Our staple form of communication dissected.

Includes: a £20 note, stock fluctuations, an examination of words in the video medium, a linguistic challenge for your mind, a frame by frame dissection 50 words, shop front poetry, image and language head to head and newspapers under the microscope. Some clips from a selection of the films are below.

Money, Dir. Emma Hart, UK, 2006, loop, 16mm

This short installation will run for 15 mins before the start of the film programme. Please come into the cinema to view the work.

Oscillation, Dir. Simo Rouhiainen, Finland, 2006 ,3 mins 48 secs, Beta SP

The stock prices on the New York Stock Exchange go down and generate sound (AV-arkki)

Gertrude Stein Film, Dir. William Moritz, USA, 1969, 9 mins, 2x16mm

There are two reels of film, the sound print is primary and should be shown alone or on the centre screen. The silent print should be shown on the wall or screen area to the left of the main image. Synchronization is not important, though the secondary left image should begin a bit earlier. Rose incense should be burning during projection. A film Gertrude Stein would make if she were alive today. A film about Time and Ritual, a film of contrasts and repetitions, a film about the making of Americans. (William Moritz)

Poem Field No. 2, Dir. Stan Vanderbeek, USA, 1966, 6 mins, 16mm

Computer Art Series are animated computer/graphic films. The series is called Poemfield. All of these films explore variations of poems, computer graphics, and in some cases combine live action images and animation collage; all are geometric and fast moving and in color. There are eight films in the computer animated art series. As samples of the art of the future all the films explore variations of abstract geometric forms and words. In effect these works could be compared to the illuminated manuscripts of an earlier age. Now typography and design are created at speeds of 100,000 decisions per second, set in motion a step away from “mental movies.” (Filmmakers Co-op)

Secondary Currents, Dir. Peter Rose, USA, 1982, 15 mins, 16mm

Secondary Currents is a film about the relationships between the mind and language. Delivered by an improbable narrator who speaks an extended assortment of nonsense, it is an ‘imageless’ film in which the shifting relationships between voice-over commentary and subtitled narration constitute a peculiar duet for voice, thought, speech, and sound. A kind of comic opera, the film is a dark metaphor for the order and entropy of language and has been the subject of a number of articles on the use of language in the arts. Percussion by Jim Meneses. (Lux)

Word Movie, Dir. Paul Sharits, USA, 1966, 4 mins, 16mm

50 words visually ‘repeated’ in varying sequential and positional relationships/spoken word soundtrack/structured, each frame being a different word or word fragment, so that the individual words optically-conceptually fuse into one 3 and three quarter minute long word. Voices on soundtrack, Barbara and Robert Forth. (Lux)

Mile End Purgatorio, Dir. Guy Sherwin, Martin Doyle, UK, 1991, 1 min, 16mm

A one-minute hymn to the London Road via its shop-signs. A heady, rapid-fire brew of Dante, Shakespeare, the Bible and William Blake, its visual text is storefront correlated, its theme the crisis on the journey, its rhythms all of daily life, and celebratory in its observations of the seemingly known. (Gareth Evans – Filmwaves Magazine)

Neither a filmic illustration of the words of a poem, nor a poem about filmed images; it is a film-poem arising from an equal partnership between filmmaker and poet. (Martin Doyle)

Associations, Dir. John Smith, UK, 1975, 7 mins, 16mm

Images from magazines and colour supplements accompany a spoken text taken from ”Word Associations and Linguistic Theory” by Herbert H. Clark. By using the ambiguities inherent in the English language, Associations sets language against itself. Image and word work together/against each other to destroy/create meaning. (John Smith)

Newsprint 1, Dir. Guy Sherwin, UK, 1972, 5 mins, 16mm

A newspaper glued onto clear film is projected as audio-visual typography. A film made without a camera. For NEWSPRINT 1 I glued a Sunday newspaper onto clear 16mm film then punched out the clogged-up sprocket holes to enable the film to run through the projector. Later I shone a strong light through this ‘newspaper-film’ to copy it onto another strip of film. This shows up the letters and words clearly, which can also be heard as they pass over the sound-head in the projector. (Guy Sherwin)

Below are online links which you can use for reference. To see the films in their original glory, check with the distributor of the film for their terms and conditions.