shoot shoot shoot broadsheet newspaper (2002)

8
SHOOT SHOOT SHOOT SPECIAL EDITION PROGRAMME NOTES A GUIDE TO THE FILMS IN THE EXHIBITION “What follows is a set of instructions, necessarily incomplete, for the construc- tion, necessarily impossible, of a mosaic. Each instruction must lead to the screen, the tomb and temple in which the mosaic grows. The instructions are fractured but not frivolous. They are no more than clues to the films which lust for freedom and re-illumination with, by and of the cinema. What follows is not truth, only evidence. The explanation is in the pro- jection and the perception.” Simon Hartog, 1968 “It is often difficult for a venue organis- er/programmer to determine from written description what an individual or group of film-makers work is ‘about’, from where it comes, to what or whom it is addressing itself. Equally, it is difficult for a film-maker to provide such informa- tion from within the pages of a catalogue when for many, including myself, the entire project or the area into which one’s work energy is concentrated, is intent on clarifying these kind of questions. The films outside of such a situation become more or less dead objects, the residue (though hopefully a determined residue) of such an all-embracing pursuit.” Mike Leggett, 1980 “The most important thing still is to let oneself get into the film one is watching, to stop fighting it, to stop feeling the need to object during the process of experi- ence, or rather, to object, fight it, but overcome each moment again, to keep letting oneself overcome one’s difficul- ties, to then slide into it (one can always demolish the experience afterwards any- way, so what’s the hurry?).” Peter Gidal, c.1970-71 * * * EXPANDED CINEMA British filmmakers led a drive beyond the screen and the theatre, and their innova- tions in expanded cinema inevitably took the work into galleries. After questioning the role of the spectator, they began to examine the light beam, its volume and presence in the room. In a step towards later complex projection pieces, for Castle One, Malcolm Le Grice hung a light bulb in front of the screen. Its intermittent flashing bleaches out the image, illuminates the audience and lays bare the conditions of the traditional screening arrangement. Take Measure, by William Raban, visual- ly measures a dimension of the space as the filmstrip is physically stretched between projector and screen. To make Diagonal, he directly filmed into the pro- jector gate and presents the same flicker- ing footage in dialogue across three screens in an oblique formation. Gill Eatherley literally painted in light over extremely long exposures to shoot Hand Grenade, which runs three differ- ent edits of the material side-by-side. Light Music developed into a series of enquiries into the nature of optical sound- tracks and their direct relation to the abstract image. The film can be shown in different configurations, with projectors side-by-side or facing into each other. Anthony McCall succinctly demonstrates the sculptural potential of film as a single ray of light, incidentally tracing a circle on the screen, is perceived as a conical line emanating from the projector. The beam is given physical volume in the room by use of theatrical smoke, or any other agent (such as dust) that would thicken the air to make it more apparent. More than just a film, Line Describing a Cone affirms cinema as a collective social experience. Malcolm Le Grice, Castle One, 1966, b/w, sound, 20m William Raban, Take Measure, 1973, colour, silent, (X)m William Raban, Diagonal, 1973, colour, sound, 6m Gill Eatherley, Hand Grenade, 1971, colour, sound, 8m Lis Rhodes, Light Music, 1975-77, b/w, sound, 20m Anthony McCall, Line Describing A Cone, 1973, b/w, silent, 30m (Total running time approximately 93m) CASTLE ONE “The light bulb was a Brechtian device to make the spectator aware of himself. I don’t like to think of an audience in the mass, but of the individual observer and his behaviour. What he goes through while he watches is what the film is about. I’m interested in the way the indi- vidual constructs variety from his percep- tual intake.” Malcolm Le Grice, Films and Filming, February 1971 “… totally Kafkaesque, but also filmical- ly completely different from anyone else because of the rawness. The Americans are always talking about ‘rawness’, but it’s never raw. When the English talk about ‘raw’, they don’t just talk about it, it really is raw – it’s grey, it’s rainy, it’s grainy, you can hardly see what’s there. The material really is there at the same time as the image. With the Germans, it’s a high-class image of material, optically reproduced and glossy. The Americans are half-way there, but the English stuff looked like it really was home-made, arti- sanal, and yet amazingly structured. And I certainly thought Castle One was the most powerful film I’d seen, ever…” Peter Gidal, interview with Mark Webber, 2001 “Malcolm said to me “Ideally in this film there should be a real light bulb hanging next to the screen, but that’s not possi- ble.” And I said “It’s not possible to hang a light bulb?” He said “Well, I don’t see how we could possibly do this.” I said “Well the only question is how do we turn it on and off at the right moments? … Are you able to do that as a live perform- ance?” He looked at me like the world was going to end! And I said “The switch will be there.”” Jack Moore, interview with Mark Webber, 2001 TAKE MEASURE “The thing that strikes me going into a cinema, because it is such a strange space and it’s organized to allow you to get enveloped by the whole illusion of film, when you try and think of it in terms of real dimensions it becomes very difficult. The idea of a sixty foot throw or a hun- dred foot throw from the projector to the screen just doesn’t enter into the equa- tion. So I thought the idea of making a piece that made that distance between the projector and the screen more tangible was quite an interesting thing to do.” William Raban, interview with Mark Webber, 2001 Take Measure is usually the shortest of my films, measuring in feet that intangi- ble space separating screen from projec- tor box (which is counted on the screen by the image of a film synchronizer). Instead of being fed into the projector from a reel, the film is strung between projector and screen. When the film starts, the film snakes backwards through the audience as it is consumed by the pro- jector.” William Raban, Perspectives on British Avant-Garde Film catalogue, 1977 DIAGONAL Diagonal is a film for three projectors, though the diagonally arranged projector beams need not be contained within a single flat screen area. This film works well in a conventional film theatre when the top left screen spills over the ceiling and the bottom right projects down over the audience. It is the same image on all three projectors, a double-exposed flick- ering rectangle of the projector gate slid- ing diagonally into and out of frame. Focus is on the projector shutter, hence the flicker. This film is ‘about’ the projec- tor gate, the plane where the film frame is caught by the projected light beam.” William Raban, Perspectives on British Avant-Garde Film catalogue, 1977 “The first great excitement is finding the idea, making its acquaintance, and court- ing it through the elaborate ritual of film production. The second excitement is the moment of projection when the film becomes real and can be shared with the audience. The former enjoyment is unique and privileged; the second is not, and so long as the film exists, it is infi- nitely repeatable.” William Raban, Arts Council Film- Makers on Tour catalogue, 1980 HAND GRENADE “Although the word ‘expanded’ cinema has also been used for the open/gallery size/multi screen presentation of film, this ‘expansion’ (could still but) has not yet proved satisfactory – for my own work anyway. Whether you are dealing with a single postcard size screen or six ten-foot screens, the problems are basi- cally the same – to try to establish a more positively dialectical relationship with the audience. I am concerned (like many others) with this balance between the audience and the film – and the noetic problems involved.” Gill Eatherley, 2nd International Avant-Garde Film Festival programme notes, 1973 “Malcolm Le Grice helped me with Hand Grenade. First of all I did these stills, the chairs traced with light. And then I want- ed it to all move, to be in motion, so we started to use 16mm. We shot only a hun- dred feet on black and white. It took ages, actually, because it’s frame by frame. We shot it in pitch dark, and then we took it to the Co-op and spent ages printing it all out on the printer there. This is how I first got involved with the Co-op.” Gill Eatherley, interview with Mark Webber, 2001 LIGHT MUSIC “Lis Rhodes has conducted a thorough investigation into the relationship between the shapes and rhythms of lines and their tonality when printed as sound. Her work Light Music is in a series of ‘moveable sections’. The film does not have a rigid pattern of sequences, and the final length is variable, within one-hour duration. The imagery is restricted to lines of horizontal bars across the screen: there is variety in the spacing (frequen- cy), their thickness (amplitude), and their colour and density (tone). One section was filmed from a video monitor that pro- duced line patterns on the screen that var- ied according to sound signals generated by an oscillator; so initially it is the sound which produces the image. Taking this filmed material to the printing stage, the same lines that produced the picture are printed onto the optical soundtrack edge of the film: the picture thus produces the sound. Other material was shot from a rostrum camera filming black and white grids, and here again at the printing stage, the picture is printed onto the film sound- track. Sometimes the picture ‘zooms’ in on the grid, so that you actually ‘hear’ the zoom, or more precisely, you hear an aural equivalent to the screen image. This equivalence cannot be perfect, because the soundtrack reproduces the frame lines that you don’t see, and the film passes at even speed over the projector sound scan- ner, but intermittently through the picture gate. Lis Rhodes avoids rigid scoring pro- cedures for scripting her films. This work may be experienced (and was perhaps conceived) as having a musical form, but the process of composition depends on various chance operations, and upon the intervention of the filmmaker upon the film and film machinery. This is consis- tent with the presentation where the film does not crystallize into one finished form. This is a strong work, possessing infinite variety within a tightly controlled framework.” William Raban, Perspectives on British Avant-Garde Film catalogue, 1977 “The film is not complete as a totality; it could well be different and still achieve its purpose of exploring the possibilities of optical sound. It is as much about sound as it is about image; their relation- ship is necessarily dependent as the opti- cal soundtrack ‘makes’ the music. It is the machinery itself which imposes this rela- tionship. The image throughout is com- posed of straight lines. It need not have been.” Lis Rhodes, A Perspective on English Avant-Garde Film catalogue, 1978 LINE DESCRIBING A CONE “Once I started really working with film and feeling I was making films, making works of media, it seemed to me a com- pletely natural thing to come back and back and back, to come more away from a pro-filmic event and into the process of filmmaking itself. And at the time it all boiled down to some very simple ques- tions. In my case, and perhaps in others, the question being something like “What would a film be if it was only a film?” Carolee Schneemann and I sailed on the SS Canberra from Southampton to New York in January 1973, and when we embarked, all I had was that question. When I disembarked I already had the plan for Line Describing a Cone fully- fledged in my notebook. You could say it was a mid-Atlantic film! It’s been the story of my life ever since, of course, where I’m located, where my interests are, that business of “Am I English or am I American?” So that was when I con- ceived Line Describing a Cone and then I made it in the months that followed.” Anthony McCall, interview with Mark Webber, 2001 “One important strategy of expanded cin- ema radically alters the spatial discrete- ness of the audience vis-à-vis the screen and the projector by manipulating the projection facilities in a manner which elevates their role to that of the perform- ance itself, subordinating or eliminating the role of the artist as performer. The films of Anthony McCall are the best illustration of this tendency. In Line Describing a Cone, the conventional pri- macy of the screen is completely aban- doned in favour of the primacy of the pro- jection event. According to McCall, a screen is not even mandatory: The audi- ence is expected to move up and down, in and out of the beam – this film cannot be fully experienced by a stationary specta- tor. This means that the film demands a multi-perspectival viewing situation, as opposed to the single-image/single-per- spective format of conventional films or the multi-image/single-perspective for- mat of much expanded cinema. The shift of image as a function of shift of per- spective is the operative principle of the film. External content is eliminated, and the entire film consists of the controlled line of light emanating from the projec- tor; the act of appreciating the film – i.e., ‘the process of its realisation’ – is the content.” Deke Dusinberre, “On Expanding Cinema”, Studio International, November/December 1975 * * * DOUBLE SCREEN FILMS Widening the visual field increased the opportunity for both spectacle and con- templation. With two 16mm projectors side-by-side, time could be frozen or fractured in a more complex way by play- ing one image against another and creat- ing a magical space between them. Each screening became a unique event, accen- tuating the temporality of the cinematic experience. River Yar is a monumental study of land- scape, nature, light and the passage of time. It employs real time and time-lapse photography to document and contrast the view of a tidal estuary over two three- week periods, in spring and autumn. The film stimulates cosmic awareness as each day is seen to have its elemental events. Sunrise brings in the light and sunset pro- vides the ultimate fade-out. The use of different film stocks, and the depiction of twins seen in a twin-screen format, emphasises the fractured and slightly disorientating view from Sally Potter’s window in Play. David Parsons’ refilming of a stunt car demonstration pulses between frames, analytically transforming the motion into a visceral mid-air dance. Wind Vane was shot simultaneously by two cameras whose view was directed by the wind. The gentle panning makes us subtly aware of the physical space (dis- tance) between the adjacent frames. With a rock music soundtrack, Choke, suggests pop art in its treatment of Piccadilly Circus at night. Multiply exposed and treated images mirror each other or travel across the two screens. Castle Two immediately throws the view- er into a state of discomfort as one tries to assess the situation, and then proceeds a long, obscure and perplexing indoctrina- tion. “Is that coming through out there?” William Raban & Chris Welsby, River Yar, 1971-72, colour, sound, 35m Sally Potter, Play, 1971, b/w & colour, silent, 7m David Parsons, Mechanical Ballet, 1975, b/w, silent, 8m Chris Welsby, Wind Vane, 1972, colour, sound, 8m David Crosswaite, Choke, 1971, b/w & colour, sound, 5m Malcolm Le Grice, Castle Two, 1968, b/w, sound, 32m (Total running time approximately 97m) RIVER YAR “The camera points south. The landscape is an isolated frame of space – a wide- angle view of a tidal estuary, recorded during Autumn and Spring. The camera holds a fixed viewpoint and marks time at the rate of one frame every minute (day and night) for three weeks. The two sequences Autumn and Spring, are pre- sented symmetrically on adjacent screens. The first Spring sunrise is recorded in real time (24 fps) for 14 min- utes, establishing a comparative scale of speed for the Autumn screen, where com- plete days are passing in one minute. Then both screens run together in stop- action until the Autumn screen breaks into a 14 minute period of real time for the final sunset into darkness. Recordings were made of landscape sound at specific intervals each day. Each screen has its own soundtrack which mixes with the other in the space of the cinema.” William Raban & Chris Welsby, NFT English Independent Cinema programme notes, 1972 “Chris found the location.which was an ex-water mill in Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight, owned by the sons of the historian A.J.P. Taylor. We managed to get it for an astonishing rent of £5 a week. One of its upstairs windows happened to look over this river estuary, it was the kind of view we were looking for, so it was ideal in many ways. We’d worked out the concep- tual model for the film, how we wanted it to look as a two-screen piece, more or less entirely in advance. We also knew what camera we wanted. There was real- ly only the Bolex camera that would be suitable for filming it on. I made an elec- tric motor for firing the time-lapse shots that was capable of giving time exposures as well as instantaneous exposures. Unknown to us of course, the first period of shooting coincided with the big coal miners’ strike, in the Ted Heath govern- ment, so the motor was redundant for most of the time; we had to shoot the film by hand. And it was quite interesting because we weren’t just making River Yar, we were down there for six weeks in the autumn and three weeks again the fol- lowing spring, so we were also making other work. I was doing a series of tree prints in a wood nearby. And we invited people down to share the experience with us, so Malcolm, Annabel and Gill all came to stay.” William Raban, interview with Mark Webber, 2001 PLAY “In Play, Potter filmed six children – actually, three pairs of twins – as they play on a sidewalk, using two cameras mounted so that they recorded two con- tiguous spaces of the sidewalk. When Play is screened, two projectors present the two images side by side, recreating the original sidewalk space, but, of course, with the interruption of the right frame line of the left image and the left frame line of the right image – that is, so that the sidewalk space is divided into two filmic spaces. The cinematic division of the original space is emphasized by the fact that the left image was filmed in color, the right image in black and white. Indeed, the division is so obvious that when the children suddenly move from one space to the other, ‘through’ the frame lines, their originally continuous movement is transformed into cinematic magic.” Scott MacDonald, A Critical Cinema 3, 1998 “To be frank, I always felt like a loner, an out- sider. I never felt part of a community of film- makers. I was often the only female, or one of few, which didn’t help. I didn’t have a buddy thing going, which most of the men did. They also had rather different concerns, more hard- edged structural concerns … I was probably more eclectic in my taste than many of the English structural filmmakers, who took an absolute prescriptive position on film. Most of them had gone to Oxford or Cambridge or some other university and were terribly theoret- ical. I left school at fifteen. I was more the hand-on artist and less the academic. The over- riding memory of those early years is of mak- ing things on the kitchen table by myself…” Sally Potter interviewed by Scott MacDonald, A Critical Cinema 3, 1998 MECHANICAL BALLET “… I began to forge ideas that explored the making of the work and the procedure of events and ideas unfolding in space and time. Inevitably, this led to the consideration of the filmmaking apparatus as an integral element within the construction of the film. Taken liter- ally of course, this applies to the making of any film, but I am referring to processes that do not attempt to hide the means of production and make the technique transparent, rather the very opposite. There are many parallels in other cre- ative fields: the improvisational aspects of modern jazz, and Exercises in Style by the wonderful French writer Raymond Queneau. These examples spring to mind as background influences upon what I see now as an essential- ly modernist project, in that I was attempting to assert the material aspects of making, over what was depicted. So, to turn to the camera to attempt exhaust all the possibilities of its lens- es, the film transportation mechanism, the shift of the turret, hand holding or tripods mounting, as conditioning factors within the films became the challenge. The project broadened out with seemingly endless possibilities offered by the film printer, the projector, and the screen.” David Parsons, “Picture Planes”, Filmwaves No. 2, November 1997 “Several areas of interest intersect in the mak- ing of Mechanical Ballet: an interest in ‘found’ footage (relating to collage, assemblage), the manipulation of the film strip and the film frame, time and duration, projection and the screen, and the film printing process, to high- light some of the main concerns. In the early ’70s I began a series of experiments with ways of refilming and improvising new constructions with different combinations of frames. Thus new forms emerged from the found material that I had selected to use as my base material. In one work I extended the closing moments of the tail footage of a film, consisting of less than a second of flared out frames, stretching it into two minutes forty five seconds, 100 foot of film. In another I used some early documenta- tion of time and motion studies of factory workers performing repetitive tasks on machin- ery. A speedometer mounted in the corner of the frame monitored the progress of their actions in relation to the time it took to perform their tasks. I found the content both disturbing and absurd and sought to exemplify this by exaggerating the action and ‘stalling’ the moni- toring process by racking the film back and forth through the gate. The original material that formed the basis for Mechanical Ballet was an anonymous short reel of film of what appeared to be car crash tests. In the original these tests are carried out in a deadpan and somewhat cumbersome manner. Reworked into a two-screen film and divorced from their orig- inal context they take on both a sinister and humorous quality. Using similar techniques to the aforementioned films, the repetitive refilm- ing of the original footage in short sections emphasised the process of film projection. Somewhat like a child’s game of two steps for- ward and one back, the viewer is made aware of the staggered progress of the film through the gate. In sharp contrast to the almost strobo- scopic flicker of the rapid movement of the frames that alternate in small increments of light and dark exposures, the image takes on new meanings; the distorted reality of two heavy objects (the cars, one on each of the screens) ‘dancing’ lightly in space.” David Parsons, 2002 The London Film-Makers’ Co-operative was founded in 1966 and based upon the artist-led distribution centre created by Jonas Mekas and the New American Cinema Group. Both had a policy of open membership, accepting all submissions without judgement, but the LFMC was unique in incorporating the three key aspects of artist filmmaking: production, distribution and exhibition within a single facility. Early pioneers like Len Lye, Antony Balch, Margaret Tait and John Latham had already made remarkable personal films in England, but by the mid-60s interest in “underground” film was grow- ing. On his arrival from New York, Stephen Dwoskin demonstrated and encouraged the possibilities of experi- mental filmmaking and the Coop soon became a dynamic centre for the discus- sion, production and presentation of avant-garde film. Several key figures such as Peter Gidal, Malcolm Le Grice, John Smith and Chris Welsby went onto become internationally celebrated. Many others, like Annabel Nicolson and the fiercely autonomous and prolific Jeff Keen, worked across the boundaries between film and performance and remain relatively unknown, or at least unseen. The Co-op asserted the significance of the British films in line with international developments, whilst surviving hand-to- mouth in a series of run down buildings. The physical hardship of the organisa- tion’s struggle contributed to the rigor- ous, formal nature of films produced dur- ing this period. While the Structural approach dominated, informing both the interior and landscape tendencies, the British filmmakers also made significant innovations with multi-screen films and expanded cinema events, producing works whose essence was defined by their ephemerality. Many of the works fell into the netherworld between film and fine art, never really seeming at home in either cinema or gallery spaces. Shoot Shoot Shoot, a major retrospective programme and research project, will bring these extraordinary works back to life. Curated by Mark Webber with assistance from Gregory Kurcewicz and Ben Cook. Shoot Shoot Shoot is a LUX project. Funded by the Arts Council of England National Touring Programme, the British Council, bfi and the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. INTRODUCTION THE FIRST DECADE OF THE LONDON FILM-MAKERS’CO-OPERATIVE & BRITISH AVANT-GARDE FILM 1966-76 Anthony McCall, Line Describing A Cone Malcolm Le Grice, Castle Two David Crosswaite, Choke

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Broadsheet newspaper programme notes for 'SHOOT SHOOT SHOOT The First Decade of the London Film-Makers’ Co-operative & British Avant-Garde Film 1966-76' film exhibition curated by Mark Webber for LUX in 2002. Includes essay by AL Rees and information on films by Malcolm Le Grice, William Raban, Lis Rhodes, Chris Welsby, John Smith, Anthony McCall, Annabel Nicolson amongst others.

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: Shoot Shoot Shoot Broadsheet Newspaper (2002)

SHOOT SHOOT SHOOT SPECIALEDITION

PROGRAMME NOTES

A GUIDE TO THE FILMS IN THEEXHIBITION

“What follows is a set of instructions,necessarily incomplete, for the construc-tion, necessarily impossible, of a mosaic.Each instruction must lead to the screen,the tomb and temple in which the mosaicgrows. The instructions are fractured butnot frivolous. They are no more thanclues to the films which lust for freedomand re-illumination with, by and of thecinema. What follows is not truth, onlyevidence. The explanation is in the pro-jection and the perception.”

Simon Hartog, 1968

“It is often difficult for a venue organis-er/programmer to determine from writtendescription what an individual or groupof film-makers work is ‘about’, fromwhere it comes, to what or whom it isaddressing itself. Equally, it is difficultfor a film-maker to provide such informa-tion from within the pages of a cataloguewhen for many, including myself, theentire project or the area into which one’swork energy is concentrated, is intent onclarifying these kind of questions. Thefilms outside of such a situation becomemore or less dead objects, the residue(though hopefully a determined residue)of such an all-embracing pursuit.”

Mike Leggett, 1980

“The most important thing still is to letoneself get into the film one is watching,to stop fighting it, to stop feeling the needto object during the process of experi-ence, or rather, to object, fight it, butovercome each moment again, to keepletting oneself overcome one’s difficul-ties, to then slide into it (one can alwaysdemolish the experience afterwards any-way, so what’s the hurry?).”

Peter Gidal, c.1970-71

* * *

EXPANDED CINEMA

British filmmakers led a drive beyond thescreen and the theatre, and their innova-tions in expanded cinema inevitably tookthe work into galleries. After questioningthe role of the spectator, they began toexamine the light beam, its volume andpresence in the room.

In a step towards later complex projectionpieces, for Castle One, Malcolm Le Gricehung a light bulb in front of the screen. Itsintermittent flashing bleaches out theimage, illuminates the audience and laysbare the conditions of the traditionalscreening arrangement. Take Measure, by William Raban, visual-ly measures a dimension of the space asthe filmstrip is physically stretchedbetween projector and screen. To makeDiagonal, he directly filmed into the pro-jector gate and presents the same flicker-ing footage in dialogue across three

screens in an oblique formation. Gill Eatherley literally painted in lightover extremely long exposures to shootHand Grenade, which runs three differ-ent edits of the material side-by-side. Light Music developed into a series ofenquiries into the nature of optical sound-tracks and their direct relation to theabstract image. The film can be shown indifferent configurations, with projectorsside-by-side or facing into each other. Anthony McCall succinctly demonstratesthe sculptural potential of film as a singleray of light, incidentally tracing a circleon the screen, is perceived as a conicalline emanating from the projector. Thebeam is given physical volume in theroom by use of theatrical smoke, or anyother agent (such as dust) that wouldthicken the air to make it more apparent.More than just a film, Line Describing aCone affirms cinema as a collectivesocial experience.

Malcolm Le Grice, Castle One, 1966,b/w, sound, 20mWilliam Raban, Take Measure, 1973,colour, silent, (X)mWilliam Raban, Diagonal, 1973, colour,sound, 6mGill Eatherley, Hand Grenade, 1971,colour, sound, 8mLis Rhodes, Light Music, 1975-77, b/w,sound, 20mAnthony McCall, Line Describing ACone, 1973, b/w, silent, 30m

(Total running time approximately 93m)

CASTLE ONE

“The light bulb was a Brechtian device tomake the spectator aware of himself. Idon’t like to think of an audience in themass, but of the individual observer andhis behaviour. What he goes throughwhile he watches is what the film isabout. I’m interested in the way the indi-vidual constructs variety from his percep-tual intake.”

Malcolm Le Grice, Films andFilming, February 1971

“… totally Kafkaesque, but also filmical-ly completely different from anyone elsebecause of the rawness. The Americansare always talking about ‘rawness’, butit’s never raw. When the English talkabout ‘raw’, they don’t just talk about it,it really is raw – it’s grey, it’s rainy, it’sgrainy, you can hardly see what’s there.The material really is there at the sametime as the image. With the Germans, it’sa high-class image of material, opticallyreproduced and glossy. The Americansare half-way there, but the English stufflooked like it really was home-made, arti-sanal, and yet amazingly structured. AndI certainly thought Castle One was themost powerful film I’d seen, ever…”

Peter Gidal, interview with MarkWebber, 2001

“Malcolm said to me “Ideally in this filmthere should be a real light bulb hangingnext to the screen, but that’s not possi-ble.” And I said “It’s not possible to hanga light bulb?” He said “Well, I don’t seehow we could possibly do this.” I said“Well the only question is how do we turnit on and off at the right moments? … Areyou able to do that as a live perform-ance?” He looked at me like the worldwas going to end! And I said “The switchwill be there.””

Jack Moore, interview with MarkWebber, 2001

TAKE MEASURE

“The thing that strikes me going into acinema, because it is such a strange spaceand it’s organized to allow you to getenveloped by the whole illusion of film,when you try and think of it in terms ofreal dimensions it becomes very difficult.The idea of a sixty foot throw or a hun-dred foot throw from the projector to thescreen just doesn’t enter into the equa-tion. So I thought the idea of making apiece that made that distance between theprojector and the screen more tangiblewas quite an interesting thing to do.”

William Raban, interview with MarkWebber, 2001

“Take Measure is usually the shortest ofmy films, measuring in feet that intangi-ble space separating screen from projec-tor box (which is counted on the screenby the image of a film synchronizer).Instead of being fed into the projectorfrom a reel, the film is strung betweenprojector and screen. When the filmstarts, the film snakes backwards throughthe audience as it is consumed by the pro-jector.”

William Raban, Perspectives onBritish Avant-Garde Film catalogue,1977

DIAGONAL

“Diagonal is a film for three projectors,though the diagonally arranged projectorbeams need not be contained within a

single flat screen area. This film workswell in a conventional film theatre whenthe top left screen spills over the ceilingand the bottom right projects down overthe audience. It is the same image on allthree projectors, a double-exposed flick-ering rectangle of the projector gate slid-ing diagonally into and out of frame.Focus is on the projector shutter, hencethe flicker. This film is ‘about’ the projec-tor gate, the plane where the film frame iscaught by the projected light beam.”

William Raban, Perspectives onBritish Avant-Garde Film catalogue,1977

“The first great excitement is finding theidea, making its acquaintance, and court-ing it through the elaborate ritual of filmproduction. The second excitement is themoment of projection when the filmbecomes real and can be shared with theaudience. The former enjoyment isunique and privileged; the second is not,and so long as the film exists, it is infi-nitely repeatable.”

William Raban, Arts Council Film-Makers on Tour catalogue, 1980

HAND GRENADE

“Although the word ‘expanded’ cinemahas also been used for the open/gallerysize/multi screen presentation of film,this ‘expansion’ (could still but) has notyet proved satisfactory – for my ownwork anyway. Whether you are dealingwith a single postcard size screen or six

ten-foot screens, the problems are basi-cally the same – to try to establish a morepositively dialectical relationship withthe audience. I am concerned (like manyothers) with this balance between theaudience and the film – and the noeticproblems involved.”

Gill Eatherley, 2nd InternationalAvant-Garde Film Festival programmenotes, 1973

“Malcolm Le Grice helped me with HandGrenade. First of all I did these stills, thechairs traced with light. And then I want-ed it to all move, to be in motion, so westarted to use 16mm. We shot only a hun-dred feet on black and white. It took ages,actually, because it’s frame by frame. Weshot it in pitch dark, and then we took itto the Co-op and spent ages printing it allout on the printer there. This is how I firstgot involved with the Co-op.”

