This programme moves from films in which sound and image are thought of together, synchronised, (that is sound and image related in the way we know them to be, experientially), through a slight slipping of that relationship (in John Smith’s masterful and much loved The Girl Chewing Gum) and ending with a complete disjunction: we’re seeing something, but hearing something else; they all in some way progress towards an 80 year-old idea of the sound image relationship, which is as relevant today as it was then.

In a 1928 essay Sergei Eisenstein set out a number of theories for radical montage, including a theory of vertical montage, of jarring sound and image events placed on top of each other, synchronously in order to create a kind of filmic chord, of multiple meanings played together.

Hollis Frampton’s (nostalgia) is sets up exactly this situation, in which you the viewer are thrown into three temporal spaces at once: recalling what was said 2 minutes ago, relating it to what is now seen, imagining what will be seen in the immediate future. It’s a sophisticated yet simple example of how what is heard and what is seen can be contrasted to create a chord, a third temporal/ mental space, a synthesis of both sound and image.

For the screening of (nostalgia) in London, we’re lucky enough to be able to present the piece with a live narration by Michael Snow*, who provided the original narration in 1971, and so route the film even more directly in the past, the here and now, and the immediate future. A one off interpretation of one of the 20th century’s masterpieces of experimental film: don’t go and miss it now.

*Check out a forthcoming exhibition of work by Michael Snow opening at the BFI on December 5th 2008 (runs till Feb 1st 2009).