i n t i m a t e   j o u r n e y s  for CogCollective

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.

Cogcollective screening at Candid Arts London on Sept 3rd 2006 7pm.

Lynn Loo
FLOATING
2min 43sec   2005  DV
sound
USA/Singapore

Always moving, not belonging to one place. A short film put together with the super-8 footage I have filmed during my cross-country journey from the East of USA to the West. It is a diary, told in the form of images without dialogue - Lynn Loo

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  super- 8
silent  
UK

Gad Hollander
STORY OF LOVERS ON A TRAIN
2min 43sec   2005  DV
sound
UK

The predominant image of this work is a night-time view of a landscape shot through a train window. A series of inter-titles and a selection of cutaway shots from various sources combine to create the “story” of the title. A different set of inter-titles over the same image-sequence would produce a different story; conversely, the same inter-titles superimposed on another sequence of images would give us virtually the same “story” but in a different setting. Either way, the story is neither explicitly seen nor told but is a construct of our imagination that takes place off-camera and between the lines. What we see, hear and read is a collection of audio-visual elements rhythmically edited to suggest a plausible drama – a passion, a romance, a tragedy or even a farce.

Most of the footage was shot on DV in eastern Europe in the spring of 2000. The rest was shot on out-of-date B&W Super-8 stock as well as on DV in various locations including Moscow, London & Israel. Some of the edited material has been used in other recent works: Black Love and Midnight Horse (both 2005). - Gad Hollander

 

Shot on super 8 in and around a busy intersection. Journeys traced in light, puncturing the dark. Soundtrack by 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)

 

 

Ooni Peh
IN TRANSIT
6min  1994  super-8
sound
Australia

Victric Thng
MOONLY
3min  2003  DV
sound
Singapore

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)

Delhi express: 1997 I have been traveling a lot and I really love it. In these periods of traveling I always take a distance from the world and most of all I am confronted with myself. In Delhi express I see a projection of myself on the Indian landscape, with the sun as a gigantic video projector. - Jeroen Kooijmans

Jeroen Kooijmans
DELHI EXPRESS
3min  1997  DV
sound
Dutch/India

Ruth Novaczek
50/50
5min  1998  DV
sound
UK

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)

Shot on a train while traveling from Hua Lian to Taipei, Taiwan.

Guy Sherwin and Lynn Loo
SOLDIER ON LEAVE TRAVELLING HOME
6min  2004/2006  DV
sound
UK/Taiwan

Jean-Gabriel Pierot
DIES IRAE
10min  2005  DV
sound
France

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)

Residues of post trauma – places and journeys flicker past like tattered pockets of memory...

A cut up of fragments from Super 8 diaries spanning over fifteen years.  Opening with waves shot from the window of a moving train, an image of my daughter holding rowan berries is set against grainy black and white back lit images of barges in Rotterdam, slowed to 2fps.  Blood red poppies shift to ruins of Dresden's Frauenkirche and whirlpools in the River Elbe.  Crown v. Casson.  Charred bodies are strewn on the ground.  Night shots of the 1945 bombing of Dresden and FEUERSTURM ÜBER HAMBURG (Hamburg Fires) cut in.  Station latticework.  Flooded fields.  The train leaves Dresden in the evening light.  Icy winter branches are silhouetted against the sky like paint strokes.  The trial of the woman who attacked me is looming.  Away from this collective memory and fear, black and white images from my first Super 8 reel, jostle with colour images from the present.  A child runs past the apple tree in my mother's garden in winter.  Summer fruit ripens on an Italian hillside.  Darryn sleeps.  He has diagnosed HIV+.  Dark streets of Perugia.  He has his problems.  The train to Siracusa.  I have mine.  Music by Simon Fisher Turner.  World War II archive footage, courtesy of the Imperial War Museum, London.  7272 print stock donated by Kodak.

The Super 8 diaries and 35mm IWM archive film were optically re-mastered onto 16mm fine grain internegative for an experimental feature film, EYE DRIFT, which never got made. - Anna Thew

(no image)

Anna Thew
FRAGMENTS OF EYE DRIFT
10min  16mm Double-screen  
sound on seperate cassette
UK