FEATURE FILMS

Born in 1974 in Grenoble, Jacques Perconte now lives and works in Paris. He is well-known as one of the pioneers of internet art. He is among the first artists to have worked on compression codecs.

Jacques made his debuts with internet and video art. His first films date back from 1995 and his first internet artworks from 1996. The website technart.net is the core of his work, showcasing all his activities (notes, articles, performances... the web is endless).

Artist's Website: http://triptyquefilms.blogspot.com/

Venue: Main auditorium - Heart of Hawick, Tower Mill
Screening date: Friday 26th October
Screening time: 3pm
Tickets: £4
Programme: Auditorium Features

FUGITIVE BEAUTY - THE FILMS OF ROBERT CAHEN

Directed by: Robert Cahen
Scottish Premiere

Running time: 01:20:00
Year: 1973-2007
Country: France

Synopsis:

Robert Cahen's uniquely poetic experimental filmmaking spans a period of 40 years. Exploring the fleeting qualities of perception, he treats filmed reality as an ephemeral and mutable substance, transforming it through a vision rich in subjective meaning. Often formally experimental, using electronic techniques of image manipulation to challenge our perceptual preconceptions, his films are also powerfully visual and deeply affecting.

A selection of his works will be shown, including his seminal 1983 work Juste le temps (13m), Voyage d'hiver (19m) and Sept visions fugitives (33m).

Voyage d'hiver (19m) 1995

Sept visions fugitives (33m) 1995

From Electronic Arts Intermix:

"Recognized as one of France's foremost video artists, Robert Cahen has since 1972 produced a distinguished body of work for cinema and television. In Cahen's uniquely nuanced world, fiction and document alike are presented as metaphoric voyages of the imaginary, exquisite reveries that describe passages of time, place, memory and perception. Genres such as narrative and performance are expanded and transformed as he explores visual, aural and temporal transformations of represented reality.

From the formal elegance of Cartes postales vidéo (Video Postcards) (1984-86) to the intricate musical and visual transitions of Boulez-Répons (1985), Cahen's work is characterized by a sophisticated application of electronic techniques that manipulate sound and image, space and temporality, resulting in subtle transmutations of the illusory and the real. Building on his extensive research in acoustics, music, and filmmaking, he plays with the textures of sound and image to restructure representational modes, from the optical to the sonic, from the "picturesque" photograph to the conventions of narrative cinema. Resonating with wit and charm, executed with technical precision, his works allude to both formal and thematic motifs of travel, movement, and transition. Cahen's dreamlike journeys depict fleeting glimpses of a transitory reality, transformed in time within the pictorial frame.

Robert Cahen was born in Valence, France in 1945. He graduated from the Conservatoire National Superieur Musique de Paris, and was a member of the Groupe de Recherche Musicales de l'ORTF (the Office of French Radio and Television) from 1971-74. From 1973-76, he was director of Experimental Video for ORTF/INA. Many of his film and video works have been produced in conjunction with Institut National Audiovisuel (INA), the French television production facility. His videotapes have been broadcast and exhibited internationally, at institutions and festivals including the Paris Biennale; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; American Film Institute National Video Festival, Los Angeles; World Wide Video Festival, The Hague; International Center of Photography, New York; Documenta 8, Kassel, Germany; FestRio, Brazil; Tokyo Festival; and the Festival of Locarno, Italy."

Cahen lives in Mulhouse, France, in the Alsace region, close to the Swiss and German borders.

Chris Meigh Andrews:
Chris Meigh-Andrews is an artist, teacher, writer and curator. Born in Essex, England in 1952, he lived and worked in Montreal, Canada from 1957-75. On his return to the UK, he studied photography, film & TV at the London College of Printing (1976-79), Fine Art at Goldsmiths (MA, 1981-1983) and at the Royal College of Art. (PhD, 1996-2001). His book, A History of Video Art: the Development of Form and Function is an important critical introduction and guide to artists' video.

For more, please see his website www.meigh-andrews.com

See also:

Artist's Website: http://www.eai.org/artistBio.htm?id=294

Venue: Main auditorium - Heart of Hawick, Tower Mill
Screening date: Friday 26th October
Screening time: 7.30pm
Tickets: £4
Programme: Auditorium Features

Las Vegas | The Meadows

Directed by: Benjamin R. Taylor
United Kingdom premiere

Running time: 00:33:22
Year: 2011
Country: Canada

Synopsis:

Travelling through the city of Las Vegas and the encircling desert, LAS VEGAS | THE MEADOWS examines the soul of a city both real and unreal. Moving from outside to inside, images of facades and voids reveal an empire of ghosts and electricity. The amusement park-fantasy-frenzy of Las Vegas becomes a psychological landscape of spaces forgotten, people unseen and multiplying kilowatts filling what used to be the meadows of the Nevada desert.

Benjamin R. Taylor is a filmmaker currently living and working in Montréal, Canada. His works use documentary and experimental techniques to focus on geography, architecture and spirituality. He is a graduate of the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema and his films and videos have been presented in various festivals and galleries around the world.

