TRAVERSING THE WILD 1

Beginning with a quiet river study of film movement and time, we extend ourselves bodily across a landscape through accumulation. A politicised desert landscape of power and conflict emerges, giving way to an abstracted metaphysical sense of moving presence. We explore the snow-covered world of Derek Jarman’s Dungeness, then traverse the space between nature and technology, analogue and digital. In the end, a blind predator dreams through its prey’s eyes. See below for full programme details.

Robert Todd will be present for an audience Q&A.

Saturday 27th October, 10am
Heart of Hawick, Tower Mill

Disquiet

Directed by: SJ.Ramir
United Kingdom premiere

Running time: 00:08:15
Year: 2011
Country: New Zealand

Synopsis:

Disquiet follows the movement of an anonymous figure through remote geographical environments to examine metaphysical journeys that are made through landscapes within the human mind.

After travelling by foot through a dark woodland forest, a figure enters into a desolate, desert-like world. It’s journey is interrupted by a looming structure – representing visions of society, memory and need – which is explored, but ultimately rejected, leaving the figure to continue on it’s quest towards an unknown destination.

Biography/Filmography:

Originally trained as a photographer, SJ.Ramir later moved to digital video - shooting scenes of lone figures moving across remote and isolated geographical landscapes. His work is primarily concerned with exploring existential themes, and the concept of journeys – both physical and metaphysical. His videos and films have been exhibited at art galleries worldwide, as well as many international film festivals including: 67th Venice International Film Festival and the International Film Festival Rotterdam (2009 and 2010).

Artist's Website: http://www.ramirfilms.co.nz

Venue: Main auditorium - Heart of Hawick, Tower Mill
Screening date: Saturday 27th October
Screening time: 10am
Tickets: £4 (for the 'Traversing the Wild 1' programme)
Programme: Traversing the Wild 1

Mimente

Directed by: Nick Collins
Not a premiere

Running time: 00:10:15
Year: 2008
Country: United Kingdom

Synopsis:

A 16mm film screening.

Reflections, shadows and an exploration of film movement and time, shot on/in a 100-yard stretch of the Mimente river in Southern France.

Biography/Filmography:

After the music ... (1979)
Cornish Winter Reeds and Skies (1980/90)
Journeys (1981)
Time at Night (1982/3)
Passage (1982/3)
Self-portrait (1983)
Deptford Creek (1984)
Looking in and out (A Winter Diary) (1984/6)
Valletta (1985)
Winter into Spring (1985)
Sanday (1986/8)
Views From A City (1991/3)
Bureau de Change (with Rose Finn-Kelcey) (1992)
Steam Installation (with Rose Finn-Kelcey) (1993)
Trissakia (1994)
Tessa's Table (with Simon Wells) (1995/6)
Borough Market (1995/6)
Variations (1997)
Three Short Films (Room with Two Mirrors; By the Woodyard; Midday Shade) (1998/9)
Tidemills (2003)
Winter Woods (2005)
Three Silent Films (Early Morning; Bathroom Mirror; Cat & Flyscreen) (2005)
Across the Valley (2006)
Loops (twin-screen) (2006 and 2007)
Trissakia 2 (2007)
Mimente (2008)
Four silent films (Frost Table, Tholos, Jasmine Tea, Garden) (2009)
Where the Arun Meets the Sea (2009)
Loutra:Baths (2010)
Square and Mountain (2010)
Dark Garden (2011)
Temple of Apollo, An Afternoon, At Pont du Tarn (2012)

Artist's Website: http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/nick-collins/24/2a8/186

Sedimenting

Directed by: Emilie Crewe
Scottish Premiere, United Kingdom premiere

Running time: 00:11:57
Year: 2011
Country: United States

Synopsis:

[ ] carries the home around as an extension of the body, creating a temporal habitat that serves a specific function. Collecting grapefruit skins and tiny pebbles, [ ] systematically arranges objects in the fashion that a bower bird prepares a nest. Each object is important.

Biography/Filmography:

Emilie Crewe (b. 1987, Quebec City, Canada) is an interdisciplinary artist working in Vancouver, British Columbia. Her work often takes the form of video installation, sound, sculpture and single-channel video. She received a BFA in Interdisciplinary Fine Art from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University in 2009. In the spring of 2011, she received an MFA in Studio Art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the department of Film, Video, New Media and Animation. Recent exhibition history includes the Governor's Island Art Fair in New York, NY, the Zhou B. Art Center in Chicago, IL, and the Khyber Institute of Contemporary Art in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Screenings include
"The Labor Party" at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, PA, the Chicago Underground Film Festival "Salonathon", and OK.Video FLESH at the National Gallery of Indonesia.