Gill Eatherley, interview with MarkWebber, 2001

LIGHT MUSIC

“Lis Rhodes has conducted a thoroughinvestigation into the relationshipbetween the shapes and rhythms of linesand their tonality when printed as sound.Her work Light Music is in a series of‘moveable sections’. The film does nothave a rigid pattern of sequences, and thefinal length is variable, within one-hourduration. The imagery is restricted tolines of horizontal bars across the screen:there is variety in the spacing (frequen-cy), their thickness (amplitude), and theircolour and density (tone). One sectionwas filmed from a video monitor that pro-duced line patterns on the screen that var-ied according to sound signals generatedby an oscillator; so initially it is the soundwhich produces the image. Taking thisfilmed material to the printing stage, thesame lines that produced the picture areprinted onto the optical soundtrack edgeof the film: the picture thus produces thesound. Other material was shot from arostrum camera filming black and whitegrids, and here again at the printing stage,the picture is printed onto the film sound-track. Sometimes the picture ‘zooms’ inon the grid, so that you actually ‘hear’ thezoom, or more precisely, you hear anaural equivalent to the screen image. Thisequivalence cannot be perfect, becausethe soundtrack reproduces the frame linesthat you don’t see, and the film passes ateven speed over the projector sound scan-ner, but intermittently through the picturegate. Lis Rhodes avoids rigid scoring pro-cedures for scripting her films. This workmay be experienced (and was perhapsconceived) as having a musical form, butthe process of composition depends onvarious chance operations, and upon theintervention of the filmmaker upon thefilm and film machinery. This is consis-tent with the presentation where the filmdoes not crystallize into one finishedform. This is a strong work, possessinginfinite variety within a tightly controlledframework.”

William Raban, Perspectives onBritish Avant-Garde Film catalogue,1977

“The film is not complete as a totality; itcould well be different and still achieveits purpose of exploring the possibilitiesof optical sound. It is as much aboutsound as it is about image; their relation-ship is necessarily dependent as the opti-cal soundtrack ‘makes’ the music. It is the

machinery itself which imposes this rela-tionship. The image throughout is com-posed of straight lines. It need not havebeen.”

Lis Rhodes, A Perspective on EnglishAvant-Garde Film catalogue, 1978

LINE DESCRIBING A CONE

“Once I started really working with filmand feeling I was making films, makingworks of media, it seemed to me a com-pletely natural thing to come back andback and back, to come more away froma pro-filmic event and into the process offilmmaking itself. And at the time it allboiled down to some very simple ques-tions. In my case, and perhaps in others,the question being something like “Whatwould a film be if it was only a film?”Carolee Schneemann and I sailed on theSS Canberra from Southampton to NewYork in January 1973, and when weembarked, all I had was that question.When I disembarked I already had theplan for Line Describing a Cone fully-fledged in my notebook. You could say itwas a mid-Atlantic film! It’s been thestory of my life ever since, of course,where I’m located, where my interestsare, that business of “Am I English or amI American?” So that was when I con-ceived Line Describing a Cone and then Imade it in the months that followed.”

Anthony McCall, interview withMark Webber, 2001

“One important strategy of expanded cin-ema radically alters the spatial discrete-ness of the audience vis-à-vis the screenand the projector by manipulating theprojection facilities in a manner whichelevates their role to that of the perform-ance itself, subordinating or eliminatingthe role of the artist as performer. Thefilms of Anthony McCall are the bestillustration of this tendency. In LineDescribing a Cone, the conventional pri-macy of the screen is completely aban-doned in favour of the primacy of the pro-jection event. According to McCall, ascreen is not even mandatory: The audi-ence is expected to move up and down, inand out of the beam – this film cannot befully experienced by a stationary specta-tor. This means that the film demands amulti-perspectival viewing situation, asopposed to the single-image/single-per-spective format of conventional films orthe multi-image/single-perspective for-mat of much expanded cinema. The shiftof image as a function of shift of per-spective is the operative principle of thefilm. External content is eliminated, andthe entire film consists of the controlledline of light emanating from the projec-tor; the act of appreciating the film – i.e.,‘the process of its realisation’ – is thecontent.”

Deke Dusinberre, “On ExpandingCinema”, Studio International,November/December 1975

* * *

DOUBLE SCREEN FILMS

Widening the visual field increased theopportunity for both spectacle and con-templation. With two 16mm projectorsside-by-side, time could be frozen orfractured in a more complex way by play-ing one image against another and creat-ing a magical space between them. Eachscreening became a unique event, accen-tuating the temporality of the cinematicexperience.

River Yar is a monumental study of land-scape, nature, light and the passage oftime. It employs real time and time-lapsephotography to document and contrastthe view of a tidal estuary over two three-week periods, in spring and autumn. Thefilm stimulates cosmic awareness as eachday is seen to have its elemental events.Sunrise brings in the light and sunset pro-vides the ultimate fade-out. The use of different film stocks, and thedepiction of twins seen in a twin-screenformat, emphasises the fractured andslightly disorientating view from SallyPotter’s window in Play.David Parsons’ refilming of a stunt cardemonstration pulses between frames,analytically transforming the motion intoa visceral mid-air dance. Wind Vane was shot simultaneously bytwo cameras whose view was directed bythe wind. The gentle panning makes ussubtly aware of the physical space (dis-tance) between the adjacent frames. With a rock music soundtrack, Choke,suggests pop art in its treatment ofPiccadilly Circus at night. Multiplyexposed and treated images mirror eachother or travel across the two screens. Castle Two immediately throws the view-er into a state of discomfort as one tries toassess the situation, and then proceeds along, obscure and perplexing indoctrina-tion. “Is that coming through out there?”

William Raban & Chris Welsby, RiverYar, 1971-72, colour, sound, 35mSally Potter, Play, 1971, b/w & colour,silent, 7mDavid Parsons, Mechanical Ballet, 1975,b/w, silent, 8mChris Welsby, Wind Vane, 1972, colour,sound, 8mDavid Crosswaite, Choke, 1971, b/w &colour, sound, 5mMalcolm Le Grice, Castle Two, 1968,b/w, sound, 32m

(Total running time approximately 97m)

RIVER YAR

“The camera points south. The landscapeis an isolated frame of space – a wide-angle view of a tidal estuary, recordedduring Autumn and Spring. The cameraholds a fixed viewpoint and marks time atthe rate of one frame every minute (dayand night) for three weeks. The twosequences Autumn and Spring, are pre-sented symmetrically on adjacentscreens. The first Spring sunrise isrecorded in real time (24 fps) for 14 min-utes, establishing a comparative scale ofspeed for the Autumn screen, where com-plete days are passing in one minute.Then both screens run together in stop-action until the Autumn screen breaksinto a 14 minute period of real time forthe final sunset into darkness. Recordingswere made of landscape sound at specificintervals each day. Each screen has itsown soundtrack which mixes with theother in the space of the cinema.”

William Raban & Chris Welsby, NFTEnglish Independent Cinema programmenotes, 1972

“Chris found the location.which was anex-water mill in Yarmouth on the Isle ofWight, owned by the sons of the historianA.J.P. Taylor. We managed to get it for anastonishing rent of £5 a week. One of itsupstairs windows happened to look overthis river estuary, it was the kind of viewwe were looking for, so it was ideal inmany ways. We’d worked out the concep-tual model for the film, how we wanted itto look as a two-screen piece, more orless entirely in advance. We also knewwhat camera we wanted. There was real-ly only the Bolex camera that would besuitable for filming it on. I made an elec-tric motor for firing the time-lapse shotsthat was capable of giving time exposuresas well as instantaneous exposures.Unknown to us of course, the first periodof shooting coincided with the big coalminers’ strike, in the Ted Heath govern-ment, so the motor was redundant formost of the time; we had to shoot the filmby hand. And it was quite interestingbecause we weren’t just making RiverYar, we were down there for six weeks inthe autumn and three weeks again the fol-lowing spring, so we were also makingother work. I was doing a series of treeprints in a wood nearby. And we invitedpeople down to share the experience withus, so Malcolm, Annabel and Gill allcame to stay.”

William Raban, interview with MarkWebber, 2001

PLAY

“In Play, Potter filmed six children –actually, three pairs of twins – as theyplay on a sidewalk, using two camerasmounted so that they recorded two con-tiguous spaces of the sidewalk. WhenPlay is screened, two projectors presentthe two images side by side, recreatingthe original sidewalk space, but, ofcourse, with the interruption of the rightframe line of the left image and the leftframe line of the right image – that is, sothat the sidewalk space is divided intotwo filmic spaces. The cinematic divisionof the original space is emphasized by thefact that the left image was filmed incolor, the right image in black and white.Indeed, the division is so obvious that

when the children suddenly move fromone space to the other, ‘through’ theframe lines, their originally continuousmovement is transformed into cinematicmagic.”

Scott MacDonald, A Critical Cinema3, 1998

“To be frank, I always felt like a loner, an out-sider. I never felt part of a community of film-makers. I was often the only female, or one offew, which didn’t help. I didn’t have a buddything going, which most of the men did. Theyalso had rather different concerns, more hard-edged structural concerns … I was probablymore eclectic in my taste than many of theEnglish structural filmmakers, who took anabsolute prescriptive position on film. Most ofthem had gone to Oxford or Cambridge orsome other university and were terribly theoret-ical. I left school at fifteen. I was more thehand-on artist and less the academic. The over-riding memory of those early years is of mak-ing things on the kitchen table by myself…”

Sally Potter interviewed by ScottMacDonald, A Critical Cinema 3, 1998

MECHANICAL BALLET

“… I began to forge ideas that explored themaking of the work and the procedure of eventsand ideas unfolding in space and time.Inevitably, this led to the consideration of thefilmmaking apparatus as an integral elementwithin the construction of the film. Taken liter-ally of course, this applies to the making of anyfilm, but I am referring to processes that do notattempt to hide the means of production andmake the technique transparent, rather the veryopposite. There are many parallels in other cre-ative fields: the improvisational aspects ofmodern jazz, and Exercises in Style by thewonderful French writer Raymond Queneau.These examples spring to mind as backgroundinfluences upon what I see now as an essential-ly modernist project, in that I was attempting toassert the material aspects of making, over whatwas depicted. So, to turn to the camera toattempt exhaust all the possibilities of its lens-es, the film transportation mechanism, the shiftof the turret, hand holding or tripods mounting,as conditioning factors within the films becamethe challenge. The project broadened out withseemingly endless possibilities offered by thefilm printer, the projector, and the screen.”

David Parsons, “Picture Planes”,Filmwaves No. 2, November 1997

“Several areas of interest intersect in the mak-ing of Mechanical Ballet: an interest in ‘found’footage (relating to collage, assemblage), themanipulation of the film strip and the filmframe, time and duration, projection and thescreen, and the film printing process, to high-light some of the main concerns. In the early’70s I began a series of experiments with waysof refilming and improvising new constructionswith different combinations of frames. Thusnew forms emerged from the found materialthat I had selected to use as my base material.In one work I extended the closing moments ofthe tail footage of a film, consisting of less thana second of flared out frames, stretching it intotwo minutes forty five seconds, 100 foot offilm. In another I used some early documenta-tion of time and motion studies of factoryworkers performing repetitive tasks on machin-ery. A speedometer mounted in the corner ofthe frame monitored the progress of theiractions in relation to the time it took to performtheir tasks. I found the content both disturbingand absurd and sought to exemplify this byexaggerating the action and ‘stalling’ the moni-toring process by racking the film back andforth through the gate. The original materialthat formed the basis for Mechanical Ballet wasan anonymous short reel of film of whatappeared to be car crash tests. In the originalthese tests are carried out in a deadpan and

somewhat cumbersome manner. Reworked intoa two-screen film and divorced from their orig-inal context they take on both a sinister andhumorous quality. Using similar techniques tothe aforementioned films, the repetitive refilm-ing of the original footage in short sectionsemphasised the process of film projection.Somewhat like a child’s game of two steps for-ward and one back, the viewer is made aware ofthe staggered progress of the film through thegate. In sharp contrast to the almost strobo-scopic flicker of the rapid movement of theframes that alternate in small increments oflight and dark exposures, the image takes onnew meanings; the distorted reality of twoheavy objects (the cars, one on each of thescreens) ‘dancing’ lightly in space.”

David Parsons, 2002

The London Film-Makers’ Co-operativewas founded in 1966 and based upon theartist-led distribution centre created byJonas Mekas and the New AmericanCinema Group. Both had a policy of open

membership, accepting all submissionswithout judgement, but the LFMC wasunique in incorporating the three keyaspects of artist filmmaking: production,distribution and exhibition within a singlefacility.

Early pioneers like Len Lye, AntonyBalch, Margaret Tait and John Lathamhad already made remarkable personalfilms in England, but by the mid-60sinterest in “underground” film was grow-ing. On his arrival from New York,Stephen Dwoskin demonstrated andencouraged the possibilities of experi-mental filmmaking and the Coop soonbecame a dynamic centre for the discus-sion, production and presentation ofavant-garde film. Several key figures suchas Peter Gidal, Malcolm Le Grice, JohnSmith and Chris Welsby went ontobecome internationally celebrated. Manyothers, like Annabel Nicolson and thefiercely autonomous and prolific JeffKeen, worked across the boundariesbetween film and performance andremain relatively unknown, or at leastunseen.

The Co-op asserted the significance ofthe British films in line with internationaldevelopments, whilst surviving hand-to-mouth in a series of run down buildings.The physical hardship of the organisa-

tion’s struggle contributed to the rigor-ous, formal nature of films produced dur-ing this period. While the Structuralapproach dominated, informing both theinterior and landscape tendencies, theBritish filmmakers also made significantinnovations with multi-screen films andexpanded cinema events, producingworks whose essence was defined bytheir ephemerality. Many of the worksfell into the netherworld between filmand fine art, never really seeming at homein either cinema or gallery spaces.

Shoot Shoot Shoot, a major retrospectiveprogramme and research project, willbring these extraordinary works back tolife.

Curated by Mark Webber with assistance from Gregory Kurcewiczand Ben Cook.

Shoot Shoot Shoot is a LUX project.Funded by the Arts Council of EnglandNational Touring Programme, the BritishCouncil, bfi and the Esmée FairbairnFoundation.

INTRODUCTION

THE FIRST DECADE OF THE LONDON FILM-MAKERS’ CO-OPERATIVE & BRITISH AVANT-GARDE FILM 1966-76

Anthony McCall, Line Describing A Cone

Malcolm Le Grice, Castle Two

David Crosswaite, Choke

Page 2: Shoot Shoot Shoot Broadsheet Newspaper (2002)

WIND VANE

“At that time, the automatic gyros on sail-boats were run from a wind vane that wasattached through a series of mechanicaldevices to the rudder. The wind vaneactually set itself to the wind and youadjusted all the gear and that then steeredthe boat in the particular orientation tothe wind. On various sailing trips, I’dbeen looking at this thing thinking,“Hmm, that’s really interesting … I won-der if I could set a camera on somethinglike that?” Because, for me the idea of asailboat travelling from A to B was aninteresting sort of metaphor for the waythat people interacted with nature. In sail-ing, as you may know if you’ve done it,you can’t just go from A to B, you have toadjust everything to which way the tide isgoing, which way the wind’s going andso on and so forth. Hopefully, eventually,you would get to B but, really, in betweentime there would have been all sorts ofother events that would affect that: speedof tides, speed of wind, no wind, etc. Sothat seemed to me to be an interestingmetaphor, so then I started building windvanes and attaching cameras to them…”

Chris Welsby, interview with MarkWebber, 2001

“The spatial exigencies of twin-screenprojection become of primary importancein this film because the adjacency of thescreen images is related to the adjacencyof the filming technique: two cameraswere placed about 50 feet apart on tripodswhich included wind vane attachments,so that the wind direction and speeddetermined the direction and speed of thepans of the two freely panning cameras.The landscape images are more or lesscoincident, and the attempt by the specta-tor to visually conjoin the two spaces(already conjoined on the screen) sets upthe primary tension of this film. As thecameras pan, one expects an overlapbetween the screens (from one to another)but gets only overlap in the screens (whenthey point to the same object). The adja-cency of the two spaces is constantlyshifting from (almost) complete similari-ty of field to complete dissimilarity. Andwithin the dissimilarity of space can bemore or less contiguous. The shrewdchoice of a representational image whichexploits the twin-screen format isWelsby’s strength.”

Deke Dusinberre, “On ExpandingCinema”, Studio International,November/December 1975

CHOKE

“Choke was made from 8mm footage thatI had blown up to 16mm. It was colourfilm I took of the Coca-Cola sign inPiccadilly Circus, which is now vastlydifferent. I think that it was the fact thatthis expanded film thing was happening,and Malcolm would’ve said, “Well, aren’tyou going to make any double screenfilms, then?” and I said “Can do, yeah”! Ijust had this idea of using this image thatI had, and again started painstakinglysello-taping little cuttings onto film so ittracked across the screen in certain parts.I must have been an absolute glutton forpunishment at the time.”

David Crosswaite, interview withMark Webber, 2001

“… But nevertheless you get characterslike Crosswaite, whose films I findabsolutely magical, I think they’re themost seminal works of the whole Co-opperiod. He certainly didn’t engage in thearguments that were going on, he stoodaloof from it. In fact he would the erodeattempts of that hierarchical thing, hispresence eroded it. He never reallyengaged in the theoretical arguments, thepolemics, at all, but nevertheless he pro-duced the most seminal, the most beauti-ful work probably of the period. He cer-tainly wasn’t excluded, and he wasalways there to deflate this idea of exclu-sivity. He refuses to engage. He wouldjust say, “Here’s my film” … and yet theyare beautifully polemical, they’re justextraordinary pieces or work.

Roger Hammond, interview withMark Webber, 2001

CASTLE TWO

“This film continues the theme of themilitary/industrial complex and its psy-chological impact upon the individualthat I began with Castle One. Like CastleOne, much use is made of newsreel mon-tage, although with entirely differentmaterial. The film is more evidently the-matic, but still relies on formal devices –building up to a fast barrage of images(the two screens further split – to give 4separate images at once for onesequence). The images repeat themselvesin different sequential relationships andcertain key images emerge both in thesoundtrack and the visual. The alienationof the viewer’s involvement does notoccur as often in this film as in CastleOne, but the concern with the viewer’sexperience of his present location stilldetermines the structure of certain pas-sages in the film.”

Malcolm Le Grice, London Film-Makers’ Co-operative catalogue, 1968

“Le Grice’s work induces the observer toparticipate by making him reflect critical-ly not only on the formal properties offilm but also on the complex ways inwhich he perceives that film within thelimitations of the environment of its pro-jection and the limitations created by hisown past experience. A useful formula-tion of how this sort of feedback occurs iscontained in the notion of ‘perceptualthresholds’. Briefly, a perceptual thresh-old is demarcation point between what isconsciously and what is pre-consciouslyperceived. The threshold at which one isable to become conscious of externalstimuli is a variable that depends on thespeed with which the information isbeing projected, the emotional charge itcontains and the general context withinwhich that information is presented. Thisexplains Le Grice’s continuing use ofdevices such as subliminal flicker and thelooped repetition of sequences in a stag-gered series of changing relationships.”

John Du Cane, Time Out, 1977

* * *

LONDON UNDERGROUND

As equipment became available for littlecost, avant-garde film flourished in mid-60s counter-culture. Early screenings atBetter Books and the Arts Lab provided avital focus for a new movement that

infused Swinging London with a freshsubversive edge.

Made independently on 35mm, in collab-oration with William Burroughs, TowersOpen Fire is rarely considered in histo-ries of avant-garde film, despite its exper-iments in form and representation. Itcombines strobe cutting, flicker, degrad-ed imagery and hand-painted film to cre-ate a visual equivalent to the author’s nar-ration. Gloucester Road Groove, featuringSimon Hartog and David Larcher, is aspirited celebration of youthful exuber-ance, the excitement of shooting with amovie camera. Jeff Keen’s vision is a uniquely Britishpost-war accumulation of art history,comic books, old Hollywood and newcollage. Positioned between happeningsand music hall, he performs dada actionsin the “theatre of the brain”. MarvoMovie is just one of countless works thatmix live action with animation, but isnotable for its concrete sound by Co-opco-founder Bob Cobbing. Speak, with hypnotic flashing discs andrelentless noise track, anticipated manyof the anti-illusionist arguments that theCo-op later embodied. The film wasmade in 1962, but its advanced radicalnature made it largely unknown until laterscreenings at Better Books broughtLatham into contact with like-mindedcontemporaries. In Dirty, Dwoskin accentuates the dirtand scratches on the film’s surface whileinterrogating the erotic imagery throughrefilming. The systematic cutting of Stuart Pound’sfilm, and its cyclical soundtrack, derivesfrom a mathematical process that con-denses a feature length work (ClocktimeI-IV) into a short ‘trailer’. Soul in a White Room is a subtle piece ofsocial commentary by Simon Hartog, anearly Co-op activist with a strong politi-cal conscience. Peter Gidal questions illusory depth andrepresentation through focal length, edit-ing and (seeming) repetition in Hall. Reign of the Vampire, from Le Grice’sparanoiac How to Screw the C.I.A., orHow to Screw the C.I.A.? series, takes thehard line in subversion. Familiar “threat-ening” signifiers, pornography andfootage from his other films is overlaidwith travelling mattes, united with a loopsoundtrack, to form a relentless assault.

Antony Balch, Towers Open Fire, 1963,b/w, sound, 16mJonathan Langran, Gloucester RoadGroove, 1968, b/w, silent, 2mJeff Keen, Marvo Movie, 1967, colour,sound, 5mJohn Latham, Speak, 1962, colour,sound, 11mStephen Dwoskin, Dirty, 1965-67, b/w,sound, 10mStuart Pound, Clocktime Trailer, 1972,colour, sound, 7mSimon Hartog, Soul In A White Room,1968, colour, sound, 3.5mPeter Gidal, Hall, 1968-69, b/w, sound,10mMalcolm Le Grice, Reign Of TheVampire, 1970, b/w, sound, 11m

(Total running time approximately 75m)

TOWERS OPEN FIRE

“Towers Open Fire is a straight-forwardattempt to find a cinematic equivalent forWilliam Burroughs’ writing: a collage ofall the key themes and situations in thebooks, accompanied by a Burroughssoundtrack narration. Society crumblesas the Stock Exchange crashes, membersof the Board are raygun-zapped in theirown boardroom, and a commando in theorgasm attack leaps through a windowand decimates a family photo collec-tion… Meanwhile, the liberated individ-ual acts: Balch himself masturbates (“sil-ver arrow through the night…”),Burroughs as the junkie (his long-stand-ing metaphor for the capitalist supply-and-demand situation) breaks on throughto the hallucinatory world of Brion GysinDream Machines. Balch lets us stare intothe Dream Machines, finding faces tomatch our own. “Anything that can bedone chemically can be done by othermeans.” So the film is implicitly a chal-lenge to its audience. But we’re playingwith indefinables that we don’t reallyunderstand yet, and so Mikey Portman’smusic-hall finale is interrupted by sci-ence-fiction attack from the skies, as lostboardroom reports drift through the coun-tryside…”

Tony Rayns, “Interview with AntonyBalch”, Cinema Rising No.1, April 1972

“Installations shattered – Personnel deci-mated – Board Books destroyed –Electronic waves of resistance sweepingthrough mind screens of the earth – Themessage of Total Resistance on shortwave of the world – This is war to exter-mination – Shift linguals – Cut word lines– Vibrate tourists – Free doorways –Photo falling – Word falling – Breakthrough in grey room – Calling Partisansof all nations – Towers, open fire”

William Burroughs, Nova Express,1964

GLOUCESTER ROAD GROOVE

“A film for children and savages, easilyunderstood, non didactic fantasies. Urbanlandscapes…Strolling single frames.”

Jonathan Langran, London Film-Makers’ Co-operative distribution cata-logue, 1977

“I felt really high with all these peoplearound. I was kind of a provincial filmstudent and the youngest of everyone andthere were fashion photographers, DavidLarcher who was very glamorous, therewas Simon Hartog who was kind of intel-

lectual … all sorts of people, wonderfulwomen that would come around, friends,and I was always in awe of them and weused to go out to restaurants and that wasall a very big thing for me. So oneevening we went to Dino’s in GloucesterRoad and I took the camera. I think I’dbeen using it all day, I just liked camerasand I filmed us going to eat, and we cameback again, and I still kept filming!Gloucester Road was kind of cosmopoli-tan, late at night… it was exotic, veryexotic, it wasn’t your dour kind of thingshot at 5 o’clock or 6 o’clock, GloucesterRoad was buzzing.”

Jonathan Langran, interview withMark Webber, 2002

MARVO MOVIE

“Movie wizard initiates shatterbrainexperiment – Eeeow! – the fastest moviefilm alive – at 24 or 16fps even the mindtrembles – splice up sequence 2 – flixunlimited, and inside yr very head theimages explode – last years models newhouses & such terrific death scenes whilethe time and space operator attacks thebrain via the optic nerve – will the opera-tion succeed – will the white saint reachin time the staircase now alive with blood– only time will tell says the movie mas-ter – meanwhile deep inside the spacemuseum…”

Ray Durgnat, London Film-Makers’Co-operative distribution catalogue, 1968

“I was never part of the early 70s sceneamong the independent filmmakers –very much anti-American, anti-Hollywood. ‘Industrial Cinema’ theyused to call it, which is true, but I neverfelt that antipathy towards commercialcinema. It was awful being a fucking mis-fit, I can tell you. I’d done my footsol-diering for the communist party andeverything in those days – factory gatesand all that shit, “ban the bomb”… So bythe time of 1970, I’d got out of that. Asfor sexual liberation, I’d been happilymarried! And the drug scene didn’t meananything to me because I’m puritanical.I’m a misfit.”

Jeff Keen, interview with MarkWebber, 2001

SPEAK

“Latham’s second attack on the cinema.Not since Len Lye’s films in the thirtieshas England produced such a brilliantexample of animated abstraction. Speakis animated in time rather than space. It isan exploration in the possibilities of a cir-cle which speaks in colour with blindingvolume. Speak burns its way directly intothe brain. It is one of the few films aboutwhich it can truly be said, “it will live inyour mind.””

Ray Durgnat, London Film-Makers’Co-operative distribution catalogue, 1968

“In 1966 Pink Floyd were playing theirfree-form, experimental rock at theTalbot Road Tabernacle (a church hall),Powis Square, Notting Hill Gate. On sev-eral occasions, Latham projected his filmSpeak as the group played. Since the filmhad a powerful flicker effect, the resultwas equivalent to strobe lighting. Filmand music ran in parallel – there was noplanned synchronization. Thinking tocombine movie and music more system-atically, Latham asked Pink Floyd to sup-ply a soundtrack. The band agreed and arecording session took place. The artistexplained that he wanted music thatwould take account of the strong, rhyth-mical pulse of the film. This the acid rockgroup proved unable or unwilling to pro-vide; consequently, the association wasterminated. A soundtrack was eventuallyadded to one print of Speak: Latham

placed a contact mike on the floor to pickup the beat of a motor (rhythm) driving acircular saw (musical note) while it wasbeing used to saw up books (percussionand bending note). The film reaches atremendous climax as the increasingly

harsh whine of the electric saw combineswith the frenetic sequence of images andflashes of light.”

John A. Walker, John Latham – TheIncidental Person – His Art and Ideas,1995

DIRTY

“Dirty is remarkable for its sensuousness,created partly by the use of rephotogra-phy which enables the filmmaker a sec-ond stage of response to the two girls hewas filming, partly by the caressing styleof camera movement and partly by thegradual increase of dirt on the film itself,increasing the tactile connotations gener-ated by rephotography. The spontaneityof Dwoskin’s response to the girls’ sensu-al play is matched by the spontaneity ofhis response to the film of their play. Therhythms of the girls’ movements areblended with the rhythms of the primaryand secondary stage camera movementsand these rhythms relate to the steadypulse emanating from the center of theimage as a result of the different projectorand camera speeds during rephotography.The soundtrack successfully prevents theawareness of audience noise (theinevitable distraction of silent cinema) byfilling the aural space, but not drawingattention to itself. You tend not to noticeit after a while and can therefore concen-trate on what is most importantly a visu-al-feel film.”

John Du Cane, Time Out, 1971

“The refilming enabled the actions of thetwo girls to be emphasized to convey thetension and beauty of such a simple andemphatic gesture as a hand reaching out:frozen, and then moving slowly, thenfreezing, then moving again, and all thewhile creating tension and space beforethe contact. The refilming was done on asmall projector and this enabled me tocapture the pulsing (cycles) of the projec-tor light, which gave off a throbbingrhythm throughout, and increased themood of sensuality.”