Artist's Website: http://www.benjaminrtaylor.com

Venue: Second Floor, Tower Mill - Heart of Hawick
Screening date: Saturday 27th October
Screening time: 11am
Tickets: £4 (for the Screening Room, per day. Or free with a ticket to another screening that day)
Programme: Screening Room Saturday

Two Years at Sea

Directed by: Ben Rivers
Not a premiere

Running time: 01:28:00
Year: 2012
Country: United Kingdom

Synopsis:

The award winning debut feature from Ben Rivers explores the life of a hermit living in isolation within an Aberdeenshire forest. Beautifully shot on 16mm in black and white, this quietly observed and penetrating fi lm follows the day to day life of Jake as he passes his time, living the radical dream he had as a younger man, a dream he spent two years working at sea to realise. A film testament to the hidden world of the outsider.

For a full biography, see www.katemacgarry.com

Artist's Website: http://www.benrivers.com/

Venue: Main auditorium - Heart of Hawick, Tower Mill
Screening date: Saturday 27th October
Screening time: 12 noon
Tickets: £4
Programme: Auditorium Features

Patience (After Sebald)

Directed by: Grant Gee
Not a premiere

Running time: 01:22:00
Year: 2012
Country: United Kingdom

Synopsis:

A multi-layered film essay on landscape, art, history, life and loss by the acclaimed documentary filmmaker Grant Gee. It is an exploration of the work and influence of German writer WG Sebald (1944 – 2001), told via a long walk through coastal East Anglia tracking his most famous book The Rings of Saturn. The book mixes history, travelogue, memoir, meditation, fiction and images to explore the personal, public and often overlooked histories of Suffolk.

Please see the Mubi page or the Wikipedia entry on Grant Gee.

Artist's Website: http://www.grantgee.com/

Venue: Main auditorium - Heart of Hawick, Tower Mill
Screening date: Saturday 27th October
Screening time: 2pm
Tickets: £4
Programme: Auditorium Features

JANADHAAR

Directed by: Jade Ajani and David Meek
European premiere

Running time: 01:33:00
Year: 2011
Country: United States

Synopsis:

Janadhaar, which means "grassroots," is set in India’s Garwhal Himalaya and explores the struggle for community-owned ecotourism and sustainable rural development within the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve.

Nanda Devi (7817 meters) is the highest peak entirely within India, and for nearly a century it drew alpinists and hikers from throughout the world. When Nanda Devi was designated as a national park in 1982, however, mountaineering and trekking were prohibited from the area. This ban has negatively affected the economy of the region, causing many people who had been dependent on ecotourism as a source of income to migrate out of the area. Since 1982, the local Bhotiya people in Nanda Devi have been involved in a campaign to win back their right to economic self-determination. In 2006, formed their own ecotourism organization, the Mountain Shepherds, which now offers a variety of alternative tourism options. The group’s first trip, a trek involving local residents hiking alongside women from both India and Western countries, took place in the fall of 2006. This film documents the Bhotiya’s nearly thirty year struggle and recent success through interviews with the local women, international participants, activists, government officials and villagers as the trek proceeds through the mountains.

Jade Ajani is an award-winning documentary and non-fiction filmmaker based in Portland, OR. A graduate of Bard College’s school for Film and Electronic Arts, he is a producer of both experimental shorts and remixed appropriations as well as original feature-length documentaries, most notably, Growing Awareness.

David Meek is an environmental anthropologist currently working towards a doctorate in Anthropology at the University of Georgia. His current dissertation research focuses on learning and landscape change within a settlement of the Brazilian Landless Worker's Movement (MST). He maintains the Placing Culture blog, about the intersections of culture and place, with a focus on the role geospatial technologies and methods.

Artist's Website: http://www.lasercave.biz/janadhaar/

Venue: Second Floor, Tower Mill - Heart of Hawick
Screening date: Saturday 27th October
Screening time: 4.20pm
Tickets: £4 (for the Screening Room, per day. Or free with a ticket to another screening that day)
Programme: Screening Room Saturday

sin∞fin The Movie #3

Directed by: VestAndPage
United Kingdom premiere

Running time: 00:45:42
Year: 2012
Country: Italy

Synopsis:

Part of a double bill of artist films (with Jusque-là by Enrique Ramirez), each involving aspects of performance art on film, followed by a special discussion on ‘performing film’.

Sin∞Fin #3 is the third part in a trilogy of films by performance artists Verena Stenke and Andrea Pagnes. Set in Antarctica, the two characters move through the deserted, icy vastness of an oneiric land. They find themselves creatures being torn between life and death, absence and misleading mirages, fortune and emptiness.

"This movie tells you what extreme lands make you think of, instead of explaining what they are made of." (Leconte Press)

"sin∞fin The Movie" is a trilogy movie project. Performance artists and independent filmmakers VestAndPage develop live performance actions in various outstanding locations around the world, analyzing artistically the subject of Spheres. At each place, installations and performances are developed in situ, the final results of which form the episodes of "sin∞fin" -- a trilogy on the ephemeral form of Live art and on Nature, out of any filmic genre, an art project set between reality and vision, to stimulate reflection on our common, conflictive contemporary situation.

