NATURE MACHINE
This programme is inspired by the exquisite experimentations of French film maker Rose Lowder. Using her films as reference, these works examine different strategic approaches to the natural and constructed world and the life forms which inhabit it. Included is Brackages’ unforgettable homage to the sun and the amazing matte effects wizardary by west coast artist Pat O’Neill.
Bouquets 1-10 Rose Lowder (FR, 16mm, 1994-95, 12mins)
“BOUQUETS 1 to 10 consists of ten one-minute films…. I managed in this series to abandon the stationary camera while still retaining what I consider a necessary graphic coherence. Each bouquet of flowers is also a bouquet of frames mingling the plants to be found in a given place with the activities that happen to be there at the time.” RL
Downwind Pat O’Neill (US,16mm, 1973, 14mins)
The interaction of people with nature – A Yellowstone Park geyser is a central motif, but there are cats, pigs, cows, cacti as objects viewed. A rich multitude of varied imagery is welded together by O’Neill in a number of ways, including complex use of mattes.
Star Garden Stan Brackage (US, 16mm, 1974, 21mins)
“The ‘star’ as it is singular, is the sun, and it is metaphored, at the beginning of this film, by the projector…. Then the imaginary sun begins its course throughout whatever darkened room this film is seen within. This ‘sun’ of the mind’s eye of every viewer does not necessarily correspond with the off screen ‘pictured sun’ of the film, but anyone who plays this game of illumination will surely see the film in its most completely conscious light.” S.B.
3/60: Bäume Im Herbst Kurt Kren (AUS, 16mm, 1960, 5mins)
Krens proto-structuralist study of trees in autumn. In this film, perception of material relationships in the world is seen to be no more than a product of the structural activity in the work.
Ariel Margret Tait (UK;16mm, 1974, 4mins )
A fragile and beautiful film poem which touches on elemental images. Air, water (and snow), earth, fire (and smoke), all come into it.
Bouquets 21-30 Rose Lowder (FR, 16mm, 2001-05, 14mins)
Consisting of one-minute films composed in the camera by weaving the characteristics of different environments with the activities there at the time. The filming basically entails using the film strip as a canvas with the freedom to film frames on any part of the strip in any order, running the film through the camera as many times as needed.
Greg Pope. 