Stephen Dwoskin, Film Is…, 1975

CLOCKTIME TRAILER

“A time truncation film trailer for therather long film called Clocktime. Filmmade as a totally systematic stream ofhitherto unrelated events welded together

into a colour interchange frame i.e. image(1), image (2), image (3)… repeat timecycle. 6 frames, 1/4 second, then imagesmove further along their original timebase; a very linear film.”

London Film-Makers’ Co-operativedistribution catalogue, 1977

“I wasn’t particularly interested in mak-ing films about poetry but films that hadgot quite a strong sexual charge. Forinstance, in Clocktime Trailer there’s awoman in it who used to work for theOther Cinema years ago – JuliaMeadows. I was absolutely fascinatedwith her, it was almost like having sexthrough the lens of the camera. I havenow seen Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom,but I’d not seen that at the time. It cameout about 1960, here was such a hoo-hahabout it and I was only about 16.Subsequently when I saw it I was: “Ohmy god”. I could see how I was a realmenace!”

Stuart Pound, interview with MarkWebber, 2001

SOUL IN A WHITE ROOM

“Films are not bombs. No cultural object,as such, can have such a direct and meas-urable effect on the physical universe.Film works in the more ambiguoussphere of art and ideas. It cannot changethe world, but it can change those whocan change it. Film makes use of valuesthat exist within a culture, and a society’sculture is more pervasive than its politics.The alteration, or even the questioning ofexisting value is the alteration of society.The established cultural hierarchy main-tains itself by protecting and enforcingthe ideas that keep it in power. Anythingthat attacks, questions, or provides newvalues is a threat. The culture allows onlythat which will not challenge its assump-tions; everything else must be forcedunderground. Film, as a cultural andsocial activity, contains within itself apotential for change. Besides the greatreporting and recording qualities of film,which provide it with a direct reference tothe culture, it also provides the sense of

magic. It possesses this sense in its abili-ty to capture life; to capture movementand to fracture time and space. The maincharacteristics of magic are its indirectreference to the culture, and to the pastand its derivation from very specific emo-tional experiences. Magic’s base is thoseemotional experiences where the truth ofthe experience is not revealed by reason-ing, but by the interplay of these emo-tions on the individual human…”

Simon Hartog & Stephen Dwoskin,“New Cinema”, Counter Culture: TheCreation of an Alternative Society, 1969

“Soul in a White Room was filmed bySimon Hartog around autumn 1968.Music on the soundtrack is “Cousin Jane”by The Troggs. The man is Omar Diop-Blondin, the woman I don’t recall hername. Omar was a student active in 1968during “les evenement de Mai et de Juin”at the Faculte de Nanterre, Universite deParis. Around this time, Godard was inLondon shooting Sympathy for the Devil/ One Plus One with the Stones and Omarwas here for that too, appearing withFrankie Y (Frankie Dymon) and the otherBlack Panthers in London ... maybeMichael X too. After returning toSenegal, Omar was imprisoned and killedin custody in ’71 or ’72. I believe his fateis well known to the Senegalese people.”

Jonathan Langran, interview withMark Webber, 2002

HALL

“Hall manages, in its ten minutes, to putour perception to a rather strenuous test.Gidal will hold a static shot for quite along time, and then make very quick cutsto objects seen at closer range. There isjust a hallway and a room partially visiblebeyond, pictures (one of Godard) on awall, fruit on a table, and so forth. Thecommonplace is rendered almost monot-onous as we become increasingly famil-iar with it from a fixed and sustainedviewpoint, and then we are disoriented bythe closer cuts and also by the suddenprolonged ringing of an alarm. But evenat the point of abrupt disorientation weremain conscious of the manipulationapplied.”

Gordon Gow, “Focus on 16mm”,Films and Filming, August 1971

“Demystified reaction by the viewer to ademystified situation; a cut in space andan interruption of duration through (obvi-ous) jumpcut editing within a strictlydefined space. Manipulation of responseand awareness thereof: through repetitionand duration of image. Film situation asstructured, as recorrective mechanism.(Notes from 1969) Still utilizing at thattime potent (signifying, overloaded) rep-resentations. (1972)”

Peter Gidal, London Film-makers’Co-operative distribution catalogue, 1974

“In Hall, extremely stable, normallyreproduced objects are given clear fromthe beginning, the editing, moreover,reducing the distance from which theyare seen, cutting in to show and to detailthem, repetition then undercutting theirsimple identification; the second timearound, a bowl of fruit cannot be seen asa bowl of fruit, but must be seen as animage in a film process, detached fromany unproblematic illusion of presence,as a production in the film, a mark of thepresence of that.”

Stephen Heath, “Repetition Time”,Wide Angle, 1978

REIGN OF THE VAMPIRE

“It was about trying to get a mental posi-tion which defied the way in which thethen-C.I.A. was kind of intervening in theworld. But it was more, not a joke, but anicon title. I suppose it said to me and toother people, “Make your barb againstthe C.I.A.” A lot of my early work, allthat aggressive work, has a political para-noia about it: the idea that there are hid-den forces of the military-industrialestablishment, which are manipulating us

SHOOT SHOOT SHOOT2

EDITORIAL

SHOOT SHOOT SHOOTIn recent years, my activities as an independentcurator or programmer of ‘avant-garde’ filmand video have put me into contact with manyindividuals and organisations around theworld. Many people would ask me about theLondon Co-op and British filmmakers and Iwas embarrassed to have to admit that I didn’tknow much about the cinematic heritage ofthis country. The constant enquiries aboutBritish work made it clear that there was a sus-tained interest in, and demand for, the filmsmade in and around the London Film-Makers’Co-op.

Gregory Kurcewicz should be credited withinstigating the present project in 1999. Sincethen it just grew and grew. During the earlystages of research, the screenings organised byFelicity Sparrow as part of the Whitechapel’sexhibition “Live In Your Head” provided avaluable opportunity to survey the field. At oneof those screenings I met Peter Mudie, whohad been working on an as-yet-unpublishedhistory of the Co-op. Peter generously gave mean early draft of his manuscript, giving meaccess to his years of research and interpreta-tion. David Curtis gave me hours of his timeand loaned me his archive of documentationfrom the period (which is now available at theAHRB Study Centre). Meanwhile, I waswatching every British film the Lux held thatwas made during this period and going directto filmmakers to discover and see the obscuri-ties and lost gems.

This project was conceived not only as anoth-er historical film programme. The elements ofpreservation and documentation were veryimportant from the beginning. Many newprints, sound masters and internegatives havebeen made, a publication is planned and a web-site is being constructed as an online researchresource. In parallel to the exhibition, a docu-mentary on the Co-op is being made by JohnWyver and Illuminations.

AGAINST INTERPRETATION It is not my intention to argue the historicalimportance of these works, nor do I wish to setup a ‘canon’ of films by which this periodshould be measured. I see my role more that ofan excavator, looking around, finding some-thing interesting and getting it out there sopeople can see it and make their own minds up.I have tried to appear transparent, butinevitably the choice of films in such an exhi-bition must be informed to some extent by per-sonal taste. I regret that many works have beenleft out despite attempts to be objective andinclusive. I was born in 1970 on the day theFirst International Underground Film Festivalbegan at the NFT. I hope that I have brought adifferent perspective on a period that has notrecently been reviewed.

FILM AS FILMIt’s refreshing, in this time of new media feed-ing frenzy, to be reminded of the wondrousvirtues of film, a medium that is often nowseen as an archaic, old-fashioned and out-dated. Here are works made on film, by artists,because no other medium suits their purpose.Beneath the surface of each is an underlying‘human-ness’, an inherent tactility and tran-sience. You can feel these films, that each onehas been crafted and fashioned into form byhand. The unique characteristics and possibili-ties of film are brought forward during therealisation of the work, where the artisticprocess begins at the inception of an idea andgoes right through to its projection.

THE PRESENT SITUATIONThat Shoot Shoot Shoot should finally becomevisible in London at this time seems incredibletimely, so much so that the project was almosthalted just as it began to move into the finalplanning stages. The closure of the Lux Centre,which managed the exhibition, in November2001 would have ended Shoot Shoot Shoot if itwere not for the foolhardy persistence of BenCook and myself. The events that led up to theLux crisis are indicative of the lack of appro-priate planning, support and resources allocat-ed to artists’ film and video in London (or theUK as a whole) in recent years. Despite earlycommitment of substantial funding from theArts Council of England’s National TouringProgramme and the British Council, for whichI am truly grateful, this project (and others likeit) has been hindered by the lack of institution-al or organisational support. Perhaps the cur-rent review led by the London funding agen-cies will improve matters, and in the meantimethe gap is being filled by independent screen-ings. Maybe the interest shown in experimen-tal film by a new generation will impel themajor arts bodies to invest in the venues, theprints and the production facilities that makeup this unique ‘essential’ cinema.

THE ABSENT CATALOGUEMuch of the work done over the past two yearshas been towards assembling materials for apublication and the launch of the film pro-gramme was the logical opportunity to publishthis research. A vast quantity of archival docu-mentation has been gathered, and many newinterviews have been conducted. Essays havebeen commissioned from David Curtis, BarryMiles, Michael O’Pray and Al Rees. Lack offunds have forced us to sacrifice the book infavour of film print costs. The proposed cata-logue will now be compiled as a separate book,to be completed when funds become available.It will hopefully benefit form the new insightand understanding of the works which shouldcome with the revival and re-viewing of thefilms and the discussions they will provoke. Inthe meantime, I hope this special broadsheetwill provide some background information forthe screenings. I am still collecting photos,stills, documentation and information, soplease get in touch if you might be able to help.

Mark [email protected]

Simon Hartog, Soul in a White Room

Anthony Balch, Towers Open Fire

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from within that power. Obviously, theywere – people were having their tele-phones tapped though I don’t suppose forone minute that my telephone was inter-esting enough to tap. Reign of theVampire is that kind of paranoid film. It’sa hovercraft that comes in, but it couldeasily be a tank with the army getting outof it … The idea of a military force thatcan sneak in somewhere, and the comput-er images. Threshold is in similar territo-ry, about the borders and so on but veryabstract. It’s about that hidden sense offorce.”

Malcolm Le Grice, interview withMark Webber, 2001

“The film is made from six loops in pairs(simple superimposition, but made byprinting through both loops togetherrather than in two runs following eachother, the effect of this is largely to elim-inate the transparent aspect of superimpo-sition). In content, the film comes near tobeing a synthesis of the How to Screw theC.I.A. or How to Screw the C.I.A.? series;it draws on pieces of film from the otherfilms, and combines these with the most‘disturbing’ of the images which I havecollected. It also relates to the‘dream’/fluid association sequence inCastle Two; it is a kind of on-goingunder-consciousness which repeats anddoes not resolve into any semantic conse-quence. One of the factors of the use ofthe loop, which interests me particularly,is the way in which the viewer’s aware-ness undergoes a gradual transformationfrom the semantic/associative to theabstract/formal, even though the ‘infor-mation’ undergoes only limited change.The sound has a similar kind of loop/rep-etition structure.”

Malcolm Le Grice, How to Screw theC.I.A. or How to Screw the C.I.A.? pro-gramme notes, 1970

* * *

STRUCTURAL / MATERIALIST

The enquiry into the material of film asfilm itself was an essential characteristicof the Co-op’s output. These non- andanti- narrative concerns were fundamen-tally argued by the group’s principalpractising theorists Malcolm Le Griceand Peter Gidal.

In explaining their (quite different) ideasin some erudite but necessarily densetexts Le Grice and Gidal have in someways contributed to misunderstandings ofthis significant tendency in the Britishavant-garde. (For example, It is not thecase, as is often proposed, that films weremade to justify their theories.) Le Grice was instrumental in acquiring,installing and operating the equipment atthe Co-op workshop that afforded film-makers the hands-on opportunity toinvestigate the film medium. His ownwork developed through direct process-ing, printing and projection, providing anunderstanding of the material with whichhe could examine filmic time throughduration, while touching on spectacle andnarrative. By contrast, Gidal’s cool, oppositionalstance was refined to refute narrative andrepresentation, denying illusion andmanipulation though visual codes. Hisuncompromising position resists allexpectations of cinema, even modernistformalism and abstraction. The artisticand theoretical relationship of these twopoles of the British avant-garde, whowere united in opposing ‘dominant cine-ma’, is a complex set of divergences andintersections.

Originally intended as a test strip, the firstfilm produced at the Dairy on the Co-opstep-printer was Shepherd’s Bush, inwhich an obscure loop of abstract footagerelentlessly advances from dark to light. The two short films by Roger Hammondand Mike Dunford concisely encapsulate

an idea; while Window Box exploits theviewer’s anticipation of camera move-ment and shrewdly transforms a seeming-ly conventional viewpoint, the perma-nence of the cinematic frame is the focusof Tautology’s brief enquiry. By translating footage across differentgauges, Crosswaite and Le Grice explorevariations in film formats: Film No. 1uses permutations and combinations ofunsplit 8mm, while Little Dog for Rogerdirectly prints 9.5mm home movies onto16mm stock. In Key, Gidal plays on the ambiguity ofan image to challenge and refute theobserver’s interpretation of it, whileintensifying disorientation through hismanipulation of the soundtrack. Du Cane’s Zoom Lapse comprises densemultiple overlays of imagery, vibratingthe moment, while Eatherley’s Deck re-photographs a reel of 8mm film, whichundergoes a mysterious transformationthrough refilming, colour changing andprinting.

Roger Hammond, Window Box, 1971,b/w, silent, 3m (18fps)Mike Leggett, Shepherd’s Bush, 1971,b/w, sound, 15m David Crosswaite, Film No. 1, 1971,colour, sound, 10mMike Dunford, Tautology, 1973, b/w,silent, 5mPeter Gidal, Key, 1968, colour, sound,10mJohn Du Cane, Zoom Lapse, 1975,colour, silent, 15mMalcolm Le Grice, Little Dog For Roger,1967, b/w, sound, 13mGill Eatherley, Deck, 1971, colour,sound, 13m

(Total running time approximately 81m)

WINDOW BOX

“In the small masterpiece Window Box,Hammond sets up a situation which ismystified in its presentation, and yet atthe same time demands of (and allows)the viewer to demystify the given visualimpulses. The situation presentedincludes thus within its own premises theobjective factors which determine thepossibility and probability of successfulanalysis. The criteria one uses to evalu-ate, interpret, are secondary to this con-ceptually-determined process of workingout what is. We are taken into a post-log-ical empiricism which realizes the sensu-al strength of illusion which at the sametime using precisely that to refer to preci-sion of information. The opposite ofCartesian in its in-built negation of anyaspect outside of the given system.Hammond is non-atomistic, non-referen-tial within a specific, set-up, and definedclosed system. Thus, a pure attitude.Hammond is purifying the conceptualand non-psychological aspect of his workto the point where it increasingly repre-sents his calculable mental system: thenonreferential structural obligation. Hedoes not create a whole system, however;rather, he deciphers one.”

Peter Gidal, “Directory of UKIndependent Film-Makers”, CinemaRising No. 1, April 1972

“Roger Hammond’s movies are shortstudies of apparently simplesubjects…they induce a tight awarenessof how these relations can be radicallytransformed by subtle shifts in filmprocess; shifts of light value, angle,movement, framing, etc… The illusionsof cinema as they bend our conscious-ness, become the focus of our attention.In Window Box, a simple subject takes onmultiple dimensions in a ghostly worldcreated by the process of rephotograph-ing projected negative footage. There is agentle reminder in this process in theframing of the eventual image, whichincorporates in its composition a horizon-tal bar of light from the wall from whichthe film is being rephotographed.” John Du Cane, Time Out, 1971

SHEPHERD’S BUSH

“Shepherd’s Bush was a revelation. It wasboth true film notion and demonstratedan ingenious association with the film-process. It is the procedure and conclu-sion of a piece of film logic using a bril-liantly simple device; the manipulation ofthe light source in the Film Co-op printersuch that a series of transformations areeffected on a loop of film material. Fromthe start Mike Leggett adopts a relationalperspective according to which it is nei-ther the elements or the emergent wholebut the relations between the elements(transformations) that become primarythrough the use of logical procedure. Allof Mike Leggett’s films call for specialeffort from the audience, and a passiveaudience expecting to be manipulatedwill indeed find them difficult for theyseek a unique correspondence; one thatcalls for real attention, interaction, andanticipation/correction, a change for theaudience from being a voyeur to beingthat of a participant.”

Roger Hammond, London Film-Makers Co-operative distribution cata-logue supplement, 1972

“The process of film-making shouldemphasise the imaginative, and the con-tact between film-maker and spectatorshould become more direct. Shepherd’sBush was made through a process con-trary to the generally accepted method ofmaking a film. It was without a script,without a camera, without the complicat-ed route through task delegation. Theentity of the film was conceived throughthe reappraisal of a Debrie Matipo step-contact printer. Designed such that withprecise control of the light reaching theprint stock after having passed throughfilters, aperture band and the negative, itwas possible to demonstrate the gradualway in which the projection screen couldturn from black to white. First, a suitableimage on an existing piece of positive

stock was found with which to produce amaster negative. The shot was only tenseconds in length but contained a rangeof tones from one end of the grey scale tothe other. It was loaded into the printer asa loop, and subsequently a print whichrepeated the action was made from thenegative. Only part of the viewer’s atten-tion should be taken with the perceptionof the figurative image on the screen. Itshould however, be dynamic enough towarrant careful inspection should theviewer’s attention turn to it. A thirty-minute version was made first, but onviewing was judged too long, so for thenext version half this length was judgedcorrect. A soundtrack was made match-ing in audio terms the perceptiblechanges in visual quality not usuallyencountered within the environment ofthe cinema. This film realized total con-trol over the making of a film, from selec-tion of the original camera stock, throughexposure, processing, printing, process-ing, projection, cataloguing, and distribu-tion.”

Mike Leggett, excerpts from unpub-lished notes, 1972

FILM NO. 1

“Film No. 1 is a ten minute loop film. Thesystems of superimposed loops are math-ematically interrelated in a complex man-ner. The starting and cut-off points foreach loop are not clearly exposed, butthrough repetitions of sequences in dif-ferent colours, in different material reali-ties (i.e. negative, positive, bas-relief,neg/pos overlay) yet in a constant rhythm(both visually and on the soundtrackhum), one is manipulated to attempt towork out the system-structure. Onerelates to the repetitions in such a waythat one concentrates on working out theserial formula while visually experienc-ing (and enjoying) the film at the sametime. One of the superimposed loops ismade of alternating mattes, so that thescreen is broken up into four more or lessequal rectangles of which, at any onemoment, two or three are blocked out(matted). The matte-positioning is rhyth-mically structured, thus allowing each ofthe two represented images to flickering-ly appear in only one frame-corner at atime. This rhythm powerfully strengthensthe film’s existence as selective realitymanipulated by the filmmaker andexposed as such. The mattes are slightly‘off’; there is no perfect mechanical fit,so that the process of the physical matte-construction by the filmmaker is con-stantly noticeable, as one matte (at timesof different hue or different colour)blends over the edge of the matte next toit (horizontally or vertically). The filmdeals with permutations of material, in aprescribed manner, but one by no meansnecessary or logical (except within thefilm’s own constructed system/serial).The process of looping a given image isalready using film for its structural andabstract power rather than for a conven-tional narrative or ‘content’. But it is thesuperimposition of the black matteswhich gives the film its extremely richtexture, and which separates it from so

many other, less complex, loop-typefilms. Crosswaite works, in this film,with two basic images: Piccadilly at nightand a shape which suggests at moments a3-D close-up of a flowerlike organicgrowth or a Matisse-like abstract 2-Dcutout. Depending on the colour dye ofthe particular film-segment and the posi-tive/negative interchange, the objectchanges shading and constanyly re-formsfrom one dimension to the other, whileshifting our perceptions from its reality as3-dimensional re-presentation to its reali-ty as cutout filling the film-frame withjagged edged blackness.”

Peter Gidal, NFT EnglishIndependent Cinema programme notes,1972

TAUTOLOGY

“Regarding the in-built tautologicalaspects of perceptual structuring. Sincerefuted.”

Mike Dunford, London Film-Makers’Co-operative distribution catalogue, 1977

“Each time I make a film I see it as a kindof hypothesis, or a questioning statement,rather than a flat assertion of any particu-lar form or idea… Each film is a filmexperiment in the sense that the mostattractive features are those that work…My films are not about ideas, or aesthet-ics, or systems, or mathematics, but areabout film, film-making, and film-view-ing, and the interaction and interventionof intentive self-conscious reasoningactivity in that context.”

Mike Dunford, 2nd InternationalAvant-Garde Festival programme notes,1973

“Its pretty obvious isn’t it? That’s thekind of film that me and RogerHammond talked about. It’s because weactually spent quite a bit of time hangingout in the Co-op, processing things andtalking about ideas. He’d read Derridaand all that kind of stuff, and as a result Iread some of it too. And that’s how Iwould have got to make something likeTautology, by talking to someone likehim A very simple idea, simply done; itdoes one thing and that’s all it does.”

Mike Dunford, interview with MarkWebber, 2001

KEY

“… an enclosed and progressive disem-bowelment of durational progression. Hedraws out singularities … he allows thecamera only a fenced in area, piecemeal.He lets the gaze hold on objects and con-stantly repeats … this permits the possi-bilities of the discrepancies betweenone’s own seeing and seeing with thecamera to become distinct, and this inturn allows for a completely differentexperience of the surroundings.”

Birgit Hein, Film Im Underground,1971

“Structural/Materialist film attempts tobe non-illusionist. The process of thefilm’s making deals with devices thatresult in demystification or attempteddemystification of the film process. Butby ‘deals with’ I do not mean ‘repre-sents’. In other words, such films do notdocument various film procedures, whichwould place them in the same category asfilms which transparently document anarrative, a set of actions, etc.Documentation, through usage of the filmmedium as transparent, invisible, isexactly the same when the object beingdocumented is some ‘real event’, some‘film procedure’, some ‘story’, etc. Anavant-garde film defined by its develop-ment towards increased materialism andmaterialist function does not represent, ordocument, anything. The film produces

certain relations between segments,between what the camera is aimed at andthe way that ‘image’ is presented. Thedialectic of the film is established in thatspace of tension between materialist flat-ness, grain, light, movement, and the sup-posed reality that is represented.Consequently, a continual attempt todestroy the illusion is necessary. InStructural/Materialist film, the in/film(not in/frame) and film/viewer materialrelations, and the relations of the film’sstructure, are primary to any representa-tional content. The structuring aspectsand the attempt to decipher the structureand anticipate/recorrect it, to clarify andanalyze the production-process of thespecific image at any specific moment,are the root concern ofStructural/Materialist film. The specificconstruct of each specific film is not therelevant point; one must beware not to letthe construct, the shape, take the place ofthe ‘story’ in narrative film. Then onewould merely be substituting one hierar-chy for another within the same system, aformalism for what is traditionally calledcontent. This is an absolutely crucialpoint.”

Peter Gidal, “Theory and Definitionof Structural/Materialist Film”, StructuralFilm Anthology, 1976

ZOOM LAPSE

“If I had to compare my work with anoth-er activity, I would first point to two relat-ed musics: Reggae and certain WestAfrican music. If I had to label my work,I would choose a term radically opposedto ‘Structural’. I would say that I made‘Ecstatic Cinema’ … I would like to thinkthat the ecstatic is our birthright and toremember that ecstasy has many dimen-sions: we know that, from the Greek, weare talking about ‘a standing outside’ ofoneself. This is meditation. And in theprocess of meditation, both rapture and adeep peace can co-exist. If my films workas intended, they will help you into ecsta-sy, and they will do this by satisfying in apolymorphic manner. The films are veryphysical, they are polyrhythmic and theyare patterned in a manner designed to cre-ate a very definite way of seeing, of expe-riencing. I intend my films to jump out atyou from their dark spaces, their gaps,their elisions, to vibrate in your wholebeing in the very manner and rhythm offelt experience. The magic of film for meis the possibility to portray these complexinterlacings unfolding through time. Youcan watch one of my films, and see twofilms simultaneously; one of my mindand one of yours. I say film of ‘my mind’,but what I want to emphasise, because thefilms emphasise it, is that is a film of mybeing. The last thing I want my films tobe is a purely mental event. This wouldbe to deny a large part of the spectrum ofthe film.”

John Du Cane, “Statement onWatching My Films: A Letter from JohnDu Cane”, Undercut 13, 1984-85

“I was interested in film as a sculpturalmedium, and as a way to have the viewerbe more aware of his viewing process, ofhis consciousness. My films were medita-tive at a time when that phrase wasn’t apopular term to use, but most of the filmswere designed to reflect the viewer backon themself. I also usually wanted myfilms to be very physical experiences, Iwanted to make the experience work onreally all of the main levels of energy; thephysical, the intellectual and the aspectsof awareness that we associate with con-sciousness. In Zoom Lapse I was alsointerested in working with the way weperceive time and space as it can bemanipulated through the camera. Ofcourse part of the content of this film hadto do with the camera’s ability to squeezeour perspective through the process ofzooming in and zooming out on a partic-ular area. In the making of the film I actu-ally lapsed the zoom process, so that Iwould shoot a single frame that had azoom within it, and sequences in the filmthat were more extended zooms, so I tooka very simple shot. I was living on a canalin Hamburg in a kind of romantic, oldwarehouse district, about all that was leftafter the bombing of the city. There wasan old set of warehouse windows acrossthe way and so I was interested in explor-ing the ways that you could squeezespace and watch the relationshipsbetween your time perception and yourperception of space and how the twointeract. There’s a process in the film, thathappens in many of my other films,where I want the viewer to be pretty con-scious that what they’re seeing is notsomething that exists on the celluloid,that there’s a way they’re manufacturing

in the viewing process. The film shouldvery obviously be something that if youcome back and watch it a second, third,fourth, fifth time you’re not really goingto see the same thing because the eye iscreating sets of images that don’t actual-ly exist.”

John Du Cane, interview with MarkWebber, 2002

LITTLE DOG FOR ROGER

“The film is made from some fragmentsof 9.5mm home movie that my fathershot of my mother, myself, and a dog wehad. This vaguely nostalgic material hasprovided an opportunity for me to playwith the medium as celluloid and variouskinds of printing and processing devices.The qualities of film, the sprockets, theindividual frames, the deterioration ofrecords like memories, all play an impor-tant part in the meaning of this film.”

Malcolm Le Grice, Progressive ArtProductions distribution catalogue, 1969

“The strategy of minimizing content tointensify the perception of film as a plas-tic strip of frames is explicitly demon-strated in Le Grice’s seminal Little DogFor Roger. Here the 9.5mm ‘found-footage’ of a boy and his dog is repeated-ly pulled through the 16mm printer; thevarying speed and swaying motion of theoriginal filmstrip ironically allude to theconstant speed and rigid registration ofthe 16mm film we are watching, anddevelop a tension between our knowledgeof the static frames which comprise thefilmstrip and the illusion of continuousmotion with which it is imbued. The useof ‘found-footage’ and of repetition –which threatens endlessness, though thisis a relatively short film – owe some-thing to the ‘pop’ aesthetic then domi-nant, but the spectator is never permittedto complacently enjoy these found-images; the graininess and under-illumi-nation, the negative sequences andupside-down passages are designed notso much to add variation as to continu-ously render those simple images difficultto decipher, thus stressing that very act ofdecoding. The relentless asceticising ofthe image became a major preoccupationin subsequent British avant-garde film-making.”

Deke Dusinberre, Perspectives onBritish Avant-Garde catalogue, 1977

DECK

“During a voyage by boat to Finland, thecamera records three minutes of blackand white 8mm of a woman sitting on abridge. The preoccupation of the film iswith the base and with the transformationof this material, which was first refilmedon a screen where it was projected bymultiple projectors at different speedsand then secondly amplified with colourfilters, using postive and negative ele-ments and superimposition on theLondon Co-op’s optical printer.”

Gill Eatherley, Light Cone distribu-tion catalogue, 1997

“Deck was shot on Standard 8, black andwhite, on a boat going from Sweden toFinland on a trip to Russia. And then Ijust filmed it off the screen at St Martin’s,put some colour on it, and turned itupside-down … Just turned it upside-down and put some sound on. The soundcame off a radio – just fiddling aroundwith a radio and a microphone, just in-between stations. It was one of thelongest films I’ve ever made and that kindof frightened me a little bit. I thought itwould be too long, you know, 13 minuteswas quite a long time. Most of my filmsare only three minutes, six minutes, eightminutes … but it could have gone onlonger maybe…”

Gill Eatherley, interview with MarkWebber, 2001

SHOOT SHOOT SHOOT 3

Mike Leggett, Shepherd’s Bush

Gill Eatherley, Deck

John Du Cane, Zoom Lapse

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LOCATION: DURATION

Film is a unique tool for the investigationof time and space. The subjective time ofthe photographed image may be meas-ured against the objective time of projec-tion through the use of time-lapse, editingand duration.

