LIGHT YEARS brings together a series of short films made on 8mm between 1968 and 1987 to create a single diary film in 25 sections with its own narrative arc as a bildungsroman or story of self-education.

Between 2015 and 2018 this material was digitized, reduced and re-edited, and voice-over and sound added. LIGHT YEARS draws inspiration from the American Underground films reaching Britain at the time, and seeks to emulate the qualities of the diary, making the personal public and re-envisioning the world.

“Approaching the Exquisite Corpus” was an alternative title we considered for this DVD release. It would have indicated how the films introduced here from my early Super 8 phase already evidence an artistically consistent path leading to my most recent production to date, The Exquisite Corpus, and highlighted my endeavor since the 1980s to make the specific qualities of the analog film medium sensuously tangible in the form of “exquisite ecstasies”.

This epic documentary subtly introduces the complex world view of iconic filmmaker and theoretician Peter Kubelka (born 1934, Vienna). While Kubelka's radical and pioneering body of films is a highly condensed work of about an hour focussing on the essence of cinema, his legendary lectures often unfold over many hours. These lectures on "what is cinema" and "cooking as an art form" are frequently illuminated by the presentation of archaeological objects from Kubelka's eclectic collection. He considers his ongoing collecting to be an expanded film practice which explores the evolution of humanity. Martina Kudlácek has carefully woven an open-ended portrait which goes beyond the biographical to reveal fresh insights into the phenomenon of film.

The Loop Collective is a group of independent media artists formed in 1996 to develop a public platform integrating experimental film and video with other art forms. We program and produce works for presentation through exhibitions and events in both traditional and non-traditional spaces. Our mission is to explore the roots of experimental film and video by creating a dialogue with other art media. We strive to promote experimental film and video for critical engagement by cultivating relations among different artistic communities. The Loop Collective has presented gallery installations, screenings, and artist talks by renowned figures including Michael Snow, Chris Welsby, Christian Lebrat, Carolee Schneemann, and Jósef Robakowski. Programmes of films by Loop members have screened at venues including The National Film Board of Canada (Toronto), Cinema Parallele (Montreal), Winnipeg Cinematheque, NASCAD (Halifax), Club SAW (Ottawa), The Factory (Hamilton), Leeds International Film Festival (United Kingdom), and the 2010 Canadian Retrospective at EXiS Festival, (Diagonal Film Archive, Seoul).