ARTISTS’ FILMMAKING SYMPOSIUM
THURSDAY 3 APRIL – 1.00pm – 8.30pm
What’s involved in developing, funding and distributing a short artist’s film? This symposium is open to all and is aimed at both aspiring and established filmmakers or artists working with the moving image. A range of internationally recognised filmmakers and speakers will share their experience, delivering talks on a range of approaches, from the DIY aesthetics of underground film culture, through micro-budget filmmaking, to professionally produced feature length or multi-disciplinary artists’ film projects. A rare opportunity to meet a range of experts closely involved in the making, funding and distribution of experimental film and artists’ moving image.
SCHEDULE
1.00pm: Registration.
1.15pm: Welcome and light lunch (provided).
2.00pm: Gareth Evans – Film Curator at Whitechapel Art Gallery, London.
2.35pm: Julie Brook – Multi-disciplinary artist and filmmaker based on
Skye, in Scotland.
3.10pm: Dr. Duncan Reekie – Film activist, based in London. Author of Subversion: The Definitive History of Underground Cinema.
3.45pm: Break.
4.05pm: Jennifer Armitage – Development Officer at Creative Scotland.
4.40pm: Robert Todd – Experimental filmmaker, Professor at Emerson
College, Boston, USA.
5.15pm: Plenary session.
5.45pm: Break.
7.00pm: Mixed film screening and filmmaker Q&A’s (participants to be announced).
8.30pm End.
TICKETS: £25 / £15 students/unwaged
BOX OFFICE: 01450 360688 (Int’l 00 44 1450 360688)
VENUE: MAIN AUDITORIUM, HEART OF HAWICK – TOWER MILL
TALKS AND SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES
2pm: Gareth Evans: A Modest Proposal
Artist film-makers’ long form work has never been more popular. Spurred on by the crossover success of Steve McQueen, Clio Barnard and many others, numerous artists now see the future is longer, and it’s hybrid, occupying a space somewhere between experiment and narrative, gallery and cinema, no-budget and some-budget (one hopes…). This presentation will consider the desirability, viability and actuality of this emergent new territory, and will examine (albeit swiftly…) the necessary chain of relations that must be in place – from idea to audience – to make such work possible. Working in production, curation, exhibition, critical response and finally advocacy of committed works and makers, Gareth Evans will seek to present a coherent, joined-up response. He will also argue for a culture of the engaged and the modest, of the making do, in an era of imposed austerity simultaneous with excess, even decadence in some quarters.
Speaker Biography:
Gareth is a writer, curator, presenter and the Film Curator of London’s Whitechapel Gallery. He programmes PLACE, an annual cross-platform festival in Suffolk . He produced the essay film Patience (After Sebald) by Grant Gee as part of his nationwide arts project The Re-Enchantment (2008 – 2011). He has curated numerous film and event seasons (eg Armenia, JG Ballard, Portugal, Romany etc) in London and nationally. He was editor of the international moving image magazine Vertigo from 2002 – 2009.
Whitechapel Gallery
Art Events
Go Together Press
2.35pm: Julie Brook: Observing Film Through Practice
Through working in wild and remote landscapes making sculptural work that is often transient and difficult to access, Julie Brook’s use of film has evolved as a necessary part of exploring and expressing the nature of her work. How can such work be brought to audiences in ways that convey the visceral qualities of the work and environment? How do the films become the work? Julie’s practice has also employed film within educational projects, enabling young people to engage in depth with drawing. More recently, she has been collaborating with a feature film director creating a different context in relation to her material. This talk will look at the evolution of Julie’s film work within the context of her multi-disciplinary practice, showing how she has responded to these questions, both artistically and practically.
Speaker Biography:
Julie Brook is a multi-disciplinary Scottish artist working across film, sculpture, drawing and painting. Over the past twenty years she has lived and worked in a succession of wild and remote landscapes. Her film works include That Untravell’d World, made on the uninhabited West coast of Jura, Inner Hebrides, and Made Unmade, a major multi-channel installation work made while working in the deserts of Libya and Namibia, recently exhibited at Dovecot Studios, Edinburgh and The Wapping Project, London.
www.juliebrook.com
Made Unmade at Dovecot Studios
The Scotsman – made unmade at Dovecot studios, byMoira Jeffrey
The Land Art of Julie Brook – White Review
Susan Mansfield on Julie Brook in The Scotsman, 9 May, 2013
Julie Brook: Minimalist, Muscular, Monastic, Magical – p.134-143, Elephant Magazine
3.10pm: Duncan Reekie: Don’t Dream it Do It
The last ten years has seen an exponential expansion of an alternative cinema outside the established institutions of both the commercial industry and the institutions of the State. Underground film clubs, D.I.Y. Filmmaking, Pop Up cinemas and local free film festivals are transforming the cinema experience for both audiences and filmmakers. Whilst the key driver of this alternative culture has been the development of cheap digital video technology and online networking, it must also be understood in the context of a struggle for ‘Independence’ initiated in the radical counterculture of the 1960′s. This talk will attempt to contextualise the new independent cinema and explore it’s radical agency.
Speaker Biography:
Duncan Reekie is an underground filmmaker, film activist and author of Subversive: The Definitive History of Underground Cinema. He has organised numerous underground film screenings and counter-cultural film events throughout the UK and Europe, including The Exploding Cinema Collective and the annual VOLCANO!! No Budget Film and Video Festival between 1996 and 1999. He initiated and co-produced the collaborative underground feature Maldoror, which toured extensively throughout Europe and America.
www.duncanreekie.co.uk
Maldoror
Exploding Cinema
Retrospective at London Underground Film Festival
4.05pm: Jennifer Armitage: Beyond the Cinema
Artists moving image is a vital and thriving artform in Scotland. While traditionally considered under a visual arts banner, it is increasingly relevant to narrative film as it pushes the boundaries and expectations of the industry and asks new questions of audiences. But how is an artform that crosses these boundaries supported and celebrated in a national context? This talk will discuss historical and current support for artists working in moving image, explore the opportunities for development and presentation of work in Scotland, and consider how artists can build the relationships that will help them develop their practice.
Speaker Biography:
Jennifer Armitage is Development Officer at Creative Scotland, Scotland’s national arts funding body. Specialising in film, she previously worked as Market Development Executive for Scottish Screen and as Education Manager at Glasgow Film Theatre.
4.40pm: Robert Todd : Film as Art – For Love or No Money?
The processes and politics of “experimental” filmmaking are continually shifting amidst developing technologies and sites/sources of appreciation, making it difficult (but possibly exciting) for the film artist to navigate the world of making and showing such work – What kinds of discourse surround “experimental” work at any given NOW? How can “experimental” filmmakers engage meaningfully in those conversations, or effectively begin new ones? What venues are considered “prime” for the field? What formats are considered “acceptable” quality for these? What constitutes the range of expenses and income that one might expect of this kind of work?…the range of practical questions seems to extend to the horizon. This talk will focus as simply as it can on the interface between the lover of film-artmaking and the infrastructure that claims to support it.
Speaker Biography:
Robert Todd is an experimental filmmaker based in the USA. Currently film professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches film production, his work has been widely screened internationally, including Media City Festival, San Francisco International Film Festival, Rotterdam International Film Festival, New York Film Festival and many others. His films have won numerous festival prizes, grants, and artist’s awards.
www.roberttoddfilms.com
Emmerson College
Robert Todd at the Underground Film Journal
7.00pm: FILM SCREENING
Scottish and international filmmakers will screen short films and film extracts, talking about their methods of production and the ideas behind them. The screening will feature several of the filmmakers participating in this year’s festival. Full details of participants will be announced before the festival.