First tracing sunlight moving around aroom, then a static study of illuminationaround a night-time window. The formalLeading Light might surprise those famil-iar with the more humorous works ofJohn Smith. Peter Gidal uncharacteristically used themechanics of an automated camera toconstruct the loop-like rhythm of Focus,which zooms through the “static reality”of a mysterious apartment. With an elec-tronic score by Anthony Moore. Sheet develops from a conceptual basisand could be viewed as documentation ofan event. The eponymous object is seenin different locations, making this one ofthe few experimental films that offer usincidental glimpses of London during thisperiod. Le Grice’s film Whitchurch Down(Duration) takes three views of a land-scape and combines them with purecolours and intermittent sound in pro-gressive loop sequences and freeze-frames, positing duration as a concretedimension. Shot to a pre-planned structure, Welsby’sdynamic Fforest Bay II uses speed as theinstrument with which he demonstratesthe disparity between the cinematic viewand the film surface. Via time-lapse, manual exposure andrefilming, Broadwalk by William Rabanranges from serenity to rigour. The per-ceptible traces of human movementappear as ghosts in the tranquil walkway. David Hall, a pioneer of video art, dis-plays a command of the cinematic medi-um in the layers of superimposition thatmake up Phased Time2, building up auraland visual ‘chords’ while mapping out aroom on the flat screen.

John Smith, Leading Light, 1975, colour,sound, 11mPeter Gidal, Focus, 1971, b/w, sound, 7mIan Breakwell & Mike Leggett, Sheet,1970, b/w, sound, 21mMalcolm Le Grice, Whitchurch Down(Duration), 1972, colour, sound, 8mChris Welsby, Fforest Bay II, 1973,colour, silent, 5mWilliam Raban, Broadwalk, 1972, colour,sound, 12mDavid Hall, Phased Time2, 1974, colour,sound, 15m

(Total running time approximately 82m)

This programme adapts its title fromMalcolm Le Grice’s “Location?Duration?” exhibition of films and paint-ings at the Drury Lane Arts Lab in 1968.

LEADING LIGHT

“Leading Light evolves a sense of screendepth and surface through the simpleagency of light. The film is shot in a roomover the period of a day and records thechanges in light through the single win-dow. The image is controlled throughmanipulation of aperture, of shutterrelease, of lens, but the effect is morecasual than determined and the spectatoris aware primarily of the determiningstrategy of following sunlight. Smith hascommented that, “…the film is notintended as an academic exercise – Iwanted to make a film of light cast by thesun largely because I found it beautiful.At the same time, I did not want to makean illusionistic narrative film about thesun moving around a room, but instead toemploy these events within an essentiallyfilmic construction. Because the imagesare so seductive, there is a conflict in thefilm between the events which occurredand the way in which they were recorded.This is quite intentional – for this reasonI chose a very romantic piece of music forthe soundtrack, which is mechanisticallymanipulated. The sound (which onlyoccurs when an image of a record playerappears on the screen) alters in level inrelation to two variables – the apparentdistance from the camera to the apparentsource of the sound, and the exposure ofthe individual shots (bright=loud,dark=quiet). The manipulations accord-ing to distance are merely an extension ofan accepted illusionistic code (source ofsound seems further away, therefore thesound is quieter, etc.), whereas themanipulations according to brightness arematerialist – a new code, but just as validas the other in the film’s terms.””

Deke Dusinberre, Perspectives onBritish Avant-Garde Film catalogue,1977

“Leading Light uses the camera-eye toreveal the irregular beauty of a familiarspace. When we inhabit a room we areonly unevenly aware of the space held init and the possible forms of vision whichreside there. The camera-eye documentsand returns our apprehension. Vertovimagined a ‘single room’ made up of amontage of many different rooms. Smithreverses this aspect of ‘creative geogra-phy’ by showing how many rooms thecamera can create from just one.”

A.L. Rees, Unpacking 7 Films pro-gramme notes, 1980

FOCUS

“Taking the relocating enumerativeplacement of ‘static’ reality in Bedroomto its ultimate conclusion; a film whose‘repetitions’ are as close to mechanisticprocesses (loops) as the human camera-

operator can get, with the help of aBolex-16 pro. With an overwhelming,complex, deep, beautiful soundtrack byAnthony.”

Peter Gidal, London Film-Makers’Co-operative distribution catalogue, 1971

“Gidal’s ultimate goal is the viewer’shead: he’s interested in the way that theviewer comes to terms with what he sees,the analytic process of working out thetrue nature of the experience. Like other‘structuralists’, his distrust of content infilms verges on an all-but-paranoid fearof human emotion… and since his filmsdefine their own rhythms (rather thanmatching life-rhythms, as inEisensteinian montage) they presupposethe viewer’s willing surrender to the taskof watching them. At their best, as inBedroom or Focus (the latter a series ofbackward-and-forward zooms through anopen indoor space, the elements withinthe shot at once seemingly arbitrary andprecisely defined), they are sufficientlystrong conceptually to capture the viewerinto participating in the experience, con-sciously or not. One of the few genuine‘originals’ at work in Britain.”

Tony Rayns, “Directory of UKIndependent Film-Makers”, CinemaRising No. 1, April 1972

“Film cannot adequately represent con-sciousness any more than it adequatelyrepresents meaning; all film is invisiblyencumbered by mystificatory systemsand interventions which are distortions,repressions, selections, etc. That a film isnot a window to life, to a set of meanings,to a pure state of image/meaning, oughtto be self-evident. Thus, the documentingof an act of film-making is as illusionist apractice as the documenting of a narrativeaction (fiction). And consciousness is asencumbered by the illusionist devices ofcinema, if one is attempting to document‘it’, as anything else. Filmic reflexivenessis the presentation of consciousness to theself, consciousness of the way one dealswith the material operations; film relex-iveness is forced through cinema’s mate-rialist operations of filmic practice.”

Peter Gidal, “Theory and Definitionof Structural/Materialist Film”, StructuralFilm Anthology, 1976

SHEET

“Sheet is concerned with redefiningboundaries, affirming that old Gestaltenthing that elements in a field are alwayssubordinated to the whole, the composi-tion of it – an aggregate of episodes – issuch that what finally emerged was asomewhat soft mesmeric movie, the rep-etitions and symmetries setting up moodsin which one became immersed.”

Roger Hammond, London Film-Makers’ Co-operative catalogue supple-ment, 1972

“Shrouding or hiding belong both to

death as the mysterious unseen killer, andto the corpse. Sheet has all these feelings.The uncertainty and surprise: where willit appear next? The sheet appears in oddplaces, making familiar objects lookstrange and uncanny. The party goes onwith everybody pretending it isn’t there,embarrassed, ashamed of it, it is eventu-ally kicked into a corner. This sums upour present approach to death. As the filmproposes: the more we pretend it isn’tthere, the more it pursues us. Then, in thefinal sequence in the valley there seemsto be a feeling of resolution. Perhaps thatthe earth will eventually claim us, butalso gives us birth, growth, and protec-tion. So, as we realize that the sheet andthe valley go together, so the sheet can gooff to a more bearable distance.”

Extract from a letter to the filmmakersfrom a member of the audience, circa1970

WHITCHURCH DOWN (DURATION)

“This film is the beginning of an exami-nation of the perceptual and conceptualstructures which can be dealt with usingpure colour sequences in loop forms withpictorial material. In this case, the picto-rial material is confined to three land-scape locations and the structure is notmathematically rigorous.”

Malcolm Le Grice, London Film-Makers’ Co-operative distribution cata-logue, 1974

“The first general point about Le Grice’swork is that the eventual structure of hisfilms is not normally the result of anadherence to a rigorously formulated ini-tial concept. The films are better under-stood as events that emerge from his plas-tic concerns with film process. In otherwords, the meaning of Le Grice’s filmsstems principally from a direct exploita-tion of film’s physical properties; filmcan be physically manipulated, forinstance, not merely in the act of expos-ing it to light in a camera, but alsothrough direct control of its developingand printing. It is easy to be misled intothinking that such concerns with the tech-nical properties of film necessarily resultin a certain dehumanization of the filmactivity. The confusion results from aninability to see that the filmmaker is alsoan actor; i.e. a man who acts with film.By making explicit the materials andprocesses of the film, the film makerallows us to see his film not just as a fin-ished object but as one event (and notalways the culminating event) in a wholeseries of events that make up a continuumof film activity. And this is a remarkablycourageous and personal thing to do: for,

in a sense, if you have the eyes to see,everything is revealed, and technique isno longer a means of alienation betweenobserver and actor, or between the actorand his activity. From this point of view,Malcolm Le Grice exhibits an unusualhonesty and integrity of intention. If LeGrice’s heart is in technique, then hisconcurrent concern with the context with-in which an observer assimilates anddirectly experiences his structuredtime/space events, is a way of wearing hisheart on his sleeve.”

John Du Cane, Time Out, 1977

FFOREST BAY II

“Each of my films is a separate attempt tore-define the interface between ‘mind’and ‘nature’. Although specified or atleast implied in any one piece of work,this delineation is constantly changed andadapted both as a definition, at a materiallevel, and as a working model, at a con-ceptual level, to each unique situation orlocation. Without this essentially cyber-netic view of the relationship between‘mind’ and ‘nature’, a view in which therelation between the two operates as ahomeostatic loop, ‘nature’ becomes noth-ing more than potential raw material atthe disposal of ‘mind’ acting upon it. Thisraw material is most visibly manifest inthat subdivision of ‘nature’ termed ‘land-scape’. The wilder and more remote thislandscape is, the further it is removedfrom, and the less it exhibits those signswhich mark the activities of ‘mind’.Technology is both a subdivision of‘nature’ and an extension of ‘mind’.Viewed within these terms of reference,the camera, as a product of technology,can be seen as a potential interfacebetween ‘mind’ and ‘nature’.”

Chris Welsby, Arts Council Film-makers on Tour catalogue, 1980

“The idea that I was thinking of withFforest Bay was sort of the way that ifyou changed the ‘sampling rates’, youwere able to capture different types ofevents. One sampling rate would do cer-tain things with the waves, and othersampling rates would start to register theactivity of people in the scene. Withanother sampling rate, you’d be able tosee the clouds moving. The idea was tostart with a really rapid sampling rate andthen slow it down, and then reverse theprocess. So the fastest sampling rate wasone frame per position. I divided the rota-tion circle of sixty degrees into eight seg-ments: rotated the camera, took a frame,rotated it again, took a frame, etc. Secondtime round, I took two frames, and so onup to about thirty frames, I think. At thefastest sampling rate, you can’t really seemuch because it’s going too fast; you’remore aware of the circular motion of thecamera itself. Then as it starts to slowdown, you can see individual wavesbreak on the shore. As it slows downsome more you can see people and, even-tually, clouds and changes of light. Then,the whole process returns. Also, theimage flattens when it’s going very fast,so you may become aware of the film sur-face itself rather than the surface throughthe screen.”

Chris Welsby, interview with MarkWebber, 2001

BROADWALK

“This film reiterates some of the concernsof Raban’s earlier work: the manipulationof time and the role of light/colour inlandscape representation. The openingand closing sequences of the film, shot atregular camera speed (24 frames per sec-ond) establish a tension with the predom-inant time-lapse/time-exposure sequence(each frame exposed for a full twentyseconds). The original hundred feet or sowhich were exposed during a period of24 hours in Regent’s Park were thenrefilmed (off a projection screen) result-ing in a film over 400 feet long. Thistechnique of rephotography furtherabstracts the process of landscape repre-sentation and offers greater possibilitiesfor variation and control over certain aes-thetic effects. Raban’s established motifof the light/colour variations of landscapeimagery is here radicalized intowhite/black sequences, which operate insimilar ways despite their polarity.White-outs constantly flatten the deepspace of the original image. Black ‘bars’– parts of irregularly exposed (repho-tographed) frames – are seen rollingacross the screen emphasizing its surfacenature. And the black ‘night’ sequenceserves to assert a strong identity betweenfilm and landscape, in so far as blacknessis first felt as absence of landscape, andonly then as absence of light – invertingcausal order. The fundamental aspect ofthis film is the interpretation of actualtime and actual landscape into filmic time

and filmic landscape. But the process ofreinterpreting a rigorous time-lapse sys-tem of recording into an intuited one ofre-recording might suggest that Rabanhas some reservations about the hegemo-ny of any system and feels the need toinsert a measure of spontaneous experi-ence.”

Deke Dusinberre, British Avant-Garde Landscape Films programmenotes, 1975

“Initially, the scale of screen speed wasdetermined by the intermittency offrames. Within this broad framework,which reduces the whole daylight periodto minutes, the film studies a more spe-cific minor scale of speed changes occur-ring inside the twenty-second frameinterval. In order to make this moreapparent, I refilmed the original from thescreen at a speed which was high enough

to slow down the speed changes andshow the build up of individual frames.The intermittent light sections of the filmwere made by filming directly into theprojector gate, sometimes ‘freezing’ indi-vidual frames and repeating sections ofthe darker film. By using freeze frames,bleached images, under-exposure andinclusion of the frame line, the filmasserts both its physical and illusionisticrealities.”

William Raban, programme notes,1972

PHASED TIME2

“Constructed on a pre-determined pro-gressively self-defining ‘phased’ scoreand lens-matting procedure, PhasedTime2 consists of six sections, each out ofa 100 ft. roll. All work was done in cam-era except for linking with black spacerbetween sections. Apart from the first,each section is subdivided according tological cyclic procedures. Each division(take) is a fixed position shot. At everyconsecutive take the camera is ‘pre-panned’ half a frame’s width to the right.Effectively, the camera is revolving in a‘static pan’ around a room throughout thefilm. Also, each consecutive take is par-tially superimposed over its predecessor(by rewinding after each take) and conse-quently phases the half-frame moves. Thefirst section is a single continuous take,with the whole frame exposed. The sec-ond commences the phased divisions; ineach, the whole frame is exposed. In thethird, alternative takes are matted half aframe’s width, progressively left andright of the frame. In the fourth, takes areprogressively matted by quarter framewidths and cycle twice; once throughwhole frame exposure; quarter matte(right); half; three quarters; half; quarter,and back to whole. Then, quarter matte(left); half; three quarters, etc. In the fifth,the same procedure is taken using multi-ples of a one-eighth matte, but this timeproceeding through only one completecycle. The sixth, and last, proceedsthrough one-sixteenth mattes from wholeframe to black (left). The second section(the first to comprise a multiple of takes)has its number of divisions determined bythe number of half-frame moves neces-sary to complete a 180 degree linear‘pan’ (eight using a 10mm lens).Subsequent sections progressivelyincrease their numbers (according tomatte cycles) until the last which com-pletes a 360 degree pan, with all takessimultaneously superimposed in the cen-ter of the section in sixteen takes (con-current with the one-sixteenth progres-sive mattes). The comparative ‘panning’pace is apparently accelerated or deceler-ated according to the relative matting pro-cedure and number of frame divisions,working from left to right and back fromright to left and back, since the camera isat all times moved to the right. The soundphases and eventually superimposes syn-chronously with the picture, and was pro-duced on a synthesizer and electricorgan.”

David Hall, First Festival ofIndependent British Cinema catalogue,1975

* * *

INTERVENTION &PROCESSING

The workshop was an integral part of theLFMC and provided almost unlimitedaccess to hands-on printing and process-ing. Within this supportive environment,artists were free to experiment with tech-nique and engage directly with the film-strip in an artisan manner.

By treating film as a medium in the sameway that a sculptor might use differentmaterials, the Co-op filmmakers broughta new understanding of the physical sub-stance and the way it could be crafted.Annabel Nicolson pulled prepared sec-tions of film (which might be sewn, col-laged, perforated) through the printer tomake Slides. Fred Drummond’s Shower Proof, anearly Co-op process film, exploits thedegeneration of the image as a result ofsuccessive reprinting, intuitively cuttingfootage of two people in a bathroom. Guy Sherwin uses layers of positive andnegative leader to build a powerful bas-relief in At The Academy, while JennyOkun explores the properties of colournegative in Still Life. Considered and brilliantly executed, TheMan with the Movie Camera dazzles withtechnique as focus, aperture and compo-sition are adjusted to exploit a mirrorpositioned in front of the lens. For Silver Surfer, Mike Dunford refilms

individual frames of footage originallysourced from television as waves of elec-tronic sound wash over the shimmeringfigure. Contrasting colours and optical patternsintensify the illusion that Lis Rhodes’Dresden Dynamo appears to hover indeep space between the viewer and thescreen. Garratt’s Versailles I & II breaks down aconventional travelogue into repetitive,rhythmic sections. Roger Hewins employs optical maskingto create impossible ‘real time’ eventswhich, though prosaic, appear to take onan almost sacred affectation inWindowframe.

Annabel Nicolson, Slides, 1970, colour,silent, 12m (18fps)Fred Drummond, Shower Proof, 1968,b/w, silent, 10m (18fps)

Guy Sherwin, At The Academy, 1974,b/w, sound, 5mDavid Crosswaite, The Man With TheMovie Camera, 1973, b/w, silent, 8mMike Dunford, Silver Surfer, 1972, b/w,sound, 15mJenny Okun, Still Life, 1976, colour,silent, 6mLis Rhodes, Dresden Dynamo, 1971,colour, sound, 5mChris Garratt, Versailles I & II, 1976,b/w, sound, 11mRoger Hewins, Windowframe, 1975,colour, sound, 6m

(Total running time approximately 78m)

SLIDES

“Slides was made while I was still a stu-dent at St.Martins. Like the sewingmachine piece, it was one that just hap-pened. By that time I was immersed infilm and I always seemed to have bits offilm around in my room, on the table,everywhere, always little fragments. I hadslides of my paintings and I cut up theslides and made them into a strip.Imagine a 16mm strip of celluloid withsprocket holes: Instead of that what I hadwas a strip – just slightly narrower –without the sprocket holes and the slideswere just cut into bits, just little frag-ments and stuck in with other film aswell, and also sewing (this was beforeReel Time). There are bits sewn withthread and some bits with holes punchedin. It was a very natural way of me towork, coming from painting, just work-ing with something I could hold in myhand was somehow less threatening thanworking with equipment. I think I wasmuch more confident working withsomething that I could grab hold of, so Imade this strip and then the film was real-ly created in the contact printer at the Co-op. Normally you would have your rawnegative and your emulsion and its liter-ally in contact, the light shines through itand you make a copy, but I had this verythin strip, which I held in the contactprinter and I just manoeuvered it. I couldsee what I was doing because there’s a lit-tle peephole you can look into so that youcan see each image. It amazes me nowthat I could have ever done anything likethat, I couldn’t possibly go within a hun-dred yards of doing it now. But I did itthen and Slides was what came out of it.

Annabel Nicolson, interview withMark Webber, 2002

“Slides develops a simple and eleganttension between stasis and apparentmotion, between surface and depth, andbetween abstract colours / shapes andrepresentational imagery. Ironically, thematerial pulled through the printer thistime is not found-footage posing as orig-inal material which is utilized in the wayfound-footage had been used by others.The film thus engages the entire conceptof – in David Curtis’ phrase – ‘theEnglish rubbish tip aesthetic’ whichembraces, in part, the theory that any-thing that can travel through a printerand/or projector is film material for a filmand for cinematic projection. The value-less becomes valued. Nicolson asserts thepreciousness not only of her originalmaterial but also that material in its trans-formations, and by extension the poten-tial preciousness of all perception. In thisrespect the film moves away from the rig-orous ascetic strategy and is more indul-gent of the pleasure of vision…”

Deke Dusinberre, Perspectives onBritish Avant-Garde Film catalogue,1977

SHOWER PROOF

“SONF SOUND TRACK SYNC?SPASH BTHA BATH GURGLE WATER– how real – pure film – or a report – sit-uation examined by camera – but false –contrived realism is not a true record ofspontaneous actuality – this could never

be? enough to contrive (the cameramakes every situation an arrangement),then edit out as much obvious con-trivance. It is only a FILM.”

Fred Drummond, original productionnotes for Shower Proof, 1968

“Fred Drummond has made a series ofshort single and double-screen films thatexplore visual rhythms and the potentialsof the printing process. They are non-nar-rative, careful orchestrations of repeatedloop footage. Shower Proof is printed onincreasingly high-contrast negative. Theimage grows from the abstract, yet plain-ly anthropomorphic, steadily through tothe personal, yet non-specific – we seeneither the man’s nor the woman’s face indetail – and back. The film explores therelation between form and movement.The visual rhythm is so strong thatdespite the film being silent the viewerhas a strong aural impression.”

Verina Glaessner, “Directory of UKIndependent Film-Makers”, CinemaRising No.1, April 1972

AT THE ACADEMY

“In making films, I am not trying to saysomething, but to find out about some-thing. But what one tries to find out, andhow one tries to find it out, reveals whatone is saying.”

Guy Sherwin, Arts Council Film-makers on Tour catalogue, 1980

“At the Academy was made during a peri-od of raiding laboratory skips for junkfilm. It uses a very simple and highlyunprofessional homemade printer. Thefound-footage was hand printed by wind-ing it on a sprocketed wheel through alight beam. Because the light spills overthe sound track area, the optical soundundergoes identical transformations tothe image. I programmed the printing sothat the image gradually builds up in lay-ers superimposed, slightly out of phase,moving from one up to twelve layers.

This has the effect of stretching or decel-erating individual frames from 1/24 secto 1/2 sec, causing them to fuse withadjacent frames. A separate concern inthe film is the game it plays with the audi-ence’s expectations.”

Guy Sherwin, A Perspective onEnglish Avant-Garde Film catalogue,1978

THE MAN WITH THE MOVIE CAMERA

“Crosswaite’s Man with the MovieCamera is a particularly elegant film. Bymounting a circular mirror a little beforethe camera, so that it only occupies thecentral area of the screen, and anothermirror to the side, the camera and thecameraman may be seen as the centralimage, with the other features of the roomvisible around the circumference. Thefilm is complex in spite of the simplicityof the set-up, which is only slowlygrasped. Particularly succinct is the wayin which the effect of manipulating thecamera, like changing focus, is seen inthe image simultaneously with a view ofhow it is brought about. There is no other‘content’ than the functioning of the cam-era itself, seen to be sufficient and evenpoetic.”

Malcolm Le Grice, Abstract Film andBeyond, 1977

SILVER SURFER

“A surfer, filmed and shown on tv,refilmed on 8mm, and refilmed again on16mm. Simple loop structure precededby four minutes of a still frame of thesurfer. An image on the borders of appre-hension, becoming more and moreabstract. The surfer surfs, never surfsanywhere, an image suspended in thelight of the projector lamp. A very quietand undramatic film, not particularlydidactic. Sound: the first four minutesconsists of a fog-horn, used as the basictone for a chord played on the organ, therest of the film uses the sound of breakerswith a two second pulse and occasionalbursts of musical-like sounds.”

London Film-Makers Co-operativedistribution catalogue supplement, 1972

“Scientific or objective reality is based onrepetition or frequency of observed data.It has been postulated that any unusualevent which occurs only once cannot beobserved. Organisation of space is deter-mined by a continuous reference to therelationships between the observer andthe observed data. ‘Objectivity’ is a func-tion of frequency, continued frequencyimplies permanence and therefore objec-tivity. Frequency is determined by theorganism. The perceptual threshold of ahuman being is approximately 1/30th of asecond. Perception is a product of fre-quency which is a product of perception.”

Mike Dunford, “Conjectures andAssertions”, Filmaktion programmenotes, 1973

STILL LIFE

“Still Life moves towards later stages oftransformation than the earlier films andsubstitutes positive for negative camerastock in the conventional negative-posi-tive process of filming and printing: thefilmmaker then attempts to reinstatesome sort of representation of reality bypainting the fruit in front of the camera itsnegative colours; but the burnt-out shad-ows and black highlights consistentlyprevent any illusionistic interpretation ofthe space within the frame while alsoasserting the processes involved.”

Jeremy Spencer, “Films of JennyOkun”, Readings No. 2, 1977

“My films, photographic constructions,and paintings all stem from similar con-cerns. They are attempts to integrate thestructural aspects of an event/landscapewith the structural aspects of the mediuminvolved. This integration of structures isaimed at creating a balance with no oneelement overstated, no one part domi-nant. My own participation is emphasisedin this process – just as scientists nowacknowledge that their own existencecannot be ignored in the calculation ofexperimental data. The subjects that Ichoose are not those that most easily sug-gest a filmic structure but are subjectswhich cannot be verbalized. For me, filmis a language with which we can studyour own visual thought processes. Eachnew film can create its own language forthis visual discussion and can be exploredand contained within its own terms.”

Jenny Okun, Arts Council Film-Makers on Tour catalogue, 1980

DRESDEN DYNAMO

“The enduring importance of Lis Rhodesas artist and film-maker is attributable toher quiet and powerful radicalism.Rhodes’ work juxtaposes an artisticallyand theoretically rigorous practice withpassionate commitment. She has devel-oped a mode of film-making inspired butnot enslaved by feminism, which has sus-tained and grown regardless of fashion-able trends in art and representation.”

Gill Henderson, A Directory of

British Film and Video Artists, 1996

“Sounds are affective. Images are instruc-tive. In reversing, turning over, the nota-tion, or perhaps the connotation ofimages and words, it becomes alarminglyapparent that words (and not only in theirrelationship with sentences) are to bebelieved, or not, and are therefore emo-tional. This is why lots can be said andnothing happens, or nothing is said and alot happens. One person’s word againstanother’s. The answer and the questionoccupy the same space. They are alreadyfamiliar if not known to each other.Emotionally they live within the samepolitical order, that is, of manipulationand persuasion. Images do not ‘say’.They are instructive. They are said to‘speak for themselves’. And I think theydo. Seeing sense is a rare occurrence, initself. There is little space for reflexivemeaning in reflection. The one is theother, if not in geometry, certainly intime. The values of a social system arecontinuously displayed and reproduced.Repetitive distribution re-enforcesacceptance, protectionism masqueradesas ‘free’ choice. But the explicit nature ofimages always remains implicit. You canlook at them. They are made to look atyou. Even chance cannot avoid recogni-tion. Abstract or configured instruction iswithin the image. Even nothing much issomething. Meanwhile the needle goesround and round the record irrespectiveof the recording. Tape wraps round thehead and the disc spins. “Read my lips’,he said. Hopefully, we didn’t bother.Seeing is never believing, or lip sync aconfirmation of authenticity. But thecombination of instruction and affectivityis very effective. Anything can be sold inbetween, anything that necessitates thepolitical construction of emotion. In aseries of films and live works I haveinvestigated the material connectionsbetween the film image and the opticalsound track. In Dresden Dynamo, the onewas the other. That is – what is heard isseen and what is seen is heard. One sym-bolic order creates the other. The film isthe score is the sound.”

Lis Rhodes, “Flashback from aPartisan Filmmaker”, Filmwaves No. 6,1998

VERSAILLES I & II“For this film I made a contact printingbox, with a printing area 16mm x 185mmwhich enabled the printing of 24 framesof picture plus optical sound area at onetime. The first part is a composition using7 x one-second shots of the statues ofVersailles. Palace of 1000 Beauties, withaccompanying soundtrack, wovenaccording to a pre-determined sequence.Because sound and picture were printedsimultaneously, the minute inconsisten-cies in exposure times resulted in rhyth-mic fluctuations of picture density andlevels of sound. Two of these shots com-prise the second part of the film which isframed by abstract imagery printedacross the entire width of the film sur-face: the visible image is also the soundimage.”

Chris Garratt, London Film-Makers’Co-operative distribution catalogue, 1977

“I was motivated originally by theprospect of being able to compose soundand visual images in units of fractions ofseconds and by the tremendous ratio ofmagnification between the making andprojection of sound and picture images.The content is not really the figurativesubject matter as in some superimposedconcept, but the here and now of the rawmaterial, in making and in projection, andin the relationship between these twoevents in which nothing is hidden,propped up, decorated, representative orrepresentable. (The choice of the materi-al used was largely a matter of chance,but it is significant that (1) the originalfootage deals with ‘art’ and ‘culture’ in avery clichéd way, (2) we instantly relateto this whole genre of documentary ratherthan to the particular subject, (3) it con-tains virtually no subject or cameramovement at all, and (4) there is an opti-cal soundtrack, identifiable during edit-ing only in the abstract, i.e. visually).”

