daniel Fawcett & Clara Pais, 8:35mins, Ireland/Portugal
4_Refining the Senses (2017), Atoosa Pour Hosseini, 12:35mins, Ireland/Switzerland
5_Brine Twice Daily (2015), Vicky Langan and Maximilian Le Cain, 20mins, Ireland

Rouzbeh Rashidi will be in attendance to introduce all screenings. EFS is deeply grateful for the support of Arturas Liutostanskis and Suspaustas laikas. Info HERE

Double-Blind at Cork Midsummer Festival

Double-Blind

Film/performance by Vicky Langan & Maximilian Le Cain

Cork Midsummer Festival

June 18th, 9.30pm, St. Luke’s Church Crypt, Cork

Limited Capacity - booking essential. Tickets €10: http://www.corkmidsummer.com/programme/event/double-blind

Descend into the atmospheric St. Luke’s Church Crypt and become immersed in a live performance that unfolds against a richly textured film installation. For this new work, experimental performance / filmmaking duo Vicky Langan & Maximilian Le Cain embrace the mood and iconography of classic Gothic literature and cinema to their raw, mysterious and often erotically charged universe. Their darkly intimate work, suggestive of intensely personal rituals, is at once haunting and discomforting.

Made possible through the assistance of Cork Film Centre and Experimental Film Society, and developed with the support of a Cork City Council Individual Artist Bursary.


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Vicky Langan / Maximilian Le Cain

Over the course of a nine-year filmmaking collaboration, Vicky Langan and Maximilian Le Cain have created a distinctively intimate cinematic universe that has more recently expanded to include live performance. This audio-visual partnership is built on the strikingly fitting match between Langanʼs magnetic, often troublingly intense presence as a performer and Le Cainʼs distinctively jarring, disruptive visual rhythms. It has resulted in fifteen moving image works to date, including the Arts Council funded feature film Inside made for TULCA 2017, and an ongoing series of performances that began at the 2017 Lausanne Underground Film & Music Festival. These performances emerged from Play Ground, a 2017 short film created with the support of the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris as a tribute to the late Dutch filmmaker Frans Zwartjes. In 2018, they created a new performance, Double-Blind, for Cork Midsummer Festival.

Langan / Le Cain are closely affiliated with Experimental Film Society, a company dedicated to the creation of uncompromisingly personal, formally challenging filmmaking. Based in Dublin, it has succeeded in forging a new and radically alternative Irish cinema. Through its distribution, their films have been widely screened at international venues and festivals.

In 2016, Langan and Le Cain both attended the MA course in Art & Process at Crawford College of Art & Design, Cork, and subsequently participated in the exhibition slips, speaks at 12 Star Gallery, London that drew on the work of selected CCAD MA graduates. They have had retrospective screenings at Microscope Gallery, New York, and the Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris. Their film Light/Sound is part of the permanent collection of the Collectif Jeune Cinéma, Paris.

Select recent screenings, exhibitions and performances have taken place at: VISUAL as part of Carlow Arts Festival; VAI Get Together, IMMA; Process Festival, Riga; American Medium Gallery, New York; Cineautopsia: Festival de Cine Experimental de Bogotá, Colombia; Cinemateca Nacional de Ecuador, Quito; Triskel Christchurch Cinema, Cork.

For a full filmography and list of all Langan / Le Cain events, please visit: https://maximilianlecain.com/langan-le-cain/

For information on Langan & Le Cain’s extensive solo careers:
vickylangan.com / maximilianlecain.com

Phantom Islands & Inside at Festival ECRÃ, MAM, Brazil

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Two recent feature films from Experimental Film Society (EFS) will screen as part of the Festival ECRÃ in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil this July. Phantom Islands (Rouzbeh Rashidi) and Inside (Vicky Langan / Maximilian Le Cain) are in many ways complimentary films that mirror each other in several aspects. Both are wordless, delving back into the origins of cinema to conjure portraits of characters and couples immersed in psychic breakdown within vividly rendered Irish landscapes. Both present extremely fragmented narratives that blur inner and outer worlds, and are driven by intensely atmospheric visuals and soundtracks. And both rely on boldly physical performances that owe as much to performance art as to screen acting.

ECRÃ Festival is an experimental film festival that arose from the desire to question the film industry and its “primordial elements” and to give space for filmmakers to experiment freely in audiovisual production. It takes place between July 17th and 22nd at the Cinemateca do MAM Rio, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

New Article on Inside by Nikola Gocić

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From film writer Nikola Gocić:

With my fourth article for EFS Publications, I open my mind wider and take a deep dive into the turbid sea of Maximilian Le Cain's and Vicky Langan's psychological inwardness, in an attempt to find representative artefacts and bring them to the surface. In other words, a few thoughts on Le Cain's solo feature debut, Cloud of Skin (2015), and his latest and most accomplished collaborative effort with Langan, Inside (2017). Read the full article here: https://goo.gl/SuHq7p

Encountering the Land | VISUAL Gallery, Carlow

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Presented by Carlow Arts Festival and VISUAL Carlow

Wednesday 6 June – Sunday 2 September 2018

Bastian Birk Theusen, Vicky Langan & Maxmillian Le Cain, Fergus Doyle, Ella de Burca, Lisa Fingleton, Laura Fitzgerald, Ruth le Gear, Saidhbhín Gibson, Eileen Hutton, Bernadette Kiely, Catriona Leahy, Maria McKinney, Yvette Monahan, Miriam O’Connor, Sarah O’Flaherty, Kenneth O’Hallaron, Laurence O’Toole, Curro Rodriguez, Bennie Reilly, Blaise Smith, Deirdre Southey, Aine Stapleton. Including selected works from the Arts Council Collection by Charles Brady, Barrie Cooke, Gerard Dillon, James Dixon, Mairead O’hEocha, Martin Gale, Patrick Hall, Alice Maher, Patrick Pye, Nano Reid.

How does rural life inspire us? What are the challenges facing farmers today? Do you know where your food comes from and how it’s produced? These questions and more are asked in engaging and creative ways by the artists selected for ARTWORKS 2018.In an exhibition that includes photography, painting, film and performance, the romance and the rough of rural life are considered. Ideas relating to our agrarian history, the rural as a sanctuary and the land as provider, are presented.

This years selectors are artist and farmer Orla Barry, Sean Kissane, Curator, Irish Museum of Modern Art and Emma Lucy O’Brien, Curator VISUAL, Carlow.

There will be two awards for outstanding work presented:
The Hotron ARTWORKS Award and the Éigse Prize for work by a recent graduate.
Both prizes are sponsored by Hotron Ltd. Award winners will be announced at the Festival Launch on 6 June.

PLAY GROUND at Visual Artists Ireland Get Together / MExIndex, IMMA

Play Ground, the Langan / Le Cain film tribute to Frans Zwartjes, is one of four films selected by MExIndex for a programme that will screen repeatedly throughout the Visual Artists Ireland 'Get Together'. Billed as 'Ireland's National Day for Visual Artists', this day-long event features talks, panel discussions, 'speed curating' and specialist clinics. It takes place at IMMA  (Irish Museum of Modern Art) on Monday May 21st.

Full programme details here.