i n t i m a t e   j o u r n e y s

Films suggesting journeys independently travelled and intimately filmed. Tonight's programme brings a variety of ideas and expressions unique to each individual filmmaker's experience, on the theme of a personal journey.

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there will be more films added to this programme for the screening at Cogcollective.

Ooni Peh
IN TRANSIT
6min  1994  super-8

Shot on super 8 in and around a busy intersection. Journeys traced in light, puncturing the dark.
Soundtrack: Steven Ball
- Ooni Peh

The film begins with a stream of traffic emphasized by the soundtrack like river flowing. Images of plastered poster walls by the side of the roads and arches under a train bridge. The occasional cars are secondary to the visual melody of lines on the streets.
Lights from the street lamps and vehicles come alive in the film. It is as if they scratch over the soundtrack, creating delays and stretching it.
Filmed at night, in black and white, this motorway reveals itself enigmatically through a personal point of view.
- Lynn Loo
(see Railway)

Images of a young couple on a sunlit train. Variations in light and colour affect our understanding of what we see.
Shot in super 8, optically printed to 16mm film and digitally edited .
- Guy Sherwin

Simple gestures, motion of the train, an enclosed setting, repetition - all contribute to a rich sensibility. As the viewer, we may envisage a space we're invited to share, we may feel a closeness with the protaganists. Or we may be wary of the film's gaze, as unobstrusive as that may be, we may desire a more cynical point of view. Is this romanticism overload?
The film reminds me of haiku poetry, in that a few well chosen images are able to convey a depth of meaning. It does not simply suspend a notion, it offers reassurance.
- Ooni Peh (see IN TRANSIT)

Guy Sherwin and Lynn Loo
UNTITLED (MAYA and PAUL)
5min 2005 silent super-8

Victric Thng
MOONLY
3min  2003  DV

a short piece about loss and misses. - Victric Thng

Crescent Moon.
To run after that which one cannot catch up with.
Loneliness.
Resurgence of the memory.
The fantomatic presence of the absent one.
To be fulled by silences and quietly.
To be empty of other's presence.
To be fulled up by absences.
The absence of the other which gave meanings of the everyday life.
The absence of the other that give meanings of the everyday life.
The impossibility of the mourning.
To remember your birthday.
"happy birthday to you, the one I loved (my fantom) happy birthday to you, the one I love (my sorrow)"
- Jean-Gabriel Périot (see DIES IRAE)

The film shows the view from the train out of Charing Cross Station looking over the Thames. The filming is repeated over and over, over time so we get differing views: boats turning etc. It was inspired by my journey to teach at Goldsmiths College. Now I would like the process to be repeated over and over ad infinitum, perhaps the finished film could be projected onto the side of the Royal Festival Hall, journey's end? - Paul Martin

Shot on Super 8 film in subtle greys, black and white. We are on a train
crossing Charing Cross railway bridge. Steel girders flash by in dynamic
rhythm; it¹s a journey that London commuters make every day. The film
also repeats - each time with variations: a heavy barge moves slowly
upstream, a patch of sun lights up the carriage, we glimpse a reflection of the
filmmaker.
There are similarities in train and film. The carriage window is the
frame. Marks and scratches on the glass are also on the film surface. Huge
girders shut out our view, releasing patches of river, and we have to construct
its image from fragments.
The film is in part homage to things mechanical - the train, the bridge,
and the physical medium of film.
- Guy Sherwin

Paul Martin
THE THAMES FROM CHARING CROSS BRIDGE - A STUDY
6min  1993  silent  super- 8

Lynn Loo
RAILWAY
5min  2005  DV

The film looks at both the interior and exterior of the train car, sometimes existing together in reflections. Scenes from the windows pass through plains, trees, train stops, commuters, conductors, roads, traffic, towns and villages of Malaysia before we arrive at the familiar skyline of Kuala Lumpur.
In this trip, my mother came with me to Kuala Lumpur. It was an intimate time we spent with each other not knowing when we will next meet. - Lynn Loo

The 'narrative' of this piece seems to embody the linear logic of train travel itself. The detail; reflections in the windows, a train attendant in the corridor, people in the carriage, and the varied landscape are a counterpoint to the lingering, almost dreamy focus on the filmmaker's 'subject'; who is quietly observed, absorbed in her journey.

The journey plays with a sense of real time although we know that time has been subtly adjusted only by the various changes in Loo's observed 'subject'. We watch the film maker observe the details of a time spent on a train from Singapore to Malaysia, in which her   focal character, gazes from the window, or sleeps, or reads. Is this an   hommage, an older Asian woman, so rarely a focal figure in western cinema, a woman who is silently immersed in her own world, her voice replaced by the mundane train announcement that seems ceaseless?

Are we being asked to ride this train and engage with a minimalist narrative? Are we being asked a question, told a story? Or are we riders on the rhythm of a lyrical poem, lulled by an unfamiliar, almost surreal sense of a journey, that seems to place itself midway between a poem and a document?

- Ruth Novaczek
  (see 50/50)

Set in New York and London, 50/50 is about a relationship.
A reflection on love gone wrong and dual responsibility; an argument, a separation and the nature of love are explored in images and text. Set to two themes from Thelonious Monk.

50 / 50 chronicles a journey from London into New York City with the voice-over narration of a failed relationship: "You weren't good to me, but then I wasn't good to you, if I remember rightly, if I remember at all ".
After brief views of leaving London and the flight we see views of New York from the car ride into the city: bridges, buildings, trucks, shadows all in a rhythmic sequence. Interspersed we see the two lovers, in the street, on the subway, close up.
Over the film the narrator tells of their relationship: "we got into whether you were pushed or whether you jumped or who pushed who first, if there ever is a first, if it isn't always 50-50". It's a dual responsibility."I wasn't so good to you, but then you weren't so sweet to me". The rhythm of the film, the rhythm of the narration, the rhythm of the music (by Thelonius Monk).
- Paul Martin (see THE THAMES FROM CHARING CROSS BRIDGE - A STUDY)

Ruth Novaczek
50/50
5min  1998  DV

Jean-Gabriel Pierot
DIES IRAE
10min  2005  DV

Remember
That I am the cause of your journey
Don't leave me on that way

From an interview: " Dies Irae - is part of a requiem prayer. I used it because this text is about destruction, the end of the world. The one who prays ask to another one (god) to rescue him or if not to remember him. It's for that I used it, because this movie is about destruction, death, and the need to remember. I used the first sentence, an extract of the prayer because it contains two people: the one who asks to remember his death and the one who has to remember.
Like in the film, first we are the one who travels till the deadly end, and then in a second movement, we are the one looking at the death of the first, and because we asked why this end, we become a witness." - Jean-Gabriel Piérot

Dies Irae - is like of a meditative visual poetry. Static, motion, stationary, speed, all juxtaposed with one another with haunting music. A sense of displacement in a visual interpretation of seeking and searching. A mesmerising lonely journey.
- Victric Thng (see MOONLY)