A Jedermann couple roams far and wide through Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego, India, Kashmir and Antarctica, seemingly lost within the absurdness of the quotidian. They perceive and define spheres and sanctums: creation, union, incorporation, rejection, collision, invasion, infection and transformation of inner, private, social and universal spheres. Nature here is immense, and all paradises are merciless in their search for beauty where anything is a mirror. Human is trying to adapt himself, trying to find a home.

See www.sinfin-themovie.de

VestAndPage are the theater and performance practitioners Verena Stenke (*1981, Germany) and Andrea Pagnes (*1962, Venice), who have been working together since 2006 as VestAndPage in body-based Live art, visual art and independent filmmaking.
They perform, exhibit, lecture, conduct workshops, and curate worldwide, being among the most popular representatives of Performance art from Italy.
Their works are always site-responsive and process-led through the action itself, thus creating a permanent sensation of vertigo and responding corporally to the given environment (nature, space).
"sin∞fin The Movie" is their movie debut, combining their various artistic backgrounds by challenging the ridge between the ephemeral art of Performance and filmmaking.
Verena Stenke is performance artist, dancer and video maker. Andrea Pagnes is performer, visual artist, writer and independent curator.

Artist's Website: http://vest-and-page.de

Venue: Main auditorium - Heart of Hawick, Tower Mill
Screening date: Saturday 27th October
Screening time: 4.30pm
Tickets: £4 (for the double bill)
Programme: Auditorium Features

Jusque-là

Directed by: Enrique Ramírez
European premiere

Running time: 00:30:00
Year: 2011
Country: France

Synopsis:

Part of a double bill of artist films (with Sin∞Fin #3 by VestAndPage), each involving aspects of performance art on film, followed by a special discussion on ‘performing film’.

In a small town in northern France (Béthune), the oldest and non religious brotherhood of the world in operation still exists. That formed more than 825 years ago. In other place of the world, in a place a 5000 feet of hight, there is an imaginary man who takes a walk, who represents the unknown and uncertain journey between the life and the death, and realises a surreal dream in a unknown landscape where the sea and earth are united into one.

Enrique Ramirez. Born in 1979 in Santiago, Chile. He has a master degree in Contemporary art and New Media in Studio National of art contemporain Le Fresnoy, France.
Enrique Ramirez’s work could be described as poetic incursions towards the humanization of contemporary dystopias.

2011 Jusque- là; Tafel.
2009 Horizon; Travel-ling
2008 Paris; Brises.

Artist's Website: http://www.enriqueramirez.net

Venue: Main auditorium - Heart of Hawick, Tower Mill
Screening date: Saturday 27th October
Screening time: 4.30pm
Tickets: £4 (for the double bill)
Programme: Auditorium Features

Swandown

Directed by: Andrew Kötting
Scottish Premiere

Running time: 01:34:00
Year: 2012
Country: United Kingdom

Synopsis:

Abducting a swan-shaped pedalo as their water-borne mode of transport, Andrew Kötting and the writer Iain Sinclair embark on an epic journey around the English coastline, through its waterways, from Hastings to Hackney in London. A watery journey as humorous as it is eccentric, the film quietly evolves into a lyrical and deeply poignant evocation of place, a kind of thwarted pilgrimage through the peopled landscapes and mythologies of contemporary life. Unmissable and utterly unique.

Please see the BFI Screenonline profile or the Wikipedia entry on Andrew Kotting.

Artist's Website: http://swandown.info/

Venue: Main auditorium - Heart of Hawick, Tower Mill
Screening date: Saturday 27th October
Screening time: 7.30pm
Tickets: £4
Programme: Auditorium Features

As Above, So Below

Directed by: Sarah J. Christman
United Kingdom premiere

Running time: 00:50:00
Year: 2012
Country: United States

Synopsis:

For thousands of years, alchemists toiled to synthesize rare substances and universal cures, to manipulate the speed of natural processes. Today, a woman has her husband’s ashes transformed into a memorial diamond. 
Precious metals are extracted from obsolete electronics. What was once the world’s largest landfill-- now the final resting place of the World Trade Center’s remains-- is being converted into a public park. The film intimately 
examines various transmutations, both microscopic and massive, that reshape matter and its meanings. 
What separates the permanent from the impermanent, the things we discard from those we preserve?

Sarah J. Christman makes non-fiction films that examine the intersection between people, 
technology and the natural world. Her award winning work has screened internationally, including the 
Rotterdam Film Festival, Margaret Mead Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, and the 
San Francisco International Film Festival where "Dear Bill Gates" earned the New Visions Award. 
She is an Assistant Professor in the Film Department at Brooklyn College.

Artist's Website: http://www.sarahchristman.com

Venue: Second Floor, Tower Mill - Heart of Hawick
Screening date: Sunday 27th October
Screening time: 4.20pm
Tickets: £4 (for the Screening Room, per day. Or free with a ticket to another screening that day)
Programme: Screening Room Sunday