Independent Film Show 13th edition, an international show dedicated to experimental cinema, anticipates the annual event on Thursday 27, Friday 28 and Saturday 29 June, planning the three programs and the two expanded cinema performances on the Museo Nitsch’s terrace.

The Independent Film Show focuses on the multiple processes that film/video-makers create to give structure to the intense relationships that exist between the devices used for projection and the interpretative participation of the audience. Past editions have often highlighted the special capabilities of experimental cinema, which does not impose a standardised view, but requires the spectator to watch with conscious application, in order to appreciate the intricate formal representations, the complex social codes, and extensive cognitive aspirations that extend beyond the screen. The immersive possibility of establishing direct contact with independent cinematic philosophies and highlighting the alternatives and innovations that subvert the logic of the standard production is the key to the approach required to access these complex visual patterns. The interference of the lights of the milieu, the position of the projectors, the reflective quality of the screen, the line of vision and its position within the field of vision contribute to the creation of the film, and it is at the moment that the viewer becomes aware of the solidity of the photons, which impress upon his gaze and envelop the body, that the cognitive process able to form complex mental structures is activated.

LUX Presents - Messages: Guy Sherwin / Alan Wilkinson / John Edwards / Steve Noble
Tuesday 23rd February 2010, 8pm
Café Oto, Ashwin St, Dalston, E8 3DL, UK
Tickets: £5

A night of film and music to celebrate the publication of a new LUX book/DVD Guy Sherwin: Messages.

3 films/3 musicians:
- Filter Beds, 16mm film / John Edwards, bass
- Flight, 16mm film / Steve Noble, drums
- Views from Home Reviewed, digital video/ Alan Wilkinson, saxophone

followed by a session of Edwards/Noble/Wilkinson.

Close-up: Histories of the Avant-Garde Part III
January 26th 2009, 20h
The Working Men’s Club, 44-46 Pollard Row, E2 6NB, London. Ticket: £5/£3 Close-Up members
Doors open at 7.45 pm
Presented by Close-Up and The Dog Movement

PASSAGE THROUGH: A RITUAL by Stan Brakhage + MUSICAL STAIRS by Guy Sherwin

A chance to see one of Brakhage’s most important sound films for the first time in London alongside Guy Sherwin’s Optical Sound film Musical Stairs.

Parts 1 and 2 of Histories of the Avant-Garde looked at the resolutely, intensely silent Brakhage film Riddle of Lumen and Guy Sherwin’s Short Film Series. Part 3 enters the world of sound with these two filmmkakers and also looks forward to Part 4 in February, which will be examining music’s manifold relationship to Film with five American masters.

Brakhage’s relationship to sound was complex. It took an almost indirect collaboration with the composer Phillip Corner to fulfill Brakhage’s desire for a way of giving equal importance to music and image whilst keeping them parallel, distinct experiences. Long passages of black with Corner’s music are cut with silent flashes of colour photography culled from Brakhage’s ‘rejected’ footage. Meditative and demanding but ultimately one of Brakhage’s most rewarding films.
Sherwin’s Musical Stairs has a method of production and structure that could be seen in opposition to Passage. Image is physically printed on to the optical sound track to create an seemingly absolute synthesis of sound and image.