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

The River

Directed by: Davor Sanvincenti
Scottish Premiere, United Kingdom premiere

Running time: 00:07:30
Year: 2009
Country: Croatia

Synopsis:

Through multiple crackling structures The River spreads audiovisual resources to create atmospheres that combine narrative and aesthetic concepts beyond one photography, Versus, captured with 82 years old camera-box which portrays the social landscape that is devoid of any romanticism. The black and white photographic film (already with expired date) has previously passed through a series of processes of destruction in order to obtain light disintegrating internal structure. The work investigates and examines the human like the unforeseeable active presence between the nature and technology, analogue and digital. It explores and reveals a research for the ontology of the audiovisual landscape.

Biography/Filmography:

Davor Sanvincenti / b.1979 / is a International multimedia artist from Croatia.
He is specifically interested in a field of audiovisual research and anthropology of visual culture, particularly focused on the conditions and forms of human senses and perceptions. His artistic practice takes shape in the variety of media - film and video, photography, physical light and sound installations and live media performances.
His work plays with the concept of illusion, exploring the possible boundaries of perception and the construction of experience. In 2010, he was recipient of the Radoslav Putar Award for the best Croatian artist under 35.

Artist's Website: http://messmatik.net

Trip to D.

Directed by: Maike Zimmermann
World premiere

Running time: 00:08:43
Year: 2010
Country: United Kingdom

Synopsis:

One day in January I took the train to Dungeness with my super-8 cameras and other equipment. I wanted to visit and film Derek Jarman's cottage and his garden. The day started off nice and dry, then it started to snow and it covered the barren landscape in a white blanket, which gave it a surreal Tarkovskyan look. I was previously unaware of the vast remoteness of the area and also of the nuclear power plant in the background. It creates a strangely evocative and unsettling atmosphere, which was reinforced by the weather. This film tries to reflect this atmosphere.

Biography/Filmography:

Maike Zimmermann grew up in Bremen, Germany and moved to London in 1994 where she first studied French and then went on to Art School. She is based in London and Berlin and works mostly image based (photo, video, 16mm, super8). Maike creates experimental films, video installations, photographic or site specific installations and sound pieces with a main interest in exploring the interplay between sound, image and concepts of narration primarily within the activities of visual music, live cinema and expanded cinema.
Her work has been shown internationally including exhibitions in Barcelona, Berlin, London, San Francisco, St.Petersburg and Stockholm.

Artist's Website: http://maike-z.com

undergrowth

Directed by: Robert Todd
European premiere

Running time: 00:12:00
Year: 2011
Country: United States

Synopsis:

A 16mm film screening.

A blind predator dreams through its prey's eyes.

Biography/Filmography:

A lyrical filmmaker as well as a sound and visual artist, Robert Todd continually produces short works that resist categorization. In the past twenty years he has produced a large body of short-to-medium format films that have been exhibited internationally at a wide variety of venues and festivals including the Media City Festival, San Francisco International Film Festival, Rotterdam International Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Le Rencontres Internationale, Black Maria Film Festival, Nouveau Cinema in Montreal, Cinematheque Ontario, the Harvard Film Archive, Pacific Film Archive, the Paris Biennial, Slamdance Film Festival, and others. His films have won numerous festival prizes, grants, and artist’s awards. He teaches film production at Emerson College in Boston.

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

We'll become oil

Directed by: Mihai Grecu
Scottish Premiere, United Kingdom premiere

Running time: 00:08:00
Year: 2011
Country: France

Synopsis:

Dry landscapes are filled with the traces of a meta-conflict, beyond any visible political or ideological issue. A continuous and unexplainable state of crisis takes over the spaces and the view, transforming pure mineral geography into a theater of war.
The story of oil taking over history.

Biography/Filmography:

Mihai Grecu was born in Romania in 1981. After studying art and cinema in Romania and France, at the Fresnoy Studio of Contemporary Arts, he has been developing a complex personal visual language. By mixing symbolic images with highly metaphorical situations and surreal atmospheres, his works challenge the viewer's perception as well as contemporary imagery, with recurring themes such as environment, war, water and metamorphosis.
His films-poems have been shown in numerous film and new media festivals worldwide (Rotterdam, Festival of New Cinema in Montreal, Clermont Ferrand, Videobrasil) and exhibitions ("Dans la nuit, des images" at the Grand Palais in Paris, Mois de la Photographie in Paris, Hengesbach Gallery in Berlin, etc).

UNLITh 2007
COAGULATE 2008
CENTIPEDE SUN 2010
WE'LL BECOME OIL 2011
GLUCOSE 2012

Artist's Website: http://www.mihaigrecu.org