Chris Garratt, “Directory ofIndependent British Cinema”,Independent Cinema No. 1, 1978

WINDOWFRAME“Windowframe is an investigation of theway in which we may perceive a specificimage – that of two people, seen througha window, involved in some activity. Thisis the image seen at the opening of thefilm. Subsequent sections of the filmpresent to the viewer differing juxtaposi-tions of the four segments of this imagewhich are created by the cross-bars of thewindow. Tensions are created betweenwhat we expect to see, and what we dosee. We see the original image as a singlewhole. Do we perceive the manipulatedsections in the same way, or are we drawnto investigate each pane separately? Canwe make ourselves see the manipulatedsections in the same way we see the orig-inal sequence? In the section in which theimage is split simply horizontally or ver-tically are we able to re-establish/re-con-struct the original image in our minds sothat the image we see differs from that onthe screen? Perhaps this film answerssome of these questions; perhaps it mere-ly raises them.”

Roger Hewins, Derby IndependentFilm Awards catalogue, 1976

“For the best part of ten yearsWindowframe was exhibited as a silentfilm. I had, however, always ‘seen’ it as afilm with sound. Indeed a magnetic stripeto facilitate this had been added to theoriginal print of the film at the lab.However, I was unable to decide exactlywhat the soundtrack should be. A simplemusic track seemed inappropriate, toomuch like background music for its ownsake with little relationship to the struc-ture of the visuals, whilst attempts at amore constructed rhythmic track intro-duced extraneous ‘off-screen’ informa-tion taking the viewer outside of theexperience of simply watching the filmitself. I was looking for a soundtrack thatprovided an equivalence for the visualsthemselves. The soundtrack on the exist-ing print is the “Missa Pange Lingua’” byJosquin des Pres. It was combined withthe visuals in 1982. This music was infact recorded for a later film. During theediting of this film I became interested inthe ‘out-takes’, where singers had mademistakes injecting sudden interruptions inthe four-part medieval harmonies. Notonly did the religious music resonate thestained glass quality of the images, butalso the four-part structure and its inter-ruptions provided the auditory equiva-lence for the overall structure of the film.

Roger Hewins, 2002

SHOOT SHOOT SHOOT4

Ian Breakwell & Mike Leggett, Sheet

William Raban, Broadwalk

Jenny Okun, Still Life

Fred Drummond, Shower Proof

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DIVERSIFICATIONS

From personal montage through toexploration of the cinematic process,the work was sensuous and playful.As a creative group, the Co-op cov-ered vital aesthetic ground and resis-ted categorisation. This programmedoes not pursue a single theme orconcept, rather it demonstrates the

broad range of work that was pro-duced during this time.

The exposition section of AnnabelNicolson’s Shapes reveals its tactileevolution, as visible dirt is made evi-dent by the step-printing technique.Moving into real time, the multiplelayers of superimposition presentstrange spatial dimensions as thefilmmaker toys with light, movingamong the paper structures in herroom. Footsteps engages the camera (view-er) in a playful game of “statues”.The film was often presented as alive performance in which MarilynHalford crept up on her own project-ed likeness. Le Grice’s Talla adopts an almostmythical pose. Images slowlyencroach on the frame as the visual

tension rises, later to explode inspectacularly bending, twisting sin-gle-frame bursts. The brief, rapid-fire collage WhiteLite by Jeff Keen is made up of baf-fling layers of live action, stop-motion, obliteration and assemblage. Anne Rees-Mogg’s Muybridge Film,in homage to the pioneer of motionphotography, constructs a playfulfilm by breaking down a sequence

into its constituent frames. Moment is an unmediated look, erot-ic but not explicit, as saturated as itscelluloid. It’s a key work ofDwoskin’s early sensual portraits ofsolitary girls, in which the returningstare challenges our objective / sub-jective gaze. Chris Welsby’s Windmill II is one ofa series in which propeller bladesrotate in front of the camera, actingas a second shutter, controlled by anunpredictable and natural force. Inthis instance, the blades are backedwith a reflective material that offersa glance back at the recording deviceintermittent with the zoetropic viewof the park. In The Girl Chewing Gum, by JohnSmith, the narration appears to directeveryday life before breaking down,causing the viewer to question the

accepted relationship between soundand image, the suggestive power oflanguage. Chinese images and slogans aretransformed by split-screen,ingrained dirt and hand-held photog-raphy to create a visual pun in IanKerr’s film, from “Persisting in ourstruggle” to Persisting in our vision.

Annabel Nicolson, Shapes, 1970,colour, silent, 7m (18fps)Marilyn Halford, Footsteps, 1974,b/w, sound, 6mMalcolm Le Grice, Talla, 1968, b/w,silent, 20mJeff Keen, White Lite, 1968, b/w,silent, 2.5mAnne Rees-Mogg, Muybridge Film,1975, b/w, silent, 5mStephen Dwoskin, Moment, 1968,colour, sound, 12mChris Welsby, Windmill II, 1973,colour, sound, 10mJohn Smith, The Girl Chewing Gum,1976, b/w, sound, 12mIan Kerr, Persisting, 1975, colour,sound, 10m

(Total running time approximately85m)

SHAPES

“I tried to make a kind of environment inthe room where I lived in Kentish Townand to make a film within it. There werepieces of paper and screwed up, transpar-ent gels hanging from the ceiling; it wasquite dense in some parts. I wanderedthrough it with a camera and then otherparts were filmed on the rooftop at StMartins. I think I was just very much try-ing to find my way in a whole new area ofwork. I remember it involved a lot of re-filming, which was the part I liked. Theprocess was very fluid, similar to paint-ing. I got quite interested in the specks ofdust and dirt on the film and the re-film-ing gave me a chance to look at that moreclosely. Probably the thing that attractedme to film was the light … the kind offloating quality you can get, images sus-pended in light. Looking at it now, thekind of paintings I was doing before werefloating shapes. It seems to me that thekind of things I was looking for I shouldbe able to do with film. When I make afilm, I’m not sure what I’m ever trying toachieve … it kind of gets clearer to me asI’m doing it.”

Annabel Nicolson, interview withMark Webber, 2002

“Compassion; care; love; appreciation;attention. Quietude; silence; slowness;gentleness; subtlety; lyricism; beauty. Itis terms like these that AnnabelNicolson’s films can be discussed in(exploratory would be another), if theyare to be discussed at all; and perhapsthey are best left to themselves, and to thereceptive eye, mind, and soul of the view-er. They are humble, unpretentious,searching, and thoughtful films: they arereverent, after a style, and should be seenwith a similar sort of reverence. Theephemeral thing, by this compassionateattention, is given the aspect of timeless-ness which transcends mere nostalgia: thething is seen ‘under the aspect of eterni-ty’.”

David Miller, Paragraphs On SomeFilms by Annabel Nicolson Seen inMarch 1973

FOOTSTEPS

“Footsteps is in the manner of a gamereinacted, the game in making wasbetween the camera and actor, the actorand cameraman, and one hundred feet offilm. The film became expanded into pos-itive and negative to change balanceswithin it; black for perspective, thenblack to shadow the screen and makeparadoxes with the idea of acting, and theact of seeing the screen. The music sets amood then turns a space, remembers thepositive then silences the flatness of thenegative. I am interested in the relation-ship of theatrical devices in film workingat tangents with its abstract visual quali-ties. The use of a game works the memo-ry, anticipation is set, positive film standsto resemble a three-dimensional sense oftime in past/future. Then negative holdsout film itself as the image is one stagefurther abstracted and a disquiet is set upin the point that the sound track ends,whilst the picture track continues.”

Marilyn Halford, Perspectives onBritish Avant-Garde Film exhibition cata-logue, 1977

“We’d just got one of these Russian filmdeveloping tanks, that you can load 100feet of black and white film into anddevelop it yourself, which is very appeal-ing because it means you haven’t got allthe palaver of going to labs. Footsteps isbased, obviously, on a game. Now whoseearly work would I have seen thatprompted that? I think the image itselfcame from René Clair. That slightlyrough black and white image I like verymuch – the idea of it not mattering if it’sgot speckly and dusty. It had a certaindegree of antiquity built into it which, tome, was quite liberating because it’s hardto keep it all dust free and so forth.Anyway, that’s how I wanted it, I wantedit to look old even before it started, likeold footage. Consequently it’s got theScott Joplin soundtrack, “TheEntertainer”; just because it’s amusingand also to add that aged thing to it. Thefirst time it goes through it’s in negativeso you wouldn’t necessarily see what wasgoing on, so you would have a lot ofquestions and curiosity as to what washappening. And then when all is revealedthe right way round, it is just so simple,it’s just such a simple game. I suppose theperformance part of it just grew out ofthat, to extend it really, it was anotherway of presenting it – to take part and toplay the game with the film image itself.”

Marilyn Halford, interview with MarkWebber, 2001

TALLA

“Talla is the most narrative/subjectivefilm I have yet made. Because all thematerial was shot by me in a week or soit has location continuity, which becomesvery important in the film. The pace ofthe cutting is still fast and images stillwork from perception to conception orperhaps in this film – to ‘feeling’.However, there is no consistent buildingup of pace and the fast-cut pieces are heldwithin pauses so that there are often‘clusters’ of images diving out of a main-ly calm field.”

Malcolm Le Grice, Interfunktionen 4,March 1970

“I think Talla is a hard film for most peo-ple. It’s a very psychological and myste-rious film. It starts out, in one primitiveway, from the interplay of the black andthe white. I was interested in this whitescreen on which things appear black. It’shighly orchestrated, in terms of the blackand white qualities of the image. There’ssomething that’s coming out in this work,in the mythological kind of subject –Chronos Fragmented and the Cyclopsand all of that stuff – that Talla is playingon. The shot material is actually on a veryobscure bit of Dartmoor, and DartmoorPrison and the warders there. So there’sthat element of the threatening, mysteri-ous bit of society which is something thatyou can’t get into, the dark side of thesocial. It’s also very mythical, in that thegods and ghosts of that landscape arefloating around there in the mist. It wascompletely edited directly on 16mmusing a magnifying glass, I didn’t edit itat all through a viewer. I thought of itsymphonically, in terms of the lengthsand orchestration. There’s an element ofpropheticness in there…”

Malcolm Le Grice, interview withMark Webber, 2001

WHITE LITE

“Watch the ghost of Bela Lugosi decaybefore your very eyes. A sequel to Plan 9From Outer Space.”

Jeff Keen/Deke Dusinberre, “InterimJeff Keen Filmography with ArbitraryAnnotations”, Afterimage No. 6, 1976

“Keen is indebted to the Surrealist tradi-tion for many of his central concerns: hispassion for instability, his sense of lemerveilleux, his fondness for analogiesand puns, his preference for ‘lowbrow’ artover aestheticism of any kind, his dedica-tion to collage and le hazard objectif. Butthis ‘continental’ facet of his work – vir-tually unique in this country – co-existswith various typically English character-istics, which betray other roots. The tackyglamour/True Beauty of his Family Starproductions is at least as close to the endof Brighton pier as it is to Hollywood B-movies… The heroic absurdity and adultinfantilism that are the mainsprings of hiscomedy draw on a long tradition of post-Victorian humour: not the ‘innocent’ vul-garity of music hall, but the anarchicnessof The Goons and the self-laceratingironies of the 30s clowns, complete withtheir undertow of melancholia.”

Tony Rayns, “Born to Kill: Mr. SoftEliminator”, Afterimage No. 6, 1976

MUYBRIDGE FILM

“I started making films in 1966, andteaching filmmaking in 1967. Before thatI had been painting and drawing andexhibiting at the Beaux Arts Gallery andother places. My first film was a painter-ly study of interference colours and struc-tures of soap bubbles (Nothing isSomething). At the same time I made a16mm home movie of my nephews whichwas called Relations. I realized twothings, one that film is not about move-ment, and that the figurative and narrativepossibilities of the second film were whatI wanted to explore. Eight years later Imade the film I should have made then, asmall film called Muybridge Film inwhich I explored all the filmic possibili-ties of someone turning a cartwheel.”

Anne Rees-Mogg, Arts Council Film-Makers on Tour catalogue, 1980

MOMENT

“Moment presents a continuous, fixedgaze by the camera at a girl’s face. Thefixity, although paralleling the spectator’sposition, nevertheless marks itself off as‘different’ from our view because it refus-es the complex system of movements,cuts, ‘invisible’ transitions, etc. whichclassic cinema developed to capture our‘subjectivity’ and absorb it into the filmictext. In this way, the distinction betweenthe looks of the camera at the profilmicevent and of the viewer at the image isemphasized. Moreover, the sadistic com-ponents inherent in the pleasurable exer-cise of the ‘controlling’ gaze (a basic factwithout which no cinema could exist) arereturned to the viewer, as it is he/she whomust construct the ‘scenario’ by combin-ing a reading of the image (slight move-ments of the woman, colour changes inher face, facial expressions, etc.) with animagined (but suggested) series of hap-penings off-screen. The result is a narra-tive: the progressive excitement of awoman who masturbates.”

Paul Willemen, Perspectives onBritish Avant-Garde Film catalogue,1977

“In one long take, a girl whose face wesee in close-up throughout, smokes andexcites herself, her eyes resting atmoments on the camera as if in a suppli-cation which is also an utterly resignedaccusation of film-maker and spectatoralike. Not for their curiosity, which mayafter all be far from devoid or reverencefor the human mystery, but for a willfulself-withholding which is the standardhuman relationship. Here are three soli-tudes, and the film’s climax occurs afterthe girl’s, in her uneasy satiety, a convul-sion returning her, and us, to an accentu-ation of the nothing from which she fled.”

Ray Durgnat, Sexual Alienation in theCinema, 1972

WINDMILL II“A reflexiveness using the camera shutteras a technical referent can be seen inWelsby’s Windmill II. The camera is

placed in a park. The basic systeminvolves a windmill directly in front ofthe camera, so that as the blades pass bythe lens they act as a second shutter, as aparadigm for the first shutter. The bladesare covered in melanex, a mirrored fabric.The varying speeds of the blades presentthe spectator with varying perceptual datawhich require different approaches to theimage. When moving slowly, they act asa repoussoir, heightening the sense ofdeep space. At a moderate speed, they actas an extra shutter which fragments ‘nor-mal’ motion, emphasizing movementwithin the deeper plane and critiquing thenotion of ‘normality’ in cinematicmotion. When moving quite fast, theblades act as abstract images superim-posed on the landscape image and flat-tening the two planes into one. And whenthe blades are stopped (or almost so) acompletely new space is created – notonly does the new (reflected) deep spacecontain objects in foreground and back-ground to affirm its depth, but theseobjects are seen in anamorphosis (due tothe irregular surface of the melanex)which effectively re-flattens them; thevariations in the mirror surface create dis-tortions which violate (or at least callattention to) the normal function of thelens of the camera.”

Deke Dusinberre, “St. George in theForest: The English Avant-Garde”,Afterimage No. 6, 1976

“Formalism has grown up in parallel withthe development of an advanced technol-ogy. The medium of landscape filmbrings to organic life the language of for-malism. It is a language shared by bothfilm-makers and painters. In painting,particularly American painting of the1950s, formalistic thinking became man-ifest in the dictum ‘truth to materials’,placing the emphasis on paint and canvasas the subject of the work. In film, partic-ularly the independent work done inEngland, it manifests itself by emphasiz-ing the filmic process as the subject of thework. The synthesis between these for-malistic concerns of independent filmand the organic quality of landscapeimagery is inevitably the central issue ofcontemporary landscape film. It is thisattempt to integrate the forms of technol-ogy with the forms found in nature whichgives the art of landscape its relevance inthe twentieth century.”

Chris Welsby, Perspectives on BritishAvant-Garde Film exhibition catalogue,1977

THE GIRL CHEWING GUM

“I am writing this with a black ‘Tempo’fiber-tip pen. A few months ago, I boughtfifteen of these pens for sixty pence.Unfortunately, because they are so com-mon, other people pick them up thinkingthey are theirs, so I don’t have many leftnow. I bought the pens from a market inKingsland Road in Hackney, about a hun-dred yards from where the film was shot.The film draws attention to the cinematiccodes and illusions it incorporates bydenying their existence, treating repre-sentation as absolute reality.”

John Smith, “Directory ofIndependent British Cinema”,Independent Cinema No. 1, 1978

“In relinquishing the more subtle use ofvoice-over in television documentary, thefilm draws attention to the control anddirectional function of that practice:

imposing, judging, creating an imaginaryscene from a visual trace. This ‘BigBrother’ is not only looking at you butordering you about as the viewer’s identi-fication shifts from the people in thestreet to the camera eye overlooking thescene. The resultant voyeurism takes onan uncanny aspect as the blandness of thescene (shot in black and white on a greyday in Hackney) contrasts with the near‘magical’ control identified with thevoice. The most surprising effect is theease with which representation anddescription turn into phantasm throughthe determining power of language.”

Michael Maziere, “John Smith’sFilms: Reading the Visible”, Undercut10/11, 1984

PERSISTING

“Thee gap in between, perception andawareness of perception of moment isPersisting. To put it in context, it workslike this, like these. Acceleration of sens-es in TV culture makes for rash decisions.Momentary vision. Speed kills. Speedlies. Very fast glimpses of one imagemean you learn more in a time period, ina sense speed slows down our attention.Very fast glimpses of different imagesmean we absorb subliminally a little ofmany things. Speed is speeding up ourattention. So time is material. Can bemanipulated. Can exist an one or morespeeds simultaneously. Subject. Where iscamera, is camera present. Are we awareof camera, who is being looked at, whatis happening, are we learning. Is it goodto expect to learn. Is there actually such athing as a valid subject. Does it matter. Tobe aware is to exist on levels simultane-ously trusting none as finite.”

Genesis P. Orridge, “Three AbsentGuesses”, Edinburgh Film Festival pro-gramme notes, 1978

“persist vb. (intr.) 1. (often foll. by in) tocontinue steadfastly or obstinatelydespite opposition or difficulty. 2. to con-tinue to exist or occur without interup-tion: the rain persisted throughout thenight. bridge n. 1. A structure that spansand provides a passage over a road, rail-

way, river, or some other obstacle. 2.Something that resembles this in shape orfunction: his letters provided a bridgeacross the centuries. subtitle n. 1. anadditional subordinate title given to a lit-erary or other work. 2. (often pl.) Alsocalled: caption. Films. a. a written trans-lation superimposed on a film that hasforeign dialogue. b. explanatory text on asilent film. vb. 3. (tr.; usually passive) toprovide a subtitle for. subtitular adj.soundtrack n. 1. the recorded soundaccompaniment to a film. Compare com-mentary (sense 2). 2. A narrow stripalong the side of a spool of film, whichcarries the sound accompaniment …Wave Upon Wave of Wheatfield.”

Ian Kerr, 2002

* * *

THE EPIC FLIGHT

An extended personal odyssey which,through an accumulation of visual infor-mation, builds into a treatise on the expe-rience of seeing. Its loose, indefinablestructure explores new possibilities forperception and narrative.

Reinforcing the idea of the mythopoeicdiscourse and the historically romanticview of the artist-filmmaker, Mare’s Tailis a legend, consisting of layers of soundsand images that reveal each other over anextended period. It’s a personal vision, anaggregation of experience, memories andmoments overlaid with indecipherableintonations and altered musics. The col-lected footage is extensively manipulat-ed, through refilming, superimposition ordirect chemical treatment. The observermay slip in and out of the film as it runsits course; it does not demand constantattention, though persistence is rewardedby experience after the full projection hasbeen endured.

While studying at the Royal College ofArt, David Larcher made a first film KO(1964-65, with soundtrack composed byPhilip Glass), which was subsequentlydisassembled and small sections incorpo-rated in Mare’s Tail (a recurrent practisethat continues through his later works).Encouraged by contact with true inde-pendent filmmakers like Peter Whiteheadand Conrad Rooks, Larcher set out on todocument his own life in a quasi-autobio-graphical manner. Though financed by wealthy patron AlanPower, Mare’s Tail was, in its technicalfabrication, a self-sufficient project madebefore the Co-op had any significantworkshop equipment. At times, Larcherwas living in a truck, and stories of filmsprocessed in public lavatories in theScottish Highlands do not seem far fromthe truth. His relationship to the Co-ophas always been slightly distanced,though his lifestyle impressed and influ-enced many of the younger, more mar-ginal figures. His next film, Monkey’s Birthday (1975,six hours long), was shot over severalyears’ travels across the world with hisentourage, and this time made full use ofthe Co-op processor to achieve its psy-chedelic effect.

David Larcher, Mare’s Tail, 1969, colour,sound, 143m

“From one flick of the mare’s tail camean unending stream of images out ofwhich was crystalised the milky way.Primitive, picaresque cinema.” (DavidLarcher)

MARE’S TAIL

“Now you see it, now you don’t. Waitingroom cinema from the mountain top tothe car park, an alternative to television.The good, the bad and the indifferent.Some consider it self-indulgent but mehas a duty to itself. Bring what youexpect to find. Not structural but startingin the beginning from theb e g i n n i n g … o r g a n i c … p r i m amateria…impressionable massa con-fusa…out of which some original namingand ordering processes spring…they arenot named, but rather nailed into the cel-luloid. “Please don’t expect me to answerthe question I’m having a hard time notfalling out of this chair” syndrome.”

David Larcher, Arts Council Film-Makers on Tour catalogue, 1980

“Mare’s Tail is an epic flight into innerspace. It is a 2 and 3/4 hour visual accu-mulation in colour, the film-maker’s per-sonal odyssey, which becomes theodyssey of each of us. It is a man’s lifetransposed into a visual realm, a realm ofspirits and demons, which unravel asmystical totalities until reality fragments.Every movement begins a journey. Thereare spots before your eyes, as when youlook at the sun that flames and burns. Welook at distant moving forms and flashthrough them. We drift through suns; apiece of earth phases over the moon. Aface, your face, his face, a face that looksand splits into shapes that form newshapes that we rediscover as tiny mono-lithic monuments. A profile as a full face.The moon again, the flesh, the child, theroom and the waves become part of ahieroglyphic language… Mare’s Tail isan important film because it expresseslife. It follows Paul Klee’s idea that avisually expressive piece adds “morespirit to the seen” and also “makes secretvisions visible”. Like other serious filmsand works of art, it keeps on seeking andseeing, as the film-maker does, as theartist does. It follows the transience oflife and nature, studying things closely,moving into vast space, coming in closeagain. The course it follows is profound-ly real and profoundly personal:Larcher’s trip becomes our trip to experi-ence. It cannot be watched impatiently,with expectation; it is no good lookingfor generalization, condensation, compli-

cation or implication.” Stephen Dwoskin, Film Is: The

International Free Cinema, 1975“A film that is almost a life style. Long

enough and big enough in scope to beable to safely include boredom, blank-screens, bad footage. The kind of filmthat is analogous in a symbolic way tosomething like the ‘stream of life’ – noone would ever criticize looking out ofthe window as being boring sometimes.It’s not a film – more like an event com-posed of the collective ideas and attemptsin film of several years. Like a personaldiary: humorous, wry, sad, ecstatic.Concerned with texture, with seeing andnot seeing, light and darkness, even lifeand death. Monumental not in size alone,but in its breadth of concept. Relaxedenough to be able to let one idea run onfor twenty minutes before switching toanother. The exact opposite of most film-making which attempts to keep the audi-ence ‘interested’ by rapidly changingfrom one form or idea to another, toexclude boredom and participation. A‘super-Le Grice’ in that it has inherentsensitivity and humanity, as well assuperlative and highly inventive tech-nique. It opens up film-making by includ-ing such self-conscious ethics as thosepropounded by Warhol etc. as a naturalpart of the film ethic as a whole.”

Mike Dunford, Cinemantics No. 1,January 1970

“Mare’s Tail is one of the finest achieve-ments in cinema. It is a masterpiece thateveryone in the country should get to see.To write about it is about as difficult asconveying the essence of magic, themeaning of existence, the quality of loveor the shadows of a receding dream. Forthe film is pure myth, a living organism inits own right, a creation whose infinitecomplexity makes criticism of it a shal-low irrelevancy (or at best a crudemythology). The achievement is that thefilm never looks like a mere catalogue ofspecial effects – the vision is integrated,relaxed, spontaneous and too fluid forthere to be any sense of contrivance inthis staggering display of inventivecuriosity. The immense diversity of tech-nique runs hand-in-hand with a sustained

simplicity of treatment. You’re aware of amind that is open and loving towardeverything: and this loving openness ofresponse transfigures every image in thefilm, as it eventually transfigures theviewer too…”

John Du Cane, Time Out, 1972

“A film that is undoubtedly one of themost important produced in this countryand that stands comparison with the bestfrom the United States. It’s as if it werethe first film in the world. When Mare’sTail first appeared it was compared toBrakhage’s Art of Vision, as an examina-tion of ways of seeing. The comparisoncan be taken further: as Brakhage is to theNew American Cinema, it seems to me,so Larcher should be considered to theNew English Cinema… Mare’s Tail is notonly about vision but proposes an episte-mology of film, particularly in its firstreel: revealing basic elements of film inan almost didactic fashion: grain, frame,strip, projector, light. We see a film inperpetual process, being put together,being formed out of these attitudes. Thefirst reel is a ‘lexicon’ to the whole film –to film in general – holding together whatis essentially an open-ended structure towhich pieces could be continually addedand offering us a way to read that film. Itis at once a kind of autobiography and afilm about making that autobiography.”

Simon Field, “The Light of the Eyes”,Art and Artists, December 1972

“Pierre Boulez came to a screening ofMare’s Tail at Robert Street once. SimonHartog said, “Oh, I sent my father to seeMare’s Tail”, his father was an impresariofor people like Joan Sutherland andPierre Boulez, and it turned out thatBoulez came and was sat behind us. I’dbeen living in trucks and I’d just come upand it happened to be the same day. Iwent along and found this old trampcalled Eric – this famous character whowas around in those days, early ’70s –and took him along. We were sitting thereand then I suddenly realised Boulez wasbehind. After half an hour he said, “C’estle perfection,” and walked out withSimon’s father!”

David Larcher, interview with MarkWebber, 2001

Introductory programme notes by Mark Webber, with thanks to Al Rees. Excerpted paragraphs on each film were assem-bled by Travis Miles and Mark Webber.Copyright remains with their original authors.

