I taught Aaron Cavanagh last year at Teesside University.
I don’t know whether he’s still making video but anyone
who can make stuff as viscerally exhilarating
as this certainly should be.
Couple more from Teesside next week.
Author Archives: michael
Ed Day – Hats
Hats (2009, 123 MB, 10:54 min)
A first film from young UK actor Ed Day this made me laugh quite inordinately.
It was “was filmed over a few weeks in Jersey and Guernsey with the cast from
Oddsocks Theatre Company’s 2009 summer tour of Richard III”.
Apart from the humour what strikes home is the sheer technical ability,
wit and
Brantley Jones – Dead Plants
Dead Plants (2009, 36 MB, 1:24 min)
Another from the seemingly inexhaustible (but always pleasantly individual)
film seam at the School of Athens.
This is a lovely understated little study of ..er..dead plants, which fuses quirk,
a certain menace and a strange found beauty into something very satisfying.
Brantley Jones seems to live a double life – his website contains much more
“well made” stuff.
It will be interesting to see where he heads, eventually.
PS Also, how can you not warm to someone who lists the late great
David Foster Wallace as inspiration?
A Sad Loss
We’re deeply sad to have to report the untimely death on Sunday of
Millie Niss, at the age of 36.
Anyone fortunate enough to have met her, either online or in person,
will have been struck by the combination of razor sharp intelligence,
a glorious sense of humour and personal kindness with a sense of utter
puzzlement at pomposity, bullshitting or self-agrandisement.
She just didn’t get the latter three.
In recent years, working in close collaboration with her mother, Martha Deed
she brought us the wonderful Sporkworld Microblog,
something that always felt to me that rarity, the invention
of a new form (or at least an unprecedentedly deep and
thorough realisation of the possibilities of a new medium,
effectively the same thing.)
It’s uncool to the deepest degree, being about domesticity,
illness, food, birds and animals glimpsed from a car or house window,
the life of a small blue-collar town -its problems and its festivals- and so much more,
but then cool -being a facade- was a concept lost on Millie and that’s why I
treasure all the more this beautiful work and I mourn her loss
as an artist, as a friend and as a marvellous human being.
We send our deepest condolences to Millie’s family but in particular to Martha.
As a small tribute we post once again their short collaborative film about Millie’s
attempt to deal with the absentee ballot form in last year’s presidential election.
4 from Littlewhile
Tuilleries (2005, 480KB, 6 sec.)
Divining (2005, 2.1MB, 30 sec.)
A few gems from Littlewhile, a vlog (no longer with us)
which featured non-fiction clips.
Dieter Roth
Donna Kuhn Blown Away Rose
Blown Away Rose (2009, 48 MB, 2:06 min)
We’ve observed before how wonderfully productive
Donna Kuhn makes her relatively restricted lexicon
of images ( OK Greek Professors! -I know there’s a problem with that expression
but it does, and I don’t know what the image equivalent of lexicon is.)
Side by side with this she cautiously introduces new elements, which I look
forward to seeing her work over in her inimitable way during the course of her next few movies.
Latest is the landscape of New Mexico.
That makes me want to visit; the video as a whole makes me want to squeal with
delight.
Sebastian Hernandez – DIY or Die #3 – A Month of Sundays
A Month of Sundays (2009, 65 MB, 4:54 min)
Last &, in my view, the best of Sebastian Hernandez’ DIY or Die
series of documentaries, which we’ve been delighted to
be able to feature here in the past few weeks.
I found them all well made, engaging and informative.
This one I also found profoundly moving.
We look forward to featuring more of Sebastian’s work
in the not too distant future.
42 New Briggate – a film & a call for work
Untitled 1, 2 and 3 (Bullet Series) (2007, 4 MB, 40 secs)
Rather splendid film by Steven Allbutt shown as part of a film showcase
in 2007 at the 42 New Briggate Gallery in Leeds, UK.
Apart from the piece’s intrinsic merits I had said to curator Yvonne Carmichael
we’d post her call for short films to be projected in the gallery window
Dec 2009 -Feb 2010 if she sent me a nice QuickTime we could also post here.
She did & so here it is – please consider submitting something!
Data Moshing with Eddie Whelan
caralion (2009, 10 MB, 1:03 min)
METALBEAR (2009, 11 MB, 44 secs)
atlas bear (2009, 9 MB, 54 secs)
There’s a wonderful strangeness and abandon to Eddie Whelan’s work.
Here he indulges in some rather winning datamoshing.
It all looks garishly gorgeous but the icing for me is his choice
and use of music/sound, which resonates very effectively with the visuals.
The lion piece, in particular, seems to me to be deeply melancholy, lovely
and pretty funny, all at the same time.