FINE PAIN in 16mm
LOMAA presents a selection of 16mm films by Canadian artists exploring the extreme possibilities of the medium through intense image manipulation, at times to the point of near abstraction. Emulsions are boiled and battered, toned and tinted, optically printed and handprocessed in alternative photochemical concoctions, combining multiple projections for a wildly immersive experience that expands the artists’ unique visual expressions.
7:15pm start time / admission by donation
buffalo lifts (Christina Battle, 2004, 3 min., silent, 16mm)
A yellow and black and green daydream of the buffalo herd as it travels across a stretch of broken emulsion. The image of the buffalo was produced by boiling the original pictures and resettling them onto a new length of film (a process called “emulsion lifting,” hence the title). [Mike Hoolboom, 2007]
Never a Foot Too Far, Even (Daïchi Saïto, 2012, 14 min., sound, dual-16mm)
Appropriating a brief fragment from an old Kung Fu movie, ‘Never a Foot Too Far, Even’ is an action movie without action. The film focuses on an obscure figure finding himself in a forest path, caught between perpetual motion and stasis. The painterly images fluctuate in the complex shifting of colour and texture, phasing in and out through a polymetric structure. It is a perceptual journey without destination in the turning sphere of ever-changing image and sound, whose beginning and end move in parallel towards a fleeting point of convergence. With original sound composition by Malcolm Goldstein. [Daïchi Saïto, 2012]
Fine Pain (Carl Brown, 1999, 58min., sound, dual-16mm)
This two-screen dual projector film extends Brown’s use of chemically tortured celluloid to the breaking point. A collaboration with his long-time sound colleague John Kamevaar, ‘Fine Pain’ is an extended dialogue between image and sound – like a prolonged riff of free jazz between two masters. The discordant tensions of this film will keep you on the very edge of your seat, astonish you with the mesmerizing range of colour and abstraction and the over-modulated sound vibrations. [Pleasure Dome program notes, Toronto, March 2000]
total duration: 75 minutes + intermission
Initially from Edmonton (AB), Christina Battle is currently based in London (ON). She has a B.Sc. with specialization in Environmental Biology from the University of Alberta, a certificate in Film Studies from Ryerson University and a MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Her film, video and installation works are often inspired by the role of official and non-official archives, our notions of evidence and explore themes of history and counter-memory, political mythology and environmental catastrophe. She has exhibited internationally in festivals and galleries and is a contributing editor to INCITE Journal of Experimental Media and a co-conspirator of the media arts exhibition series ‘Nothing To See Here’.
Originally from Japan, Daïchi Saïto is a filmmaker working principally on Super-8, 16mm and 35mm formats. After studying philosophy in the US and Hindi and Sanskrit in India, he turned to filmmaking in Montreal, where he currently resides. He is co-founder of the Double Negative Collective, a Montreal-based artist filmmaking group dedicated to the exhibition and production of experimental cinema. His films have been widely exhibited in major film festivals, museums, galleries and cinematheques worldwide.
Carl E. Brown (b.Toronto, 1959) is a canadian filmmaker, photographer and writer. After two years at the University of Toronto where he studied philosophy and psychology, he decided to study filmmaking, completed in 1982 at Sheridan College. He’s created nearly twenty films which have been screened in many festivals in America, Europe and Asia, and were part of the retrospective ‘Experience chromatiques le cinema contemporain’ at the Louvre in 1995.
LOMAA wishes to thank the London Arts Council for their ongoing financial support, making both this event and future screenings possible.