SHOOT SHOOT SHOOT 5

Annabel Nicholson, Shapes

John Smith, The Girl Chewing Gum

David Larcher, Mare’s Tail

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CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS AND

DEVELOPMENTS 1966-76

A DETAILED GUIDE TO THE PERIOD

Excerpted from a work-in-progress, withparticular bias toward the early formativeyears

1966Bob Cobbing (a concrete poet who hadpreviously organised film societies andother arts clubs in Hendon and Finchley)left teaching in 1965 to work in paper-back department of Better Books shop onNew Compton Street (around the cornerfrom 94 Charing Cross Road) – organisesCinema 65 film club there showing for-eign, experimental, non-commercial andunknown films – Ray Durgnat, PhilipCrick, John Collins in frequent atten-dance at regular Friday night screenings –in ’65 the screenings are meant to pro-voke and encourage; by ’66, it becomesapparent that more coherent organisationis needed as more people become inter-ested in making and distributing films –films usually projected in the shop (sur-rounded by books), and only occasional-ly in the basement (which was used forpoetry, exhibitions and theatre / happen-ings, such as Jeff Nuttall’s People Show)

MARCH 1966 Jonas Mekas posts an open letter to NewYork Film-Makers’ Co-operative mem-bers stating that, through the persistenceof Barbara Rubin, a London Co-op isforming and will be run by Barry Miles,and based at Indica (a bookstore andgallery on Southampton Row) – plannedfilm fundraiser at Albert Hall (followingon from the “Wholly Communion” poet-ry reading, which featured Ginsberg,Ferlinghetti, and Trocchi the previousyear) – talk of establishing London Co-opas base for European distribution

MAY 1966Mekas says in second letter that theLFMC will start in July – plans to spend$2,000 on prints for 3 programmes forAlbert Hall show in June (the show neverhappened) – Co-op committee at thistime: Bob Cobbing, Phillip Crick, JohnCollins, Paul Francis, Simon Hartog, RayDurgnat, Michael O’Casey, Les Philby,Stewart Kington – general ethos is anenthusiasm for filmmaking (in addition toviewing) despite a lack of knowledge orexperience

Harvey Matusow arrives from New York,where he had been involved in fringes ofunderground scene – had previouslyspent time in jail for perjury duringMcCarthy trials – an incorrigible hustler,he got things done but aroused much sus-picion

JUNE 1966Approximately 20-25 people attend 2 Co-op planning meetings – draft code ofpractice drawn up by Miles, Cobbing,Jim Haynes, Paul Francis, M. Ellis, PeterWhitehead and Matusow (who is namedas secretary) using Better Books addressas base

1 JULY 1966Letter from Paul Francis to Mekasannounces Co-op is being set up inde-pendent of Better Books and Indica – byreply receives Western Union cable on11th with message “GOOD START ANDGOOD SPEED WE ARE WITH YOU”signed Brakhage, Breer, Brooks,Emshwiller, Jacobs, Markopoulos,Mekas, Vanderbeek, Brigante, Clarke,Rogosin

12 JULY 1966 Co-op Committee meeting at which a 5page draft constitution is written includ-ing plans for screenings, distribution,newsletter and quarterly magazine (thencalled Reel) – Durgnat, Francis, Hartog,Matusow, Leonard Foreman, R. Hudson,and Jeff Keen write Mekas again explain-ing preference to establish independentbase despite friendly competition of the 2bookstores – Open Screenings start tooutnumber pre-selected programmes atBetter Books

SUMMER 1966David Curtis graduates from the Sladesummer ’66 and travels to New York tosee films – on his return he frequentsBetter Books and helps with film shows –a week of Open Screenings at the LondonFree School is presented as part of theNotting Hill Fayre – Steve Dwoskin, on aFulbright Scholarship to London Collegeof Printing, brings his early films withhim from New York – meeting with JohnLatham leads to screening at the Fayre,seen by Cobbing – Co-op is by nowestablished as a group though not offi-cially formed

SEPTEMBER 1966 Destruction In Art Symposium (DIAS) atvenues throughout London includes

events at Better Books, organised by BobCobbing & Gustav Metzger – screeningsinclude Kurt Kren’s Actionist films andJohn Latham’s Speak – nature of eventleads to significant media and publicattention

Plans to use Jeanetta Cochrane Theatre(set up by Jim Haynes) for late nightindependent screenings – new Co-opdraft constitution includes renamed mag-azine (Cinim) and outlines structure ofthe organisation

13 OCTOBER 1966 London Film-Makers’ Co-operative(LFMC) officially formed at meeting atBetter Books: Matusow as chairman,Cobbing and Francis secretaries – Co-opdraft telegram to Mekas, declaring inten-tion to “shoot shoot shoot” – unlikely thatthe telegram was ever sent, it may justhave been mocked-up by Hartog forreproduction in Cinim and elsewhere

15 OCTOBER 1966 First official Co-op screening forms partof the Roundhouse Rave – launch partyof IT (International Times) newspaperheld at the Roundhouse – includes PinkFloyd, Soft Machine and 6-hour film pro-gramme featuring Balch, Dwoskin, andLatham – IT, the press organ for theBritish cultural underground was pub-lished by Jim Haynes, John Hopkins(Hoppy), Barry Miles and Jack Moore,and edited by Tim McGrath

20 OCTOBER 1966Matusow’s presence secures good atten-dance to the press conference whichannounces the Co-op at their BetterBooks HQ – subsequent article in Townmagazine proclaims Steve Dwoskin,Andrew Meyer, Simon Hartog, BobCobbing, and Matusow “some ofLondon’s most active underground film-makers”

31 OCTOBER – 5 NOVEMBER 1966 “Spontaneous Festival of UndergroundFilms” at Jeannetta Cochrane Theatre – 6day long schedule includes films byDwoskin, Keen, Balch, Matusow, Meyerand London School of Film Techniquestudents as well as significant interna-tional work by Anger, Brakhage, Mekasetc – just about every piece of experi-mental film that was available in London(from Co-op, BFI, Connoisseur,Contemporary Films distribution) isshown – followed by 6 nights of OpenScreenings at Better Books – first issue ofIT includes 4 page supplement on theevent

NOVEMBER 1966 First issue of Cinim is published; editedby Phillip Crick, designed by LawrieMoore, and published by the Co-op – Co-op has about 50 members and distributesfilms by Dwoskin and Meyer – FirstLFMC bulletin distributed to members

26 NOVEMBER 1966Matusow complains to Mekas by letterthat US visitors gravitate to Indica“although Miles has never been to a Co-op meeting” – a later letter from BarbaraRubin to IT staff indicates that NY film-makers reluctant to send films to Londonbecause of Matusow’s involvement

NOVEMBER 1966-JANUARY 1967Co-op holds 11 Open Screenings andmany other programmes at Better Books

CHRISTMAS 1966Hoppy opens UFO club on TottenhamCourt Road and David Curtis begins filmscreenings, which first augment lightshows on Friday nights, in between liveperformances by psychedelic rock groups

JANUARY 1967 LFMC Bulletin Number 2 notes that filmsupply for exhibition is ‘drying up’ – Co-op screenings become repetitive due tothe lack of available films

FEBRUARY 1967 Matusow complains to Mekas that the

Robert Fraser Gallery has prints of exper-imental film and will not loan them forscreenings – desperate to get promisedNew American Cinema films – Co-op useSpontaneous Festival profits to buy 6films from Robert Pike’s Creative FilmSociety including works by Ian Hugo,Kuri, Al Sens, Paul Bartel, Scott Bartlett,Robert Pike – by this time Co-op haveapproximately 8 hours of films, andBritish film-makers slowly begin to startmaking work

Matusow thrown out of Co-op due to sus-picion of motives based on alleged pilfer-ing from Spontaneous Festival receipts –replaced by new executive committee ofCobbing, Dwoskin, Hartog, TrevorPeters, John Collins

29 APRIL 1967“14-Hour Technicolor Dream”, hippyLondon’s gathering of the tribes, atAlexandra Palace – intended as fund rais-er for IT but too many tickets were givenaway for free – live bands inc. PinkFloyd, Crazy World of Arthur Brown,Alexis Korner, The Pretty Things, TheMove, plus happenings (Yoko Ono),films and light shows – BBC TV makethe documentary “Man Alive: What Is AHappening?” at the event

JULY 1967 Second issue of Cinim (edited by PhilipCrick, designed and produced by SteveDwoskin, published by the Co-op)

SUMMER 1967UFO club closes (later to be revitalised atthe Roundhouse) – Jim Haynes and JackHenry Moore lease 182 Drury Lane forthe Arts Lab

AUGUST 1967 Co-op Bulletin No. 5 announces plans forlecture series on various aspects of film-making to encourage production – JohnCollins made executive officer of Co-op,but is later asked to leave for allegedlyembezzling profits from Cinim

18 AUGUST 1967 Negotiated by Curtis, Cobbing and Co-ophold first screening at Drury Lane ArtsLab (before its official opening)

SEPTEMBER 1967 Tony Godwin sells Better Books toCollins Publishers who halt all culturalactivities – Cobbing given one month’snotice to leave – Film collection movestemporarily to Dwoskin’s flat in NottingHill – office to Cobbing’s flat, thenHartog’s, then Curtis & Biddy Peppin’s

25 SEPTEMBER 1967 Arts Lab opens and includes theatre, cin-ema, coffee shop, gallery – Haynes asksCurtis to run cinema in basement – openswith disastrous week long run of Echoesof Silence by Peter Emanuel Goldman –Open Screenings held there everyTuesday

26 SEPTEMBER 1967 Malcolm Le Grice present to see RayDurgnat introduce films by Kurt Kren atICA – Curtis initiates plans for filmworkshop at Arts Lab – 2 Co-op pro-grammes at Arts Lab in October, plusPeter Kubelka in person at ICA (arrangedby Dwoskin and Cobbing) before screen-ings cease following closure of BetterBooks on 2 October – Co-op screeningsat ICA demonstrate its independencefrom the Arts Lab and reluctance to moveorganisation there – beginning of splitbetween ex-Better Books and Arts Labgroup’s different views on how the Co-opshould develop – 41 films in Co-op dis-tribution library at this point

AUTUMN 1967Co-op films shown at Liverpool BluecoatArts Forum festival, who also awardmoney for the completion of films bySteve Dwoskin, Simon Hartog, Jeff Keen,David Larcher, John Latham and RolandLewis – Co-op encourages a shift to film-making rather than film watching –Anthony ‘Scotty’ Scott begins to assem-ble The Longest Most Meaningless Moviein the World, an endless film entirely con-structed by the progressive inclusion offootage found around Soho productionhouses

OCTOBER 1967 Opposition to Jonas Mekas who proposesthat he, Stan Brakhage, Ken Kelman, P.Adams Sitney (a group that would laterform Anthology Film Archives’ contro-versial “Essential Cinema” committee)will select New American Cinema filmsfor European distribution – Jonas plans toarrive with films in September ’67 (hedidn’t) – Ray Durgnat briefly Co-opchairman, Ron Geesin replaces PaulFrancis as joint secretary with BobCobbing

Derek Hill starts New Cinema Club andshows films initially at Mermaid Theatreand ICA – Vaughan-Rogosin Films startto buy American experimental work forUK distribution, including Anger,Brakhage, Kuchar and Warhol

NOVEMBER 1967 Bob Cobbing and John Collins announceplans for new bookshop and arts centrecalled “Boooooks” at 80 Long Acre – toinclude a cinema plus sound facilities andediting equipment (they call it an“Eventure Room”) – and write toAmerican Cinema filmmakers asking forprints

22 NOVEMBER 1967List of films in distribution includes 60titles, few of which are home-grown

DECEMBER 1967 Knokke-le-Zoute “Exprmntl 4” festivaland competition in Belgium proves awatershed, whose influence leads to theLFMC establishing itself on an interna-tional level – 20 British films submitted,though only 5 shown in competition –Steve Dwoskin wins the Solvay Prize,and his films Chinese Checkers andSoliloquy are chosen by P. Adams Sitneyfor his New American Cinema tour –Wavelength (Michael Snow) wins firstprize as Sitney begins to consider his piv-otal definition of ‘Structural Film’ –David Curtis regards the festival as a sig-nificant moment for London film-makers,though Dwoskin and Cobbing play itdown, crystallising differences betweenDwoskin’s subjective view and Curtis’(and other’s) increasing attention toprocess

1968 Following Knokke, Curtis starts to screen

more ‘serious’ work at Arts Lab – during1968 Stan Vanderbeek, GregoryMarkopolous (Gammelion), WarrenSonbert and Marguerite Paris (represent-ing Millennium Film Workshop andshowing Charles Levine) all presentshows, though none deposit films for Co-op distribution.

JANUARY 1968 John Collins presents screening at psy-chedelic club Middle Earth which wasraided by police – Collins impulsivelymoves event to basement of planned“Boooooks” store which was also raidedafter complaints from residents – leads tothe loss of lease for the new shop andCollins again parts company withCobbing and the Co-op

30 JANUARY – 27 FEBRUARY 1968 Malcolm Le Grice, a painter who hadgraduated from the Slade in 1963, takesCurtis to the “Young Contemporaries1968” show at the Royal InstituteGalleries which includes Photo Film(Based on Muybridge) by FredDrummond, Horizon by Lutz Becher andwork by other St. Martins students of LeGrice

LATE FEBRUARY 1968 Le Grice shows Castle One (The LightBulb Film) at Arts Lab under pseudonym“Minima Maas” and becomes directlyinvolved with Co-op activities – Curtisand Le Grice (with Drew Elliot) draw upplans for processing/printing equipmentto be housed at Arts Lab

17 MARCH 1968“Battle of Grosvenor Square” anti-Vietnam War demonstration is document-ed by a group of Co-op filmmakersincluding Dwoskin, Hartog and MichaelNyman – some footage sold to BBC TVnews

APRIL 1968 Curtis and Hartog arrange 12 city univer-sity tour for P. Adams Sitney’s massive“Travelling Avant-Garde FilmExposition” that premieres at the NFT22-28 April – tour has an huge effect onburgeoning critics and film-makersaround the country and is first majoropportunity to see this work in England –Curtis again tries to secure NAC tourprints for Coop – to coincide with EssexUniversity screenings, Simon Field andPeter Sainsbury publish only issue ofPlatinum

17-18 MAY 1968 “Parallel Cinema” meeting at ICA to dis-cuss the possibility of an independent dis-tribution collective – over 100 peoplepresent including Marc Karlin (CinemaAction, later Berwick St Collective),Peter Block (24 Frames Distribution),Derek Hill (New Cinema Club), RonOrders and Tony Wickert (Angry Arts,later Liberation Films), John McWilliam(Electric Cinema) and TattooistsInternational (Dick Fontaine et al) –meeting leads to a Parallel Cinema infor-mation office being established at ICA –committee (led by Philip Drummond)forms with intention to establish a circuitof 50 ‘electric’ cinemas, distribute pack-ages of short films, and provide a centralbooking agency for independent 16mmfilms – Godard’s Le Gai Savoir is chosenas a test film toward establishing the cir-cuit – as a direct development, PeterSainsbury and Nick Hart-Williams estab-lish The Other Cinema in 1970, whichbecomes the most active and successfulof the independent distributors, repre-senting Godard, Herzog, Straub plusDwoskin and many political and thirdworld filmmakers

SPRING 1968 Le Grice and Hartog complete new draftconstitution for Co-op which includesprovisions for liberal division of labour,and shared equipment and facilities –agree to appoint a paid secretary for moreefficient management to generate revenuefor film production

JULY 1968Peter Gidal (having arrived from NewYork the previous month) attends screen-ing at Arts Lab and brings along two ofhis own films – Room (Double Take)scheduled to be shown in 2 week’s time,when Curtis, Hartog, Le Grice, Dwoskin,Fred Drummond see and are impressedwith Gidal’s work – 8mm films byGoldsmith’s sculpture student MikeDunford are also well received – manynew film-makers begin to emerge withoutany substantial knowledge of previousavant-gardes – aesthetic and conceptualtrends that later become specific to theLFMC start to surface

SUMMER 1968 After his tour ends, Sitney returns to NYwith all films from the NAC Expositiontour –– David Curtis meets Carla Liss,American artist and friend of Mekas whowill become central to Co-op organisa-tional structure – First LFMC distributioncatalogue published (loose metal binding,assembled by Liss and Curtis, cover byDwoskin) – list approximately 100 filmsplus addendum of experimental films dis-tributed by Vaughan-Rogosin – no doubtbecause of present state of flux, no Co-opaddress or personnel names are printed –Sitney had advocated integration of the 2active groups and there are soon propos-als towards uniting Arts Lab and Co-opfactions: Arts Lab group: Curtis, LeGrice, Bennett Yahya, Cordley Coit / Co-op group: Dwoskin, Hartog, Cobbing,Collins

AUGUST 1968Scotty’s Longest Most MeaninglessMovie in the World is over 5hrs of 35mmmaterial by the time it is premiered atArts Lab … 10 hours long by 1970 …could still be growing for all we know

SEPTEMBER 1968 Curtis writes the report “Subsidies toIndependent Filmmakers: The present sit-uation and how it might be improved”,which calls for new funding structures –Curtis & Le Grice are in favour of work-ing with the BFI to secure funding, whileDwoskin and Hartog strongly resist theidea

11 SEPTEMBER 1968 First LFMC screening of 1968 at the ArtsLab– Mike Dunford and Fred Drummondshow new work

19 SEPTEMBER 1968 Michael Snow and Joyce Wieland at theICA, a visit that helps to perpetuate ageneral shift on part of LFMC practition-ers toward formalist work, although

many of these film-makers had beenclearly moving in this direction beforesimilar North American work had arrivedin London

12-17 NOVEMBER 1968 Curtis and Dwoskin travel to the six-day“Europ” (European Co-op) meeting at theUndependent Film Centre in Munich –film-makers Birgit and Wilhelm Heininvite over 40 colleagues to the meeting,which is inconclusive, only leading to thepublication of Supervisuell magazine(edited by Klaus Schoener) – plans for aEuropean co-op had evolved from discus-sions initiated by P. Adams Sitney andShirley Clarke at Knokke – Curtis seesRohfilm (W+B Hein) and recognises aes-thetic similarities with Le Grice, whoseTalla is also screened – at this timeGermany has 3 regional co-ops, as wellas P.A.P. (Progressive Art Productionsdistribution and print sales) – Austrian,Dutch and Italian co-ops also present atmeeting

NOVEMBER 1968Carla Liss returns to New York and nego-tiates with Mekas – agreement to send theNAC prints from the previous Europeantour to London on condition that Liss willmanage them – Bob Cobbing demands an“Extraordinary General Meeting” (someresentment at the hiring of an American)

Malcolm Le Grice mounts his exhibition“Location? Duration?” in the Arts Labgallery – large paintings, constructions,drawings and films – his screenings on 1& 2 November include recent workscompleted on new printing / processingequipment which hint at Co-op’s materi-alist direction for next few years

18 NOVEMBER 1968 David Curtis and 10 others resign fromArts Lab following disagreements withJack Moore over the future direction ofthe organisation – Sandy Daley takesover management of cinema – Arts Lab isforced to close by bad debts six monthslater

26 NOVEMBER 1968At the Co-op meeting, Bob Cobbing,Philip Crick and John Latham resign –Cobbing replaced as treasurer by LeGrice – by late ’69 Dwoskin and Hartoghave also left, severing ties with earlyBetter Books community

Following the Arts Lab walk-out, Co-opagain has no permanent base – film col-lection is housed at Covent Garden flat ofDavid Curtis and Biddy Peppin, printing/ processing equipment in Malcolm LeGrice’s garage in Harrow, mail goes viaaddress of Carla Liss and NicholasAlbery

DECEMBER 1968Co-op holds several fundraising screen-ings in late ’68 – early ’69 includingthose at All Saints Hall in LadbrokeGrove and Living Arts Workshop, Surrey

EARLY 1969 Carolee Schneemann arrives in London(stays until 1973, at one point living in atent outside Co-op) – prints Plumb Lineat Co-op – Schneemann is one of severalAmericans who wind up in London toavoid Vietnam War, and who will gradu-ate toward the Co-op inc. BarbaraSchwartz and Lynne Tilman

David Curtis fails to persuade the Sladeto host Co-op screenings, and is refusedan application to the Arts Council toassist with screenings and lectures inEngland and Europe – negotiations withCamden Council for their support of theNew Arts Lab – most Co-op screeningsduring this time are at the ElectricCinema on Portobello Road, organisedby Liss

25-26 JANUARY 1969Conference of Arts Labs organised byPhillippa Jeffrey and the Cambridge ArtsLab – attended by representatives fromDrury Lane Arts Lab, LFMC, OxfordFilm-Makers’ Co-op, Artists’ InformationRegister, Time Out, Release, CyberneticTheatre, Portable Theatre, EdinburghCombination and the Arts Council –organisations share information and dis-cuss collaboration – Tony Rayns andRoger Hammond meet with Co-op forfirst time

MAY 1969 Last issue of Cinim (edited by SimonHartog, produced by Steve Dwoskin,published by the Coop)

Camden Council offers building at 1Robert Street for temporary use, rent-free– IRAT (Institute for Research in Art &Technology) is formed as an umbrellaorganisation to administrate differentgroups that will occupy the space – JoeTilson and J.G. Ballard on advisory board– LFMC members spend the summer ren-ovating the space, which include manydifferent artistic groups and encouragecross-disciplinary work – cinema (DavidCurtis), LFMC (Carla Liss & MalcolmLe Grice), video (TVX / John Hopkins &Til Roemer), theatre (Roland Miller, laterVictoria Miller & Martin Russell) mime(Will Spoor), music (Hugh Davies), pho-tography (Ian Robertson), gallery (BiddyPeppin & Pamela Zoline, later JudithClute), printing (John Collins) electronics(David Jeffrey) metal and plastics(Martin Shann, later Bernard Rhodes)and cybernetics (John & Dianne Lifton) –renovations to the building are completedby September

Dwoskin and Hartog leave the Co-oporganisation – Dwoskin will later removehis LFMC-distributed films to The OtherCinema

25 AUGUST – 13 SEPTEMBER 1969 Edinburgh Film Festival invites Co-op topresent an extended series programmes –includes world premiere of DavidLarcher’s Mare’s Tail, as well as newwork by Le Grice, Drummond, Dunford,Gidal and others – programmes also fea-ture many NAC films, Newsreels and theItalian Co-op – expanded performancesby Glasgow’s Exit Group, Le Grice, FredDrummond and Scotty’s Swiz Events

20 SEPTEMBER 1969Gimpel Fils Gallery begins a short livedattempt to represent filmmakers and sellprints as art editions, in association withPAP and Edition Claude Givaudan –Peter Gidal is only LFMC filmmaker toparticipate – screening of selected worksat ICA also features films by RobertBeavers, Stan Brakhage, Wilhelm &Birgit Hein, Kurt Kren, Gregory

Markopoulos and Martial Raysse

4 OCTOBER 1969 New Arts Lab aka Institute for Researchinto Art & Technology (IRAT) opens –David Curtis runs the cinema, whileMalcolm Le Grice and Carla Liss organ-ise the Co-op – following an initial con-tact through Carolee Schneemann, LeGrice persuades American financierVictor Herbert to donate £3,000 towardsCo-op equipment and purchases Debriestep printer and Houston-Fewlessneg/reversal processor – installed bycrane, the equipment damages the adjoin-ing pub forcing Le Grice and Drummondto fix the brickwork – during IRAT peri-od LFMC filmmakers make many signif-icant works

Annabel Nicolson moves to London,starts to visit Co-op and becomesinvolved in IRAT Gallery – had alreadymade first film Abstract No. 1 underinfluence of Len Lye / Norman McLarenand later significantly influences trend toexpanded and participatory film pieces

NOVEMBER 1969‘RAT Cinema’ opens with several screenings ofMare’s Tail (which is distributed by OtherCinema, not the Co-op) – Open Screeningsheld every Tuesday – projection at IRAT donemostly by Fred Drummond, Al Deval, GrahamEwens and Mike Leggett – access to own the-atre space provides filmmakers with more free-dom to experiment with projection and expand-ed cinema – English Film-Makers’ series show-cases new films coming out of the workshop –Peter Weibel & Valie Export, Wilhelm & BirgitHein, Warren Sonbert and other internationalfilmmakers present shows during this period

Curtis travels to USA for 2 weeks – goes toNew York, San Francisco and Los Angeles togather material for his book ExperimentalCinema, which will be written over next 18months

SHOOT SHOOT SHOOT6

LONDON FILMMAKERSCOOPERATIVE

13A PRINCE OF WALES CRESCENTLONDON NW1 TEL. 267-4907

PRESS RELEASE

The London Filmmakers Cooperativewill inaugurate its cinema which wasbuilt by Coop filmmakers on 10 ofSeptember at 4:00p.m. with a pressshowing of new films from the FilmCoop library at its new premises: 13aPrince of Wales Crescent. Many of thefilms to be shown will be having theirfirst public screening in England. A num-ber of the films have been processed andprinted by the filmmakers on CoopWorkshop equipment.

The Filmmakers’ Coop is a non-profitorganization formed to help independentfilmmakers in production and distribu-tion of their films. It is organized and runcooperatively by the filmmakers them-selves. The Coop has the largest non-commercial library of English, Americanand European experimental, ‘avantgarde’ or underground films in Europeand England. The Coop Workshop is aplace where independent filmmakers canexperiment freely while avoiding exhor-bitant production costs. The workshophas facilities for processing, printing andediting 16mm and 8mm film.

Many of the films screened at the ‘pressshow’ will be shown at the Coop Cinemaduring the course of the year. The filmswill also be screened in London (andother parts of England) at such places asthe New Cinema Club, and at art schools,clubs and film s ocieties.

Underground or independently madefilms rarely get much press coverage inEngland, even by the ‘underground’press, so that all too often really fine,important, interesting, original or outra-geous films get a tiny audience that hard-ly pays for the cost of the screening. Thisis partly due to the fact that people havenever heard of the film or filmmakerbefore. We hope this showing will gener-ate some coverage of these films. Itwould be especially good if somethingcould be written about the films prior totheir public showings. We will distributea 1971-72 Coop Cinema program and upo n request can let you know where andwhen Coop films will be shown else-where.

Th e new Coop Catalogu e is also avail-able upon request.

LONDON FILM-MAKERS CO-OP

94 CHARING CROSS ROAD LONDONW C 2

PRESS CONFERENCE

date: thursday 20th october 1966time: 11 a mplace: better books new compton street shop(adjoining 94 charing X rd)

announcing:the foundation of the london film-makers co-operative new member of the internationalassociation of film co-operatives

the movement:avant-garde low budget non-commercialfilms are today being made here in london ingreater numbers than most people realise sim-ilar groups of young film-makers are active inboth the united states and countries throughouteurope seeking to free and therefore widenthis art-form from the ties of industry and highfinance which have bound it so far now withthe formation of the london film-makers co-opan important link in the world-wide chain ofnon-commercial ‘underground’ film-making isestablished at the press conference plans willbe outlined for a major london festival of‘underground’ films from around the worldlondon film-makers co-operative magazineCINIM no 1 will appear in a fortnight

born on october 13th london film-makers co-operative has already held one highly success-ful all-night viewing of ‘underground’ films tocapacity audience

harvey matusow: chairmanpaul francis bob cobbing: joint secretaries

FILM CO-OP WORKSHOPNEW ARTS LAB ETC.

DEAR ALL, PLEASE EXCUSE THE LAST WET

COMMUNICATION FROM HERE ANDDIG OUT ALL THE ENTHUSIASM YOUONCE HAD( HOPING IT HASNT BEENTOTALLY DISIPITATED BY RECENTNON-HAPPENINGS)

WE NEED YOU YOURMEMBERSHIP(YES AND THE BREAD YOU HAVNT PAIDYET) YOUR ACTIVITY YOUR DISCU-SIONS DICISIONS THOUGHTS QUES-TIONS

YOUR LEARNING AND YOURTEACHING YOUR PRESENCE

I HAVE YOUR NAME BECAUSE YOUWERE ONCE INTERESTED IN THE FILMCO-OP. IF YOUR NO LONGER INTEREST-ED SILENCE ( BYE-BYE) IF YOU ARESTILL INTERESTED GET IN TOUCHWITH ME( GARETH COOK) HELP MEMAKE THE WORKSHOP YOUR WORK-SHOP THATS WHY IM HERE

ACTUALITY,S TESTS ARE BEINGRUN ON BOTH THE PRINTER AND THEPROCESSOR TO DETERMINE THE BESTEXPOSURE/DEV.SPEED FOR PRINTMATERIAL

WE NEED ACURATELY EXPOSEDNON VITAL CAMERA STOCK TO RUNSIMILAR TESTS ON TO DETERMINEBEST DEV.SPEED FOR ORIGINAL CAM-ERA WORK I ANTICIPATE THIS WILL BECOMPLETED FIRST IT WOULD DEPENDWHO WANTED WHAT FIRST AND WHOCAME AND DID IT

SO FAR YOU ARE JUST NAMES ON ALIST TO ME ( BAR4OR5) I AM “IN RESI-DENCE” –

TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAYFRIDAY 12.30-6.00&&

ALSO EITHER SATURDAY OR SUN-DAY 12.30-6.00 GIVE ME A RING ANDSAY WHEN

YOULL BE HERE AND ILL ARRANGETO BE HERE OUTSIDE THOSE TIMES

IF YOU HAVE CAMERA STOCK TODEVELOP BRING IT INIF YOU HAVE DEVELOPED STOCK TOPRINT BRING IT IN

BUT BRING YOURSELF IDEARSEFFORTS

LOVE GARETH(HOME) 731-0931IRAT RECEP.387-2605

IF THEY CANT/WONT FIND MELEAVE A MESSAGE AND ’PHONE NO.

