My short experimental film, E215 has won Publica’s Clerkenwell Screen Shorts competition where it was noted for having “compelling visual narrative”. Good times. The prize is that it will be projected in Clerkenwell Green, London on 22 May to coincide with Clerkenwell Design week.
More information on the event can be found on Publica’s website.
“Initiated in 2013 as part of our film programme, the Clerkenwell Screen projects out from our studio windows overlooking Clerkenwell Green. The project gives us a unique opportunity to contribute to the experience of public life by developing an interplay between the public and private realms. The projections we show are ephemeral: a gift to passers by encouraging them to engage with us as they pass through this historic public space.”
On the same week E215 will also be screened at Montreal Underground Film Festival on 24th where it has been nominated for a Muff Jury Prize! An will also screen at Snug Lab at Edinburgh’s Roxy Arthouse on 23rd May.
Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival is an international festival of experimental film and artists’ moving image. This years theme was ‘DreamLand’, focussing on film explorations of the natural world as a place of dreams, relating further to utopian dreams of a Scottish homeland – in Scotland’s Year of Homecoming, and the Scottish Referendum. My short film E215 was selected for its ‘Dreamland’ programme.
The reason I’m writing this is because having grown up in a small scottish town I could not imagine hosting an experimental film festival. That in itself is an experiment. Saturday night I attended a performance by the French collective, Nominoë. The event took place in the town hall. The contrast between the conservative environment and the performance made it feel appropriate that only an experimental film festival should take place in Hawick. As stated Alchemy has made me a new man. Perhaps I am ignorant but to see projected experimental work in Scotland is rare. I felt that every aspect of the festival was treated with great care and thought. I look forward to next years festival.
Cortex: Nominoë & Stéphane Mensah
Nominoë are a collective of artists made up of filmmakers Emmanuel Lefrant, Alexis Constantin, Nicolas Berthelot and Stéphane Courcy di Rosa. Through a play of shadows, the screen captures the image of a body in movement before the projectors’ beams of light, while the dancer’s gestures, through sensors, sculpt light and sound in the space within which he evolves. I took a wee picture after the performance of what is behind the screen. Five 16mm projectors next to a strobe light.
The festival also had a healthy amount of video installations works by Andrew Kotting, Ruth Le Gear, Pat Law and many more. All were available for the public to visit. Below is the auction house, one of the buildings that housed the video installations.
System Error – Guli Silberstein
Images In A Nondescript Fountain – Karl F.Stewart
All of the good photographs taken by Patrick Rafferty.
www.raffertyandrafferty.com