The Falmouth Convention

Frame from our film Project
The Annexinema Film Programme includes our film Project at The Poly Cinema, Falmouth, Kernow on Saturday 22 May 8.30 to 11.30pm.
http://www.thefalmouthconvention.com/evening-screenings-and-special-events
Annexinema Screening poster
The Poly Cinema, Falmouth
It was good to see Project on a big screen again and to see Stan Brakhage’s Garden of Earthly Delights.


The Falmouth Convention: Annexinema film programme
The Poly Cinema, Church Street, Falmouth
Saturday 22 May 2010 8.30pm - 11.30pm

Part one
30 Miles North of Edmonton - July 16th, 1969

Tobias Schmucking / Germany / 2003 / super 8/miniDV / colour / sound / 7min
While Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins are preparing for their journey to the moon, somewhere, 30 miles north of Edmonton, a solitary caravan is drifting through time.

Voiliers et Coquelicots (Sailboats and Poppies)
Rose Lowder / France / 2001 / 16mm / colour / silent / 2min 40sec
The boats sail out of the Vieux port in Marseilles to be amongst the poppy fields.

Journeying Within
Anna Sadler / UK / 2010 / miniDV / colour / sound / 4min 30sec
A film and audio recording developed through visiting and revisiting a Cornish tin mine. A body explores its relationship with space and light through lack of both.

The Coming Race
Ben Rivers / UK / 2006 / 16mm / b+w / sound / 5min
A hand processed film in which thousands of people climb a rocky mountain terrain. The destination and purpose of their ascension remains unclear. A vague, mysterious and unsettling pilgrimage fraught with unknown intentions. The title The Coming Race is after a Victorian novel by E.G.E. Bulwer-Lytton, about a race of people who live under a mountain.

The Plough
Simon Raven / UK / 2010 / HD video / colour / sound / 2min 30sec
The artist drags a satellite dish through the coming light to work, presumably.

Coastal Calls
Rob Gawthrop / 1982 / 16mm / colour / sound / 12min
“The film is made up of four 100ft rolls/takes of slow pans of a beach and its surrounding landscape with focus and exposure in constant change. The sound is that of space (sea, wind) alternating with that of a wind instrument (Shawn). Only at specific instances do focus and exposure match to give an image that is readable in illusionistic terms, so that any attempt to ‘place’ oneself is subverted by the constant perceptual shift applied to the image.”
Michael Mazière, Undercut

Les Amours de la Pieuvre (The Love Life of an Octopus)
Jean Painlevé and Geneviève Hamon / France / 1967 / 35mm / colour / sound / 13min
Operating under the credo ‘Science is fiction’ Painlevé lived his life as a field trip, forging his own unique cinematic path. From an essay written in 1935: “Wading around in water up to your ankles or navel, day and night, in all kinds of weather, even in areas where one is sure to find nothing, digging about everywhere for algae or octopus, getting hypnotised by a sinister pond where everything seems to promise marvels although nothing lives there. This is the ecstasy of any addict.”

Interlude: 30min

Part two
Farewell Topsails

Humphrey Jennings / UK / 1937 / 35mm colour / sound / 8min
One of the very first colour documentaries, and a paean to the last of the topsail schooners transporting China clay from Cornwall to London.

Project
Kayla Parker and Stuart Moore / UK / 1997 / super 8/DVD / colour / sound / 1min 20sec
A series of experiments with light, time and place, Project is made up of hundreds of photos taken during field trips to sites of ancient Celtic holed stones in Kernow, taken using constructed devices and naturally occurring pinhole phenomena.

Breath
William Raban / UK / 1974 / 16mm / colour / sound / 15min
A tape recorder is placed near Hay Tor (Dartmoor) and left to record whilst 3 camera operators walk from different distances towards the recorder. Two of them were given whistles of different pitches, whilst the third person had no whistle. First camera was instructed to film for the duration of a breath, whilst blowing his whistle as synchronising signal for the other two. At the end of the first whistle, the second camera was instructed to film in the same manner . The third camera filled the time space between the second whistle and the first whistle. The filming ended just after all three cameras converged on the tape recorder, and when the film had run out of all three cameras. The original and uncut soundtrack was used to score the cutting and reassembly of the picture.

Walk (in Progress)
Emily Wilczek / UK / super 8/miniDV / b+w / sound / 2min 20sec
Walk (in Progress) documents four people on a walk in the French countryside, filmed on out-of-date black and white filmstock with the audio captured on MiniDisc. Emily relinquishes control of the camera, suggesting to the others that they film. The sound and image are edited in sync, with periods of black when the camera isn’t running. Depending on the proximity of the camera operator to ‘the film-maker’ the mechanised whirr of the camera may be audible.

Garden of Earthly Delights
Stan Brakhage / USA / 1981 / 16mm / colour / silent / 2min 30sec
A collage composed entirely of mountain zone vegetation. As the title suggests it is a homage to (but also an argument with) Hieronymous Bosch.

Alice in Wonderland or Who is Guy Debord?
Robert Cauble / USA / 2009 / video / colour / sound / 23min
Alice, unhappy with her prim, proper existence in Victorian England, travels through time into an age that allegorically resembles our own. There, she encounters elitist tea-partiers, rapping flowers, and a philosopher cat, before she is consumed by an assaulting music video. Her only hope for understanding this foreign world of spectacle is to somehow find Guy Debord.