FURTHER READING

A BRIEF BIBLIOGRAPHY

BOOKS AND MANUSCRIPTSBerke, Joseph (editor) Counter Culture: TheCreation of an Alternative Society (PeterOwen, 1969)Curtis, David (editor) A Directory of BritishFilm & Video Artists (Arts Council/Universityof Luton Press, 1995)Curtis, David Experimental Cinema: A Fifty-Year Evolution (Studio Vista, 1971)Dickinson, Margaret (editor) Rogue Reels:Oppositional Film in Britain, 1945-90 (BFI,1999)Durgnat, Raymond Sexual Alienation in theCinema (Studio Vista, 1972)Dusinberre, Peter du Kay (Deke) EnglishAvant-Garde Cinema (unpublished thesis,1977)Dwoskin, Stephen Film Is… The InternationalFree Cinema (Peter Owen, 1975)Gidal, Peter (editor) Structural Film Anthology(BFI, 1976)Gidal, Peter Materialist Film (Routledge,1989)Hein, Birgit Film Im Underground (UllsteinVerlag, 1971)Le Grice, Malcolm Abstract Film and Beyond(Studio Vista, 1977)Le Grice, Malcolm Experimental Cinema inthe Digital Age (BFI, 2001)MacDonald, Scott A Critical Cinema 2(University of California Press, 1992)MacDonald, Scott A Critical Cinema 3(University of California Press, 1998)Mekas, Jonas New American Cinema Groupand Film-Makers’ Cooperative(s): The EarlyYears (Anthology Film Archives, 1999)Mudie, Peter “London Film-Makers’ Co-oper-ative” (unpublished work-in-progress)O’Pray, Michael (editor) The British Avant-Garde Film 1926 to 1995: An Anthology ofWritings (Arts Council/University of LutonPress, 1996Rees, A.L. A History of Experimental Film andVideo (BFI, 1999)Walker, John A. John Latham: The IncidentalPerson, His Art and Ideas (MiddlesexUniversity Press, 1995)

CATALOGUES AND EXHIBITION PROGRAMMES

First International Underground Film Festival(NFT, 1970)A Survey of the Avant-Garde in Britain(Gallery House, 1972)Second International Avant-Garde FilmFestival (NFT/ICA, 1973)First Festival of Independent British Cinema(ICW/Arnolfini, 1975)Festival of Expanded Cinema (ICA, 1976)Arte Inglese Oggi: 1960-76 (British Council,Milan, 1976)Derby Independent Film Awards (DerbyPlayhouse, 1976)Perspectives on British Avant-Garde Film(Hayward Gallery, 1977)A Perspective on English Avant-Garde Film(Arts Council/British Council, 1978)New British Avant-Garde Films (EdinburghFilm Festival, 1978)Film As Film: Formal Experimentation inFilm, 1910-1975 (Hayward Gallery, 1979)Film London (NFT/LFMC, 1979)Unpacking 7 Films (Arts Council, 1980)The Other Side: European Avant-GardeCinema 1960-1980 (American Federation ofArts, 1983)Light Years: A Twenty Year Celebration(LFMC, 1986)Live In Your Head (Whitechapel, 2000)Film-Makers On Tour (Arts Council, 1977,1980)Independent Cinema One: Directory ofIndependent British Cinema (1978)National Film Theatre calendars and pro-gramme notes (1960-1980)Progressive Art Productions catalogue (1969)Light Cone distribution catalogue (1987)London Film-Makers’ Co-operative distribu-tion catalogue (1968, 1971, 1972, 1974, 1978,1993)

PERIODICALSCinim, Platinum, Afterimage, IndependentCinema, Cinemantics, Cinema Rising,Readings, Screen, Undercut, Filmwaves, Filmsand Filming, Sight and Sound, Art & Artists,Studio International, Time Out, InternationalTimes

MISSING IN ACTION

ANTHONY ‘SCOTTY’ SCOTTOver the lengthy period of research, onlya few films or filmmakers have managedto escape our investigations. One personthat has remained elusive to all lines ofenquiry was Anthony ‘Scotty’ Scott,maker of The Longest, Most MeaninglessMovie in the World, (which is also ‘miss-ing’, despite the fact that it must be atleast several weeks long by now). If any-one knows where Scotty might be, or ifhe should come to light during the courseof this exhibition, please point him in ourdirection!

email [email protected]

Page 7: Shoot Shoot Shoot Broadsheet Newspaper (2002)

1970Le Grice starts to make colour-field filmson Coop workshop equipment, beginningwith Love Story – his first expanded per-formance with this material is HorrorFilm 1 (1971)

Rodney Wilson becomes Film Officer atArts Council and implements funding forartists’ films

JANUARY 1970 At IRAT, 5 days of open live-action andmulti-screen events are held, mostly ledby Annabel Nicolson, and include LeGrice, Mike Dunford and Sally Potter –this inaugurates a period of intense devel-opment of expanded work by the coreLFMC group, quite unique from otherinternational examples

Issue one of Cinemantics (published byJohn Mathews)

JANUARY-FEBRUARY 1970Larry Kardish (from New York Museumof Modern Art) tours Britain for 2 weekswith 3 1/2 hours of films from US andCanada

APRIL 1970J.G. Ballard exhibits crashed cars in theIRAT gallery

MAY 19703 week season of late night undergroundfilms at Roundhouse includes premiere ofJohn Chamberlain’s 7-screen film WidePoint, produced by Alan Power (who alsofunded films by Dwoskin and Larcher)

JUNE 1970Mike Leggett and Ian Breakwell presentexpanded shows at IRAT inc. Sheet andUnword

SUMMER 1970 BFI tries to negotiate a take-over of Co-op distribution

SEPTEMBER 1970 Curtis, Field and Albie Thoms organise“1st International Underground FilmFestival”, a week of screenings atNational Film Theatre which attracts alarge number of international filmmakersinc. Kurt Kren, Peter Kubelka, PaulSharits, Jonas Mekas, Wener Nekes,Tonino de Bernardi – programmes runfrom 10:30am to past midnight –exhausting and liberal survey of the inter-national scene, approx 330 films in 100hours – Oh Sensibility performance byOtto Muehl was banned following publicoutcry because of plans to slaughter achicken on the NFT stage – expanded

events by Weibel & Export, Schneemannand Jeff Keen (whose show was invadedby ‘Crazy Otto’ because it wasn’tprovocative enough) – Afterimage No. 2published by Simon Field and PeterSainsbury to coincide with festival,devoted to articles on avant-garde film

DECEMBER 1970 Co-op decides to move out of RobertStreet and find its own location, in antic-ipation of the impending IRAT closure

JANUARY 1971 Camden Council offers the abandonedDairy at 13a Prince of Wales Crescent(building is partly occupied by Spacesubsidised artists’ studios) – Co-op isgiven the entire first floor for a cinema,workshop and distribution facilities, itsfirst dedicated base in its 4-year history –many new members becoming involvedwith Co-op at this time are Le Grice’sformer St. Martin’s students – PaulBotham, David Crosswaite, John DuCane, Gill Eatherley, Roger Hammond,Stuart Pound and William Raban joinover the next year – considerable renova-tions needed at the Dairy take 9 months,shared labour adds to developing collec-tive ideology

“American Underground Film Festival”at NFT organised by Ken Wlashin andJames Lithgow – 7 programmes of most-ly narrative experimental film

26 MARCH 1971 IRAT closed as the building is finallyreclaimed by Camden Council – Curtiswithdraws from Co-op organisation

APRIL-AUGUST 1971Curtis and Field present 3 seasons titled“Developments of the New Cinema” atNFT – 22 screenings of mostly interna-tional work includes Dwoskin / Gidalprogramme and special evening of 2shows devoted to “Double ProjectionFilms from English Filmmakers", whichwere printed and processed at the Co-op

MAY 1971“British Cinema 4: Independent MovieMakers” at NFT includes a programme offilms by Gidal and Mare’s Tail byLarcher

JUNE 1971 BFI offer Curtis £75 for 3 weeks work to

document underground cinema activity inBritain and later withdraw offer before heis able to decline – BFI appoints MamounHassan as Production DepartmentSupervisor (following Bruce Beresford’sresignation), which marks a shift to fund-ing longer (feature) film production

AUGUST 1971Second LFMC distribution catalogue(A5, black with pink lettering) featuresaround 400 films, by over 160 filmmak-ers – distribution is still being managedby Carla Liss and Barbara Schwartz dur-ing the transition period

SEPTEMBER 1971Official opening of the Co-op at the Dairy– Peter Gidal (completing his postgradu-ate degree at the Royal College of Art)becomes responsible Dairy cinema pro-grammes with support of RogerHammond – David Crosswaite is mainprojectionist – discussion becomes anincreasingly important part of screenings(which may have led to a greater empha-sis on literary discourse) – under Gidal,the cinema holds weekly screenings andalmost half of the slots are devoted toEnglish-made films – through 1971-72,there is an increasing emphasis on newLFMC work – Co-op survives this periodwithout any funding, all work is done byvolunteers and cinema / distributionincome covers overheads – no heatingand no seating, audience sits on old mat-tresses on cinema floor

Carla Liss leaves, thereby severing thelast tie to the initial Co-op group and toJonas Mekas and New York – Gidalimmediately insists that 50% of all futuregroup bookings from the LFMC must beEnglish films, a policy that leads to agreater international presence for Co-opworks – prior to this, majority ofEuropean and domestic bookings hadconsisted of New American Cinema films– Lynne Tilman manages distribution fora short time

New Co-op committee consists ofMalcolm Le Grice (chairman, workshoporganiser), Peter Gidal (treasurer, cinemaorganiser), Mike Dunford (secretary)

OCTOBER 1971Opening of Co-op workshop at the Dairy,which is run by Le Grice and his formerstudents – first film produced there isMike Leggett’s Shepherd’s Bush – duringthis period widespread use of cheapGerman Orwo stock (much of it stolenfrom the BBC) accounts for mid-greycast on many of the films

1972John Du Cane and Peter Gidal write reg-ularly for Time Out over next 3 years –their promotion of Co-op and relatedscreenings at the NFT increase atten-dance and awareness of activities

Gabrielle Stubbs and Annabel Nicolsonmanage distribution from 1972-74 –institutional rentals increase as avant-garde film stops being ‘underground’ andbecomes more accepted as an art form

21 JANUARY 1972Time Out publishes a long article on theCo-op written by Irving Washington,comprising a history of the organisationand description of the current situation

MAY-JUNE 1972Hamburg Filmschau includes 2 pro-grammes of LFMC work

2 JUNE 1972 & 7 JULY 1972“English Independent Cinema” at NFT, 4programmes organised by Gidal includeswork by 17 filmmakers, inc. Crosswaite,Dwoskin, Hammond, Schwartz andSchneemann, with two screen films byBotham, Drummond, Raban & Welsby

15 JULY 1972River Yar (Raban and Welsby) shown atCo-op – a group of new and youngerfilm-makers begin to work with andthrough the LFMC including DavidParsons, Chris Welsby (Chelsea Schoolof Art students) and Tim Bruce, SteveFarrer, Ian Kerr, Lis Rhodes, John Smith(North East London Polytechnic studentsof Guy Sherwin)

27 AUGUST 1972Anthony McCall presents Death WatchBeetle, a fire event at North WealdAirfield

LATE 1972Supplement to LFMC distribution cata-logue No. 2 is published (A5, blackcover, silver lettering) – lists approx 170additional films that have been acquiredover past year, majority having been pro-duced by British filmmakers

2-15 OCTOBER 1972“Survey of the Avant-Garde in Britain”curated by Rosetta Brooks at GalleryHouse, 50 Princes Gate – third part of theexhibiton features film, video, installa-tion and performance – work by manyCo-op filmmakers inc. Du Cane,Dwoskin, Gidal, Leggett, McCall, Rabanand others but not Crosswaite, Hammondand Le Grice – Gallery House is a tem-porary alternative exhibition space man-aged by Rosetta Brooks and Sigi Kraussbetween Spring 1972 and Summer 1973

NOVEMBER 1972Annabel Nicolson travels to New York,Buffalo, Toronto, Vancouver andMontreal with several recent works byCo-op members – her memoir of the tripappears as “Canadian Fragments” in Art& Artists, April 1973

DECEMBER 1972 Special “Artists’ Films” issue of Art &Artists demonstrates increasing attentionto film from the fine arts sector – cover isHorror Film 2 by Le Grice – containsarticles by or about, David Dye, SimonField, Peter Gidal, Malcolm Le Grice andAnnabel Nicolson

6 DECEMBER 1972 Inspired by Art & Artists feature, WilliamRaban sends an open letter to Britishinstitutions and arts centres to attractbookings, which leads to two more eventsat Gallery House and a Filmaktion weekat Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (June’73) – thus begins a period which sees theCo-op reaching out beyond their ownfacility

21-30 DECEMBER 1972“A Small Festival of Events and Films” atGallery House including expanded workfrom Le Grice, McCall and Schneemann

DECEMBER 1972Le Grice begins to regularly contributefilm column “Vision” to StudioInternational (which continues until1977)

1973Peter Gidal commences teaching at theRoyal College of Arts – Anne Rees-Moggestablishes a film course at ChelseaSchool of Art

Camden ’73 Festival includes “Festivalof British Films – London Film-Makers’Co-op Mixed Show” at The Place

EARLY 1973 Le Grice invited to join the BFIProduction Board (FIPB) to advise onfunding – Le Grice and Colin Young pre-pare a report on state of independentfilmmaking in Britain – Screen invite LeGrice to commission and edit articles onexperimental film for a future issue, butall are later rejected as they abandonedthe planned special issue

FEBRUARY 1973 David Curtis joins the Arts Council Film& Video sub-committee (later appointedAssistant Film Officer in 1977)

16-18 MARCH 1973 3 days of Filmaktion events at GalleryHouse (core group plus DavidCrosswaite) inc. first performances ofMatrix & Gross Fog (Le Grice), ChairInstallation (Eatherley) and 2’45” &Diagonal (Raban) – Filmaktion formedas loose collective primarily consisting ofEatherley, Le Grice, Nicolson and Rabanwho develop expanded work for groupshows

11 MAY 19732 programmes of Co-op films shown atNFT, includes Botham, Crosswaite,Drummond, Du Cane, Hammond,Nicolson, Potter and Raban

5-7 JUNE 19733 programmes at the Tate Gallery underthe title “Film as Structure” organised byMick Hartney – 1st screening inc.Frampton, Kubelka, Sharits, Snow, other2 nights are one-man shows presented byGidal and Le Grice

20-27 JUNE 1973Walker Art Gallery “Filmaktion” showsorganised by William Raban and AntheaHinds include Botham, Crosswaite,Dunford, Eatherley, Hammond, Le Grice,Nicolson, Pound and Raban – a week ofscreenings, expanded cinema and chil-dren’s workshops – Raban shoots a time-lapse film of the event

JULY 1973 The Arts Council’s “Committee ofEnquiry into Films” (aka TheAttenborough Report), begun in 1971, isfinally published – leads to establishingthe Art Film Division at the Arts Counciland causes disruption at BFI – MamounHassan resigns, replaced by PeterSainsbury, who initiates a shift to fundingof experimental film – Arts CouncilArtists’ Film and Video Sub-Committeeprovides the main source of funding forCo-op filmmakers’ who seek productiongrants during the mid 1970s

3-16 SEPTEMBER 1973“Second Festival of Independent Avant-Garde Film” organised by Simon Fieldand David Curtis at NFT (films) and ICA(expanded cinema) – Kurt Kren, MichaelSnow, Joyce Wieland, Jonas Mekas, KenJacobs, Barry Gerson, Taka Iimura, PeterKubelka, Valie Export, Peter Weibel andothers attend from abroad – 105 filmmak-ers represented in programmes that runfrom morning to early morning –Filmaktion group present their last 4shows as part of the ICA programme –Piero Heliczer runs a week long fringefestival in the Co-op cinema – AustrianTV station ORF make a documentary ofthe festival

OCTOBER 1973Tony Rayns’ long review of the 2ndAvant-Garde Festival in Sight & Soundprompts Le Grice to write a letter underthen pseudonym Mary Lou Grace, ironi-cally praising the magazine for finallygetting around to acknowledging ‘real’film

John Du Cane publishes only issue ofLight One, dedicated to the work ofMichael Snow

DECEMBER 1973Le Grice presents LFMC films inStockholm and other Swedish cities

LATE 1973Deke Dusinberre arrives in London – aformer student of P. Adams Sitney andAnnette Michelson, he intends to writehis Master of Philosophy thesis onStructural Film at the University ofLondon but changes his focus to theLFMC and English avant-garde – aftercompleting his thesis at the Slade,Dusinberre becomes very involved in Co-op organisation in 1976

1974 Police raids on Co-op building andWilliam Raban’s home under thePrevention of Terrorism Act, apparentlylooking for evidence of political activismand links to the I.R.A.

New LFMC distribution catalogue (A5,blue cover, white lettering) lists over 500films and for the first time includes sepa-rate listings for expanded cinema per-formances

JANUARY-APRIL 1974Barbara Meter and Peter Gidal collabo-rate to establish a Dutch touring circuitfor Co-op filmmakers – Mike Dunford &Sally Potter, David Dye, Gill Eatherley,Tony Hill, Le Grice, Annabel Nicolsonand William Raban each present shows inAmsterdam, Groningen and Utrecht

MAY 1974 Malcolm Le Grice takes Co-op films toscreen at Millennium Film Workshop inNew York and Carnegie Institute inPittsburgh

JUNE 1974 Anthony McCall presents Fire Piece atOxford MoMA

Peter Gidal stops programming Co-opcinema – Annabel Nicolson takes over(assisted by Tony Hill) and temporarilycloses the space to widen it in order tobetter accommodate the expanded worksshe intends to present – Gidal also stopswriting for Time Out and is replaced byTony Rayns – Marjory Botham movesinto Nicolson’s former position manag-ing distribution

AUGUST 19747 programme retrospective of SteveDwoskin at NFT

AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 197424 Frames presents “The New Avant-Garde” series of 18 programmes at theNFT – showcases films they distributeand consists almost exclusively ofAmerican work (John Du Cane is one offew English filmmakers they represent) –at the present time they carry approx. 350film and 50 videotapes – 24 Frames is acommercial distributor directed particu-larly towards TV sales

9 NOVEMBER 1974 First meeting of the IndependentFilmmakers’ Association at the RCA,whose intent is to lobby to promote inde-pendent film and video makers andencourage exchanges between theoristsand practitioners – organising committeeincludes Dwoskin, Gidal, Hartog, NickHart-Williams, Marc Karlin, Le Grice,Laura Mulvey and James Scott – initiatedin response to a BBC TV programme byMelvyn Bragg which misrepresents con-temporary independent filmmaking prac-tise in the UK

25 DECEMBER 1974-4 JANUARY 1975

“Exprmntl 5” festival at Knokke-Heist –performance and multi-projection work isexcluded from competition so MalcolmLe Grice and several others refuse partic-ipation – video is included for the firsttime – Still Life With Pear (MikeDunford), Line Describing a Cone(Anthony McCall) win awards, WilliamRaban and Marilyn Halford also in com-petition – Sign (John Du Cane) is notselected though P. Adams Sitney protestsfor its inclusion

11-18 FEBRUARY 1975“First Festival of Independent BritishCinema” at the Arnolfini Gallery inBristol is organised by ICW (IndependentCinema West), led by David Hopkins –many Co-op, political and independentsfilmmakers and students travel from allover the UK to attend – week of eventsinclude screenings, workshops, discus-sions and expanded work

3-21 MARCH 1975 “Avant-Garde British Landscape Films”organised by Deke Dusinberre at TateGallery, consists of 3 repeating daily pro-grammes plus special evening events pre-sented by William Raban, Chris Welsby,and Renny Croft – films by Jane Clark,Mike Duckworth and David Pearce alsoshown

MARCH 1975 Camden Council give 6 months notice toCo-op – announcing intention to reclaimthe Dairy building for a housing project

APRIL 1975Co-op apply for a grants from BFI GroupSupport Fund and GulbenkianFoundation for workshop funding –BFIapplication is turned down but PeterSainsbury offers to help them re-apply

MAY 1975 Le Grice presents programme of LFMCfilms at the Oberhausen InternationalShort Film Festival

Arts Council “Video Art” show atSerpentine Gallery includes IanBreakwell, Mike Dunford, David Hall,Mike Leggett, Will Milne, Lis Rhodesand Tony Sinden – at this time, manyvisual artists were turning to video

JUNE 1975Peter Sainsbury meets with Co-op execu-tive committee to discuss application –suggests restructuring Co-op by employ-ing paid workers – amount of originalrequest doubled and re-submitted

8 JULY 1975 Meeting at Camden Town Hall organisedby Malcolm Le Grice includes represen-tatives from LFMC, Camden Council,Greater London Arts Association,Gulbenkian Foundation, Space Studiosand BFI – Camden Council suggest tem-porary 12 month relocation to formerPiano Factory at 44a Fitzroy Road andCo-op accept the offer later that month –building again needs considerable reno-vation before it can be occupied

AUGUST 1975 BFI award Co-op first significant granttowards running costs

SEPTEMBER 1975 Le Grice and Gidal begin to withdrawfrom organisational activities (thoughthey stay on the Co-op committee), aftermutually deciding to step aside to allownew leaders to direct Co-op initiatives

NOVEMBER 1975 LFMC opens at the Piano Factory –Space Studios again occupy part of thebuilding – Co-op uses BFI grant pay firstsalaries since Carla Liss left in ’71 – pro-jectors that had been used since IRAT in’69 are replaced – second hand optical

printer and twin system projector for dub-bing magnetic soundtracks installed –many film prints made at this time usethis equipment (which accounts for thenumber of magnetic sound prints still indistribution)

Cinema attendance rises during first fewmonths and 1975-76 season is very suc-cessful – Lis Rhodes is cinema organiser,with help from Annabel Nicolson (per-formances) and David Curtis (historicalprogrammes) – Anne Rees-Mogg organ-ises open screenings on alternateThursdays – William Raban and GuySherwin run the workshop for the firstyear, and number of members also risesrapidly – workshop membership fee israised from £1 to £5 (first increase sincethe move to the Dairy in ’71) – Mary PatLeece takes over distribution, assisted byDeke Dusinberre

Special issue of Studio Internationaldevoted to “Avant-Garde Film in England& Europe” – includes Peter Wollen’spolemical article “The Two Avant-Gardes” and “Theory and Definition ofStructural/Materialist Film” by PeterGidal – plus articles on or by DavidCurtis, Deke Dusinberre on ExpandingCinema, David Dye, Ron Haselden,Malcolm Le Grice on Kurt Kren, andinternational reports by Birgit Hein,Barbara Meter and Peter Weibel

1976Jonathan Harvey, director of Acme (anorganisation which provides artists withaccess to abandoned houses on short-term leases), opens the Acme Gallery inCovent Garden – Marilyn Halford worksthere part time and helps organise filmevents including shows by Lis Rhodes &Ian Kerr, William Raban and ChrisWelsby

4-11 JANUARY 1976 “Festival of Expanded Cinema” at ICAorganised by Deke Dusinberre and SimonField features 43 artists, both establishedand new filmmakers – includes works bySteve Farrer, Chris Garratt, Tony Hill,Derek Jarman, Anthony McCall, AnnabelNicolson, William Raban, Lis Rhodes &Ian Kerr, Guy Sherwin, Tony Sinden andmany others – new filmmakers starting tocome through include Robert Fearns,Rob Gawthrop and Roger Hewins

14 JANUARY 1976Premiere of David Larcher’s Monkey’sBirthday at the Co-op – shot over severalyears around the world, the film makesextensive use of LFMC workshop equip-ment

10-11 FEBRUARY 1976 Weekend seminar in response to Wollen’s“Two Avant-Gardes” article is organisedat the Co-op by Deke Dusinberre – LeGrice delivers a paper on relationshipbetween theory and practice in his films,while Gidal and Wollen expand on theirStudio International articles – TonyRayns chairs the discussion

FEBRUARY-MARCH 1976“Arte Inglese Oggi” survey of Britishartists organised by British Council atPalazzo Reale, Milan – Richard Corkinvites David Curtis to advise on filmprogramme which includes Dunford,Dye, Gidal, Haselden, Keen, McCall,Nicolson, Raban, Rhodes, Sherwin andWelsby – several of these go to Italy topresent expanded events

MARCH 1976 Co-op makes new application to therestructured BFI for running costs but byreceives no subsidy at all for a 4 monthperiod – BFI eventually makes interimpayment to cover period until lease onFitzroy Road expires – lease is subse-quently extended to December ’76 (Co-op eventually moves to GloucesterAvenue in Autumn 1977)

MARCH-APRIL 1976 Le Grice tours USA and Canada as firstfilmmaker to use British Council’s“Touring Abroad” scheme which paysinternational travel for artists’ – Gidal,Leggett, Raban and Welsby also travel toUSA in ’76 – Peter Gidal begins his pres-entation at Museum of Modern Art inNew York with the statement “I hateeverything about America, and every-thing that America stands for.”

SPRING 1976David Hall proposes the formation ofLondon Video Arts (later to becomeLondon Electronic Arts) as an organisa-tion run by and for video artists and thedistribution and exhibition of their work –other founder members include DavidCritchley, Tamara Krikorian, StuartMarshall, Steve Partridge.

MAY 1976 Le Grice lectures on “Materiality inavant-garde film” at State University ofNew York, Buffalo, at invitation of HollisFrampton and Paul Sharits

First conference of the IndependentFilmmakers’ Association (IFA), organ-ised by Simon Hartog, Claire Johnstonand Paul Willemen

MAY-JUNE 1976 Peter Gidal presents “Structural Films”season at NFT – 18 screenings of interna-tional work, with almost half devoted toCo-op members – Structural FilmAnthology (edited by Peter Gidal) is pub-lished by BFI and includes revised ver-sion of Gidal’s “Theory and Definition ofStructural/Materialist Film”, excerpt ofLe Grice’s forthcoming book AbstractFilm and Beyond, and new or reprintedarticles by and about filmmakers in theprogramme

JUNE-JULY 1976Berlin Film Festival includes new workby Dwoskin, Le Grice and Raban

AUGUST 1976 Co-op runs out of distribution catalogues,so Deke Dusinberre asks BFI for grant toprint new edition, but 2 applications arerejected (next catalogue is not publisheduntil early 1978)

Co-op executive committee at this timeconsists of Paul Botham, Mike Dunford,Peter Gidal, Malcolm Le Grice, AnneRees-Mogg, Chris Welsby

Afterimage No. 6 special issue“Perspectives on English IndependentCinema” published by Simon Field –includes articles by or about CinemaAction, Noel Burch, Mike Dunford, DekeDusinberre, Steve Dwoskin (by PaulWillemen), Jeff Keen (by Tony Rayns),on Gidal’s Theory (Anne Cottringer),Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen

6-9 AUGUST 1976 Deke Dusinberre organises the “DerbyIndependent Film Awards” at DerbyPlayhouse – an attempt to stimulate film-making outside London – Fuji suppliesfilm stock which is awarded to everyoneincluded in programmes – work showndisplays a wide range of artists, inde-pendent and political filmmaking

30 AUGUST-3 SEPTEMBER 1976 Edinburgh Film Festival presents“International Forum on the Avant-Garde” organised by Simon Field andPeter Wollen – a week of screenings,expanded cinema and discussions –Regina Cornwell, Hollis Frampton,Annette Michelson, Yvonne Rainer, PaulSharits, Michael Snow and JoyceWieland from USA, Chantal Akerman,Raymond Bellour and Birgit Hein fromEurope and Ian Christie, Peter Gidal,

Marc Karlin from UK, among many oth-ers, take part in debates – Le Grice andMcCall also present expanded cinemawork at the Scottish Arts Council Gallery

SEPTEMBER 1976 Guy Sherwin writes another applicationto BFI for catalogue and relocation costs– William Raban resigns from Co-opworkshop to teach at St. Martin’s Schoolof Art – Steve Farrer takes over the vacantposition – Annabel Nicolson has a secondperiod of running the Co-op cinema

SEPTEMBER 1976LFMC begins to negotiates lease onspace above a laundry at 42 GloucesterAvenue, which is owned by British Rail

OCTOBER 1975Co-op again runs out of money – BFIagrees to pay basic running costs to endof year

10 OCTOBER-11 NOVEMBER 1976 “LFMC First 10 Years” screening seriesand party are organised by DekeDusinberre, with assistance from DavidCurtis – 4 mixed programmes of workillustrate the diversity of work made inand around the Co-op during its firstdecade

NOVEMBER 1976 Deke Dusinberre takes over cinema pro-gramming, Sherwin continues to runworkshop (with Steve Farrer) andbecomes acting Executive Representative– Co-op receives funds towards imminentrelocation from Greater London Counciland Gulbenkian Foundation

After a prolonged period of fundraisingand renovation, the Other Cinema finallyopen their own theatre on TottenhamStreet (it closed after a year, later reopen-ing as the Scala)

DECEMBER 1976Mary Pat Leece leaves distribution and issucceeded by Felicity Sparrow –Malcolm Le Grice and others inititemoves to turn Co-op into a charitabletrust, and investigate possibility ofbeecoming a incorporated company

Chronology assembled by Mark Webber, editedby Travis Miles. With respect to Peter Mudie(on whose manuscript this document was orig-inally based) and David Curtis (who made awealth of archival material available forresearch).If this article contains errors or omissions thatyou can help us correct for the future expandededition please email [email protected]

SHOOT SHOOT SHOOT 7

Intermission at McCall/Schneemann Co-op screening, 12 June 1974Photo by Alan Power

Malcolm Le Grice

Page 8: Shoot Shoot Shoot Broadsheet Newspaper (2002)

LOCATING THE LFMC

THE FIRST DECADE IN CONTEXT

A.L. REES

Before the London Filmmaker’s Co-oper-ative was founded, only a few inspiredindividuals such as Margaret Tait, JohnLatham and Jeff Keen made experimental16mm films in the UK during the early1960s. Filmmaking was costly and time-consuming, and had little status as a seri-ous art form. With limited technicalmeans, these artists created their ownkinds of lyric cinema, hand-painting thefilm as well as shooting live action. Theirfilms were sadly little known at the time,when even Anthony Balch’s films madein collaboration with William Burroughshad few outlets beyond the London art-house cinemas run by Balch himself. Bythe mid 1960s, however, interest inunderground film grew across the counterculture. News of the US and Europeanavant-gardes filtered through the under-ground press and the colour supplements,and film clubs began to show some of thefilms themselves.

