A screening of four films by Peter Gidal followed by the launch of the publication Flare Out: Aesthetics 1966–2016, a collection of the artist’s writings on film, art and aesthetics. Gidal was a central figure during the formative years of the London Film-Makers’ Co-op and made some of its most radical works. His cinema is anti-narrative, against representation and fiercely materialist, and his writings are similarly polemical and unique. This programme presents a selection of four films from 1968–2013.
After the screening there will be a Q&A with Peter Gidal and Mark Webber, followed by the book launch of Flare Out: Aesthetics 1966–2016, edited by Mark Webber and Peter Gidal, published by The Visible Press.
Films
Assumption
Peter Gidal, 1997, 16mm, colour, sound, 1 minute
Assumption features glimpses of life at the London Film-Makers’ Co-op; but it is more than a potted history of an organisation. It pays tribute to Mary Pat Leece, a founding member of Four Corners Film Workshop and a teacher at Chelsea and Saint Martin’s Schools of Art, one of the true innovators of the independent film sector. With its virtuoso editing, voice-overs and scrolling titles, it works as a densely-plotted celebration of independent film culture at the end of the 1990s.
Key
Peter Gidal, 1968-69, 16mm, colour, sound, 10 minutes
‘A slow zoom-out and image dissolve (defocus) of … (+feedback sound).’
Kopenhagen/1930
Peter Gidal, 1977, 16mm, b/w, silent, 40 minutes
‘Kopenhagen/1930, presents a different attitude to the seductions of content, to the signifying processes that are repressed in the rigorous procedures of the Structural/Materialist film. Its material is ‘images by George Gidal, Copenhagen 1930’: photographs, their grounding and their signification.’
not far at all
Peter Gidal, 2013, 16mm, colour, sound, 15 minutes
‘First film in 5 years, tempted to say different yet the same, but not. not far at all’s soundtrack, just for the record, is concrete/abstract without language.’