My vimeo page
My Vimeo Page is http://vimeo.com/gillianmciver/albums
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RIP AMOS VOGEL 29|04|2012
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I have a more sustained film blog on Cinemania but sometimes, every so often I pop over here and write something about a film – a film I’ve made or a film I’ve liked – and today it’s the THIS IS ENGLAND series of films by Shane Meadows.
I don’t know if Meadows needs any introduction but if so he can do it himself http://www.shanemeadows.co.uk/who.htm as he’s such a fascinating guy.
I love his films and I think that apart from the sheer quality of them – the casting and acting, the writing, the cinematography etc – the things that is so wonderful and so utterly unique is that he makes films about totally normal, ordinary people. Normal working people dealing with the real things in their lives, sometimes extraordinary and dreadful things and sometimes ordinary things and sometimes wonderful things. Meadows manages to make it all completely real, empathetic, never manipulative, honest. Yet totally gripping.
So this post is just to say “thanks” to Shane Meadows and his people, for just keeping on making brilliant work.
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part one of my COLD WAR project
“Project Gagarin: A Cold War Nostalgia” shown at Gallery Mavena in Zadar, Croatia for the exhibition REVOLUTION NOW AND FOREVER
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still from Crossings: Gleim Tunnel
exhibited at “Creature” show of video art, 10 Gales Gallery London
FILMS ABOUT CITIES
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read this: film art download pdf
Film as a Subservient Art | By Celluloid Liberation Front, 8 December 2009
Film as a Subservient Art link
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Alain Resnais
recently I saw Muriel ou le temps d’un retour dir Alain Resnais. A strange and at times mystifying film, but deeply deeply moving. Resnais’s films never fail to haunt me. Again, an example of an artist who knows how to alter his audience’s consciousness through his work. See it.
Resnais is old now, and won’t make many more films. Dennis Hopper just died. Though nothing connects these two, their position as independent film makers and independent spirits, makes them part of the living fire of 20th century art. Resnais is the better artist of course, but Hopper was the radical man the world most needed in that hour. I am sad to see him go and afraid for cinema’s artistic future.
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La Mort toujours – film still
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Recent Film Highlights
Such a weird film: Night of the Hunter by Charles Laughton. So odd. Visually stunning but creepy in a way I haven’t seen before.
London Film Festival 2009 – Sarah Turner’s digital film Perestroika (I saw this twice and enjoyed it even more the second time).
Peter Campus at the BFI 2009
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still from Mosti: the bridges of St Petersburg
My current Classic Film Highlights
Orson Welles’s Macbeth
Nick Roeg’s Don’t Look Now
The Battle for Algiers dir. Gillo Pontecorvo; cinematographer Marcello Gatti
The Agnes Varda Collection I and II DVDs
Amarcord Fellini
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I have a youtube space where some of my short pieces are streamed, plus a few clips from longer pieces. The new stuff isn’t on there so contact me if you are interested in the longer films, or in Tarkovsky’s River.
http://www.youtube.com/user/v1de0art
above: another still from La Mort Toujours
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TARKOVSKY’S RIVER
A slide show of still photos, Tarkovsky’s River which forms the first part of the film, was featured at the Format Photography Festival in March 2009 – the theme was Photocinema. The event was in the Quad media arts centre in Derby, in the Midlands, and featured photographic work by David Lynch, William Egglestone, Gregory Crewdson, Jonas Mekas, Simon Roberts and others. Tarkovsky’s River is actually a work in several parts: the photos themselves which number over 100 35mm slides (The worst job ever is scanning 100+ slides at maximum quality!), digital video and a literary text. For Format, because it would have been impossible to show more than a tiny selection of prints, I decided to edit all the photos into slideshow. I then used the first part of the text as a voiceover. The success of this approach meant that I now had two moving image works to deal with: the digital video and the slideshow. I then made the Tarkovsky’s River film using both still and moving images.
About the film:
“Tarkovsky’s River” is about a journey into landscape, into the deep heart of a place where the river is as wide as a sea, where skies are vast and where often time seems to have stood still. It is about a journey into memory, not a personal memory but a collective one, holding within it a sense of the interconnectedness of man and the natural world. The landscape is old, lived in, sentient – yet never pretty, never tamed.
Andrei Tarkovsky’s vision is in this landscape. The work as a whole is about my journeys along the river, attempting to find Tarkovsky’s own inspiration in the landscape, and finding instead – something else.
The photographs number about 150 and were taken during visits over several years, to the upper Volga region. The photographs capture the steady elements of daily life in the remote areas of the region. Creaking wooden houses; a child looks into a mirror; cattle drink from the river; simple hospitality; bread is delivered, and so forth.
The work is not “about Tarkovsky” but is about the journey and the experience of being in the same place, and taking inspiration from the same landscape. And about going beyond that specific place and into a deeper sense of the land, and of time itself, which is where Tarkovsky takes us.
“Tarkovsky’s River” bring together still and moving images that document the journey along Tarkovsky’s river, the Volga, during several different trips.
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Postindustrial Baroque
Postindustrial Baroque, shown 2-screen
15 min running time
Postindustrial Baroque - text
Postindustrial Baroque collects together a series of mysterious explorations and excavations of derelict, deserted and decaying places in different cities. Filmed in London, Berlin, St Petersburg, Zurich and Belfast – to name a few.
Text by Gillian McIver
Cinematography by Gillian McIver, Ben Foot, Julian Ronnefeldt, Valentina Floris
Edited by Valentina Floris
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2008 Film Highlights
Camerimage Festival 2008 - Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle, DoP Anthony Dod Mantle); Appaloosa (Ed Harris, DoP Dean Semler)
Raindance Festival – saw Peter Greenaway’s new film Nightwatching (DoP Reiner van Brummeln)
London Film Fest 2008 – Ibrahim El-Batout’s Ain Shams / Eye of the Sun (DoP Heham Farouk)
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PLACES
[THE FIRST] EXPERIMENTAL CITY [BELFAST], a five-minute experimental documentary about the imminent transformation of Belfast, made in 2005, is available to view on VideoArt.Net
http://www.videoart.net/home/Artists/VideoPage.cfm?Artist_ID=2034&ArtWork_ID=2476&Player_ID=9
If you are interested in my DVD “Places” please email me.
“Places” is a collection of short films about unusual places on the global landscape.. Places that are powerful, holding within them history, memories, stories, images… Influenced by both Gaston Bachelard and Henri Lefebvre, the works investigate the physical and human spaces of cities and the legends or myths that surround them
(The First) Experimental City (Belfast)
MOSTI, the bridges of St Petersburg )
The House on Sadovaya Street
La Mort Toujours
Europa ( with Luc Boisclair)
total running time 35 min
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By the way, I’m always interested in screening and exhibiting – but I am not prepared to pay submission fees. Point of principle. You can see my work online and make up your mind if you want to screen it. For stuff not online, email me.