The LFMC was begun by a small groupof such enthusiasts who screened films atan avant-garde book shop in CharingCross Road in 1965-66. Shortly after-wards, augmented by David Curtis’ pro-grammes of experimental film at theDrury Lane Arts Lab, it attracted morefilmmakers and began to live up to itsname. Stephen Dwoskin and Peter Gidalbrought from New York an authenticwhiff of Andy Warhol’s Factory. Others,like Malcolm Le Grice, used foundfootage and raw projection as an exten-sion of painting and sculpture. In 1968-69the filmmakers were in control of theLFMC and more films were being made.When it moved north to Robert Street, onthe fringe of Camden Town, in 1969, theLFMC was just one among a cluster ofradical arts groups housed by the NewArts Lab, but it was already developingits own ethos as well as the facilities toshoot, process and edit films.

With the closure of the Arts Labs, theLFMC split off on its own. It moved suc-cessively through a series of formerindustrial spaces: ‘the Dairy’, ‘the PianoFactory’ and finally ‘the Laundry’, itshome in Gloucester Avenue for twentyyears. In the crucial years of 1971-75, itoccupied austere studios in Prince ofWales Crescent. Each location stampedits shape on the films that were madethere, from the meltdown of media in the‘expanded cinema’ of the two Arts Labs,to a more purist climate at Fitzroy Road.En route, the LFMC effectively inventeda new avant-garde genre, the BritishStructural / Materialist film. Its tough anddemanding screening programme oftenfeatured the latest work, straight from theworkshop.

DISTINGUISHEDLFMC films looked strikingly hand-made. Many films of the early seventiescarry distinct traces of their own printingand processing, as in the sparkly film sur-face that mirrors the watery image ofMike Dunford’s Silver Surfer. AnnabelNicolson pulled the film through theprinter to make the colour tapestry ofSlides, while successive reprinting of thefilm leader numerals in Guy Sherwin’s AtThe Academy creates the illusion of bas-relief depth on the flat film surface. LeGrice emerged as a master-printer whoserich overlays of colour primaries forThreshold and Berlin Horse were similarto the loops used in his live-action three-projector performance in Horror Film.The notion of the direct print survived inlater professional lab-printed work by LeGrice and others, and in the images ofsome who never or rarely used the LFMCworkshop, including such different artistsas David Larcher, Stephen Dwoskin andChris Welsby. Larcher’s dissolute, ripeand wandering colour, Dwoskin’s photo-genically crisp tones and Welsby’s insis-tently unmanipulated print, struck directfrom the negative, all attest in distinctways to the primacy of process in theLFMC.

These features distinguished the Britishavant-garde film from its American pro-genitors, whose films were rarely seenuntil the American critic P. Adams Sitneytoured England with his New AmericanCinema Exposition in Spring 1968. Sixmonths later, those same films returned toEngland when Carla Liss took up her postas the LFMC’s first paid employee. Withthe American work now available inBritain, Liss was able to establish LFMCdistribution as a more sustainable opera-tion. Temperamentally, however, theLFMC felt closer to the similarly materi-al-based experimentation in Germany,Austria and Poland. By contrast, theAmerican underground, from KennethAnger through Maya Deren and StanBrakhage, had favoured the personal filmof inner consciousness, or ‘psychodra-ma’. Warhol turned the genre on its head,replacing the subjective dream with the‘fixed stare’ of the camera-eye.Subsequent films by Paul Sharits,Michael Snow, Hollis Frampton, KenJacobs and George Landow created a new‘structural’ avant-garde that had an endur-ing influence on international filmmak-ers.

The New American Cinema had powerfuladvocates, including Sitney and AnnetteMichelson. In their persuasive andinformed essays, the medium of experi-mental film was also a model of mind.For Michelson, the avant-garde capturednew forms of appearance and awarenessin a radically phenomenological cinema,as exemplified in the self-referential filmsof Michael Snow. The title of Sitney’smagisterial book “Visionary Film” alsostresses the American avant-garde’s sub-jective moment and its capacity to evokeideas. By contrast, the British avant-gardewas empirical rather than metaphysical.Here, a film was not so much an illusionin the mind of the spectator, as a con-struction and projection thrown as animage on a screen.

This conviction emerged directly fromthe art school background of most of theLFMC filmmakers. Few of them wereinterested in feature films and they had noambitions to enter the film or televisionindustries. Film for them was primarilyan art medium. Filmmaking had a seriesof acts or stages, each of which implied anew range of strategies, from shooting toprinting and projecting. These could be

combined to make a film or separated tomake an event.

There was no real equivalent to the psy-chodrama at the LFMC. Psychodramawas a literary model and by contrast theLFMC sprang directly from the visualarts. The few exceptions are more playfulthan traumatic, and include BruceLacey’s ‘family’ films and the childlikehumour of the films and performances ofJeff Keen. After the short, intense lyri-cism of Alone and Moment, StephenDwoskin turned to extended portraitswith a documentary touch. DavidLarcher’s films are documentary-diariesor personal travelogues, loosely struc-tured and of long duration. Such tacticsdisrupt, even as they elicit, the spectator’sidentification with the lure of the screenimage. Peter Gidal, more extremely,rejected psychodrama along with all cin-ema which denies its own illusionism.

PLASTICThe next generation (which includedWilliam Raban, Chris Welsby andAnnabel Nicolson) came straight to filmmaking from the art school studio. The artschools were in a state of flux as waves ofnew art hit them throughout the 1960’s,from abstract expressionism to Pop. Atthe same time they kept up a studio tradi-tion which went back to William Morrisand the Arts and Crafts movement of thenineteenth century. This regime encour-aged ‘hands-on’ direct experience and arespect for materials. As older art formslost their appeal, under the impact of themass media, some younger artists turnedto film, video, sound and photography,which were largely free of high art asso-ciations, and modernist in their imperson-al technology. Each was treated like anystudio material, in the artisanal manner.Film, for example, could be hand-printed,stained, used as sculpture, or looped. Itwas literally a ‘plastic medium’, in thejargon of the Bauhaus, as well as arecording device. For this generation, ledby Le Grice, the physical and as yet unex-plored aspects of film were as importantas its ability to make a representationalimage.

The aim was not just formal. By chal-lenging the ways in which film represen-tation appears, the viewer is made awareof the process by which the image iscoded. The visual illusion is transformedinto an experience of time. New struc-tures explore and question the passiverole of the cinema spectator, and look to aparticipatory rather than semi-hypnoticstate of viewing. Each of these goalsbrought the film avant-garde close to thegrowing conceptual art movement in thelate sixties and early seventies, charac-terised by “lists, grids, catalogues, count-ing games and random procedures”(Peter Wollen). These ideas, at the mar-gin of the arts, were an alternative to offi-cial culture, cinema language and itspower to manipulate the audience. In anearly film, Castle One, Le Grice usedfound footage of industrial labour and ofpoliticians to show that film is a socialobject or construct. No image is neutral,in this view. A flashing light bulb in frontof the screen also means that “the aware-ness of the audience is returned to theactual situation (watching a film) by ref-erence to the bulb and the perceptualproblem which its flashing creates”(Malcolm Le Grice).

Some of these and other deconstructiveideas entered the LFMC orbit from con-cept art. This diverse movement includedmany artists who made films, notably IanBreakwell, David Dye and Tony Sinden.Most were born in the early 1940’s, andwere part of a generation that also includ-ed Le Grice, David Curtis, Derek Jarmanand David Hall (the founder of Britishvideo art who was at this time a filmmak-er and sculptor). For Dwoskin, Gidal andLarcher, film was their major medium,while others crossed media barriers intolive performance and installation art. Onthe south coast, Jeff Keen, Jim Duke andTony Sinden founded the AcmeGenerating Co. for expanded cinema andperformances in 1967. In 1969-70, LeGrice and his students made ‘pre-produc-tion’ films, or what David Curtis called

“making films with projectors”. This wasin the spirit of the Arts Labs, which host-ed the LFMC until 1971, and where allthe art forms mingled promiscuously.When film went off on its own it lostmuch of that interaction, even as it devel-oped a new independent ethos and pro-duced, for the first time, a distinct groupof LFMC filmmakers.

This new direction appeared in 1973 as‘Filmaktion’, but was seeded three yearsearlier by tutor Malcolm Le Grice at StMartins School of Art, where his studentsincluded William Raban, Gill Eatherley,Annabel Nicolson and Marilyn Halford.Around these circulated others from theLondon art schools, such as John DuCane, Chris Welsby, Jenny Okun andAnne Rees-Mogg. The purist, if not puri-tan, elements in the structural avant-gardewere not their only feature, as time nowshows. Seen today, their strict forms alsohave more playful ingredients. The ‘roomfilms’ of the time are revealing and mov-ing documents of typically spartandomestic space. They include John DuCane’s Zoom Lapse, in which a windowand kitchen table are densely superim-posed until they white-out; the deepcolour of John Smith’s Leading Light;and the glimpses of dailiness in DavidHall’s metrical Phased Time2. PeterGidal’s Hall is a canny example, drawingthe viewer by selective framing to iconicphoto pin-ups (Godard, the RollingStones) and to simulacra for the filmitself as a projected sound-image event (adesklamp, an intermittent door bell).

Marilyn Halford, in such films asFootsteps (a cat and mouse game with thecamera as pursuer) and Gill Eatherley’slight-play in Hand Grenade, also sharedsome of Annabel Nicolson’s uniqueinsights into transience. Their insistenceon the fragility of the image was differ-ently developed by the 3 and 4 screenfilms of Le Grice, Raban and others, inwhich the projectors are moved and over-lapped in the screening, or in which thefilmmaker interacts with the movie.Nicolson read by flickering match-light(Precarious Vision). Le Grice createdcolour-layers by moving his arms andbody in front of three projector beams(Horror Film), Raban measured screenspace by pacing out the film as it was pro-jected (Take Measure), Welsby construct-ed large scale installations of projectorsin horizontal format (i.e. on their sides),to show panoramic shots of the sea (ShoreLine).

EXTREMEAt one extreme, Welsby edited wholly ‘incamera’, using time-lapse and predeter-mined structure to reveal landscape asform and light. Le Grice similarly re-views landscape in such films asWhitchurch Down (Duration), but in amore intuitive and colourist way. Rabanand Halford were turning to the urbanscene in such films as Time Stepping,which alternates different axial views ofan East London street, while East Londonitself was to become prime subject matterfor another filmmaker, John Smith. FromDavid Crosswaite’s Choke, a two-screenfilm of Piccadilly Circus with rocksoundtrack, to Paul Botham’s EiffelTrifle, the urban scene was part of theLFMC’s image bank, although the con-stant appeal of landscape was also a hall-mark. Here, the LFMC filmmakers linkedback to the story of British art and to itsfusion of the empirical gaze with the newscientific meteorology in the nineteenthcentury. Just as in that earlier meeting ofConstable’s eye with scientific topogra-phy, so in the 1970’s a painterly under-standing of light and form met up withthe mechanical apparatus of camera andprinter. The romantic vein in this tradi-tion continues with Larcher’s epic scalefilms, which celebrate the same interac-tion of the eye and the machine to expandsight.

In 1975, the critic Deke Dusinberre posit-ed a distinct ‘landscape tendency’ in theBritish avant-garde, and he curated aseries of screenings at the Tate to provehis point. He connected landscape film tothe art of John Hilliard, Richard Long andHamish Fulton, who had indeed emerged

from the same art college and concept artbackground as the LFMC. After almost adecade of process-led films, the imagewas back. In some ways this extended thefield of what Le Grice and Gidal hadcalled ‘structural-materialism’ in theearly 1970s. Gidal coined this distinctiveterm for the direction taken by Britishfilmmakers towards a politics of vision,or of film as a critique of optical sensa-tion. But these two leading and giftedfilmmakers were in some ways alsopulling in different directions. Le Griceeventually embraced Frampton’s ‘spectreof narrative’, and his vision has alwaysbeen of the expansive sort. Gidal’s mod-ernism was of the other kind: paringdown and minimalizing the image, so thateach frame resists the lure of unity andpossession. His films are a running cri-tique of their own viewing conditions,and internalise their pictorial codes, justas his mentor Samuel Beckett made loopsof words and speeches to sideline thepower of language to refer.

In the art school tradition of the LFMCfilmmakers, language as such was treatedwarily. Dialogue and voice-over wereassociated with mainstream drama anddocumentary. They rarely appeared untillate in the 1970s, notably in Lis Rhodes’invocation of a ‘woman’s voice’ in LightReading, (1979). Sound was disruptedand looped by Le Grice in Castle One andReign of the Vampire, but much of thework made at the LFMC was characteris-tically visual and often silent. AnthonyMcCall and Annabel Nicolson exploredprimary projection, Marilyn Halford andGuy Sherwin combined projection withperformance, Ian Kerr and Lis Rhodesmade films in live projection by drawingand scraping on them as they passedthrough the lens. Most elaborate wereWelsby’s gallery installations for multi-screen seascape films with text, chartsand documents of the location. RonHaselden also created large-scale galleryworks with looped projection and con-trasts between still and moving images.The Festival of Expanded Cinema at theICA in 1976 revealed a whole new gener-ation that included Steve Farrer, BobFearns, Chris Garratt, Rob Gawthrop,Nicky Hamlyn and many more.

IMPULSEA similar impulse to direct making laybehind the ‘expanded’ use of media in theearly LFMC. The Bolex camera, whichhad been developed as a relatively light-weight news gathering instrument, was aversatile vision machine. Its engineeringproduced a new kind of cinema as film-makers adapted its technology to theirown devices. Springwound action, turretlenses and variable focus, rewind, over-laps, timed dissolves, autoaction, remov-ing the lens, swinging the camera in theair and single framing appeared in manyfilms. Such options for film vision, setfree from the human-centred eye, weretaken up by LFMC filmmakers in filmslike Lensless, Zoom Lapse, Knee High,Clockwise (Accept No Substitute),Shepherd’s Bush, River Yar, ColourSeparation, Focus and Room Film. Theliteralness of these titles is striking. Theyname the process by which the film wasmade, or the location where it was shot.The content of the film can be deducedfrom its self-descriptive title, an idea alsofound in modernist painting and music.

The films made at the LFMC were not thewhole story. It took part in internationalfestivals in London (1970 and 1973) andabroad, while Peter Gidal and John DuCane publicised the LFMC and relatedNational Film Theatre screenings from1972-75 with regular reviews in TimeOut. From the middle to late seventies theLFMC attracted the cautious interest ofScreen, then the leading UK journal offilm theory. Gidal and Le Grice were per-suasive and sophisticated voices in intel-lectual debate and in raising funds fromthe Arts Council and the British FilmInstitute. Through the IndependentFilmmakers’ Association, founded in1974 as a forum for filmmakers and theo-rists, the LFMC was part of a chain ofcampaigning workshops like the BerwickStreet Collective (founded 1970), CinemaAction (founded 1968), Four Corners

(founded 1973) and the Film Work Group(founded 1974). These and other factionsalso met and tangled at the RCA FilmSchool, where Gidal and Dwoskin bothtaught from 1973, along with theoristsNoel Burch and Jorge Dana. Differentversions of film semiotics, experimenta-tion and politics were hammered out.Gidal’s citation of Brecht ‘against repre-sentation’ was countered by the Brechtian‘alienation effect’ in the drama films ofStraub-Huillet. Both were critical of‘visual pleasure’ in the conventionalsense, but where Gidal turned to frag-mentation and enigma, the politicalgroups adopted the long-take and spokentext to disengage the viewer from the filmspectacle.

VISUALThe more visual and celebratory side ofthe LFMC, including Le Grice’s lyricalcolour films, eventually had an effect onthe commercial world, which most of itsmembers would have rejected had theyknown of it. This was its impact, bothdirect and oblique, on TV advertising androck videos, whose language of rapid cut-ting is largely imitated from the avant-garde, up to the present day. DavidSylvester was one of the rare art criticswho saw (and approved) this way ofspreading the modernist message. For tel-evision, plagiarism is necessary.Similarly, LFMC expanded cinema longprecedes the current enthusiasm forinstallation and projection art, but israrely acknowledged. In part, this is dueto a split between filmmakers and otherartists which still persists. The LFMCitself had only the loosest alliance withvideo makers and other media artists.Consequently, London Video Arts (laterLondon Electronic Arts) was founded in1976 as a separate group. Video had beenprofiled at the Serpentine Gallery in1975, and then at the Tate in 1976. It wasalready developing distinct concerns ofits own, from real-time viewing to televi-sion ‘interventions’ and gallery space.

Twenty years later, the LFMC and LEAfinally merged in the Lux Centre. TheLux closed after five years in 2001, butthe film collection and key workshopfacilities remain open as a holding opera-tion. In this sense, with several hundredmembers as well as an extensive distribu-tion archive of classic and new work, theLFMC has not yet vanished. Its historywas made up of such crises. Commentingon the period of the structural film in theearly 1970’s, David Curtis wrote, “for meits rigour is inextricable from the physicaldeprivation of the Prince of WalesCrescent building”. At an all time finan-cial low, he adds, the LFMC was onlyheld together by Gidal’s and Le Grice’s“will to survive”. It was under these con-ditions that genuinely new ideas emerged.

From LFMC experimentation sprang akind of filmmaking which was related tobut finally distinct from the contemporaryfilms of Gilbert and George, GordonMatta-Clark and Marcel Broodthaers, totake a random sample of artists. In theircases, film extended or documented theirpractice in other media, as it still does forartists from Bruce Nauman to TacitaDean. The LFMC - in the spirit of Derenand Brakhage as it happens - was com-mitted to film as an independent art form.The conditions of making and projectingthe film were taken to be internal aspectsof the art form, to be investigated as itsmajor content. Here it led film waybeyond its key aspects as a document or arecord, let alone a narrative. The LFMChad little interest in the mainstream cine-ma, except perhaps to oppose it. Most ofits films descend in a straight line fromLumière and Méliès, bypassing the narra-tive cinema. It opened the gates for allkinds of experimental filmmaking thatexplode the classic rules of cinema. Thiswas far from the intention at the time, butfrom the mid-1960’s the LFMC was lay-ing out the basic map we all still use intime-based media. New roles wereexplored for maker, for viewer and for thespace - the viewing space, be it cinema orinstallation, live performance or film pro-jection - which stands between them.

© 2002 A.L.Rees.

SHOOT SHOOT SHOOT8

SHOOT SHOOT SHOOT

Curator: Mark WebberLux: Benjamin Cook, Mike Sperlinger, JamTidyProject Management: Lucy ReynoldsProject Assistants: Travis Miles, MilenaMichalski-GowTechnical Consultant: David LeisterProjection: Chloë Stewart, Greg PopeWebsite: Gregory KurcewiczDesign: Rachel Reupke

Advisory Panel:David Curtis, Senior Research Fellow, CentralSaint Martin’s School of ArtMichael O’Pray, Reader in Film, University ofEast LondonA.L. Rees, Senior Research Fellow, RoyalCollege of ArtSimon Field, Director, International FilmFestival RotterdamChrissie Iles, Film and Video Curator, WhitneyMuseum of American Art

Arts Council of England: Gary ThomasBritish Council: Paul Howson and SatwantGillBFI: Heather StewartEsmée Fairbairn Foundation: David LittlerAHRB British Artists’ Film & Video StudyCentre: David Curtis

New prints and film restoration/preservation:NFTVA / BFI Donor Access: Shona BarrattSoho Images: Len Thornton, Ray SlaterCreative Film Services: Terry MacCallam

Thanks to all the filmmakers and other peoplewho lived through all this and shared theirmemories and collections with us.

We are extremely grateful to ChristopheBichon & Loic Diaz-Ronda (Lightcone), DekeDusinberre, William Fowler, JamesGrauerholz & WSB Communications, RonHaselden, Lisa Le Feuvre, Barry Miles, KarenMirza, Peter Mudie, Laura Mulvey, MM Serra(New York Film-Makers’ Cooperative), JohnWyver.

We appreciate the continued support of the fol-lowing: Sophie Howarth, Andrew Brighton,William Rallison, Jon Lewis (Tate Modern)Yann Beauvais (Scratch Projections) AnneDemy-Geroe (BIFF) Fabienne Nicholas(Experimenta) Margaret Samai (FTIWA)Vivienne Gaskin (CCA) Stefanie Schult-Strathaus (FDK) Claes Karlsson (Kulturhuset)Peter Pakesch (Kunsthalle Basel) NúriaEnguita & Núria Homs (Fundaçio AntoníTapies) Juan Guardiola (Artium) CarlosAdriano (Babushka) Ruben Guzman (MuseoNacional de Bellas Arte) Jim Sinclair(Vancouver Cinematheque) Alex MacKenzie(Blinding Light) Steve Anker (SFCinematheque) Kathy Geritz (PFA) BenjaminWeil & Nathalie Dubuc (SFMoMA) MarkRance (Film Forum) Abina Manning (VideoData Bank) John Mhiripiri & Jonas Mekas(Anthology Film Archives) Vicki Lewis &Sune Nordgren (Baltic) Linda Pariser(Cornerhouse) Caroline Collier & MichaelPrior (Arnolfini) Josephine Lanyon (PictureThis) Ikeda Hiroyuki (Image Forum) TomBirchenhough (British Council)

Interview tapes transcribed by Diane Beddoes,Helen Eger, William Fowler, Rebecca Gamble,Darren Green, Gregory Kurcewicz, RozLeach, Milena Michalski, Travis Miles, LupeNuñez-Fernandez, Heike Seidler, Jo Shaw,Mike Sperlinger, Denise Webber, MarkWebber, Cassie Yukawa

Shoot Shoot Shoot is a Lux projectwww.lux.org.ukShoot Shoot Shoot website and online researchfacility at www.lfmc.org

Shoot Shoot Shoot broadsheet copyright Lux.First edition, May 2002.

BRITISH ARTISTS’ FILM & VIDEOSTUDY COLLECTION AT

CENTRAL SAINT MARTINSCOLLEGE OF

ART AND DESIGN

This new resource for scholars and curators isfunded by the Arts & Humanities ResearchBoard, and is part of the Centre for BritishFilm and Television Studies, directed byProfessor Laura Mulvey of Birkbeck. The col-lection has two forms; a physical collection oftapes, still images and paper documentation,and an on-line database giving details of over4,000 works by British artists1920-2000.

The collection at Central St Martins holds over600 VHS tapes – containing over 1,500 indi-vidual works. These include the Arts Councilof England’s reference collection of work itfunded, exhibition compilations from the Film& Video Umbrella, the former LEA and otherorganisations, off-air recordings and tapesdonated by individual artists. The paper docu-mentation includes over 500 artist files (writ-ings by and about the artist) and collections offliers and programme notes, film stills andposters. The research team is: ProfessorMalcolm Le Grice / David Curtis / MichaelMazière / Steven Ball.

The database of artists and works will beonline at www.pads.ahds.ac.uk from June2002. To book study time [email protected] Further informationfrom the CSM sitewww.research.linst.ac.uk/filmcentre/

British Artists’ Film & Video Study Collection,Room 203, Central Saint Martins College ofArt and Design, Southampton Row, LondonWC1B 4APTel +44 (0)20 7514 8159Fax +44 (0)20 7514 7071

LETTERS

Dear Sir

I am a basket stacker at the BasingstokeCo-operative Supermarket. Four times a year,one of my duties is to collect the un-openedcopies of SIGHT AND SOUND from all theother sales girls. We send these to under-devel-oped countries for use as toilet tissue (althoughthe paper is not really absorbent enough, itdoes help to ease our consciences a little).

This quarter there was not a single copyleft in the box on delivery day. I only under-stood why when Polly Griddle (on check-out)ran up to me excitedly with her little virginpages bared for the first time in many years:“They have something about real films thistime,” she said. Of course I did not believe her at first, but thereit was, an article (four full pages) on theIndependent Avant-Garde Festival by TonyRainbow. Yes! even written by someone whoknows about it. You can imagine the ecstasythat filled our shop for at least an hour or two.However we mellowed a little when werealised what depravation would be caused inSouth America if SIGHT AND SOUND wereto make a habit of paying attention to this kindof cinema.

Yours faithfully,

MARY LOU GRACE

LONDON FILM-MAKERS’CO-OPERATIVE

CONSTITUTION, 1976

I. PrinciplesA. The London Film-Makers’ Co-operative (hereafter referred to as the Co-op) isa voluntary organisation of film-makers dedi-cated to the production, distribution, andscreening of independent, non-commercialfilms. The Co-op encourages the growth of adynamic independent film culture in GreatBritain. The Co-op is a non-profit organisation;any surplus income shall be reinvested in Co-op activities and shall not be distributed amongits members.

II. MembershipA. Membership in the Co-op is opento any interested individual upon receipt of afilm for the library. Anyone becomes a memberof the Co-op and is entitled to use the Co-op’sproduction/workshop facilities subject toapproval by the Committee or its delegate (sec-tion III), upon payment of £5 per annum.B. Cinema screenings are open toCo-op members and the public, upon paymentof a fee of £1 per annum.C. General Meetings of the member-ship shall be held at least twice per year; UKmembers shall be given at least 14 days noticeof General Meetings by the Secretary.Extraordinary Meetings may be called by theCommittee on the basis of a request by 3 mem-bers to the Committee. 25 members, or 30 ofthe London-based membership, constitutes aquorum for a General or ExtraordinaryMeeting.D. The membership is responsiblefor Co-op policy and may amend articles insections II, III, IV by a 2/3 majority; with theexception of membership fees, which may bealtered by a simple majority.E. The Co-op shall be dissolved onlyby a 9/10 majority at an Extraordinary Meetingcalled for that purpose. Any assets at the timeof dissolution shall be devoted to projects withgoals similar to those of the Co-op (section I).At such meetings, only foreign members canhave a postal vote.

III. AdministrationA. Co-op policy and programmesshall be administered by a Committee account-able to the membership at General andExtraordinary meetings.B. The Committee shall be electedannually from the membership; it shall consistof at least five members, including aChairperson, a Treasurer, and a Secretary.General membership only can appoint and dis-miss staff.C. The Committee shall oversee thedaily operation of the production/workshopfacilities, the distribution library, and thescreening programme.D. The Treasurer shall present anaudited statement of all Co-op accounts to aGeneral meeting not less than once per year.E. Minutes of all Committee meet-ings shall be available from the Co-op officesto any member upon request.

IV. RegulationsA. All members complying with sec-tion II A shall have access to the produc-tion/workshop facilities as administered by theCommittee, or its delegate(s).B. Films in the Co-op library shallbe made available for rental at rates deter-mined by the film-maker; all prints shall beprovided by the film-maker, who retains com-plete ownership of the print. Films may bewithdrawn from the library at any time, subjectto prior booking arrangements made throughthe Co-op.C. Film-makers shall receive 70% ofall rental fees on each of their films; the Co-opshall retain 30% of rental fees to cover distri-bution costs. Payments will be made to film-makers on a semi-annual basis, unless other-wise requested.D. The Committee shall endeavourto keep distribution lists up to date throughsupplements or re-issue of the distribution cat-alogue.

LUXLUX is a new organisation formed to continuethe work of its predecessors; The LondonFilmmakers Co-op, London ElectronicArts/London Video Access and The LuxCentre.

Based around a unique collection of artists’ filmand video work LUX seeks to promote and sup-port contemporary and historical artists’ mov-ing image work as well as the artists that makeit through distribution, exhibition, publishingand research.For more details contact:LUX, 3rd Floor, 18 Shacklewell Lane, London E8 2EZ, UK tel: +44 (0)207 503 3980, fax: +44 (0)7092 111413 e m a i l : i n f o @ l u x . o r g . u kweb: www.lux.org.uk

Top: Filmaktion group at Gallery House, 1973. Bottom left: Postcard from David Curtis to Peter Gidal, 1968. Bottom right: Peter Gidal, 1967.

TEN YEARS OF BRITISH AVANT-GARDE FILM

A DOCUMENTARY

Taking its cue from the 2002 retrospec-tive programme of British avant-gardefilm 1966-1976, SHOOT SHOOTSHOOT relates the story of the firstdecade of the London Film-makers’ Co-op. Key participants in the closely inter-twined stories of the Co-op and Britishexperimental film in these years reflecton the successes (and failures) of a radi-cal project to imagine a new kind of cin-ema: new ways of distributing work, newforms of exhibition and, crucially, newkinds of images and sounds. Participantsinclude Stephen Dwoskin, David Dye,Gill Eatherley, Peter Gidal, Malcolm LeGrice, Annabel Nicolson, William Rabanand Guy Sherwin; the film’s consultantis David Curtis. Clips of many of the keyfilms, performances and installations arealso featured.

SHOOT SHOOT SHOOT is available forretail or institutional sale or hire fromLouise Machin at Illuminations. [email protected] or +44 20 72888409; more details atwww.illumin.co.uk.