Workshop programme 2
Tuesday 14 July 2015, 10:00am
Studio 174
174 Harbour St
Kingston, Jamaica
Workshop programme 2: Poetry
Mile End Purgatorio | Guy Martin Doyle | UK 1991 | Video | 1min 25sec
Film For Tom | Stephen Connolly | UK 2005 | Video | 12min 12sec
Blight | John Smith | UK 1996 | Video | 14min 25sec
As part of an educational training scheme at Studio 174 in Kingston Jamaica, structured as a twofold artists’ residency and summer school, we were invited to participate with six curated artists’ film programmes. Young people from the downtown area of Kingston worked together with students from the University of the West Indies and resident artists on a series of artistic works in various disciplines, including filmmaking, painting, radio, sound art, and photography. The workshops were organised by Openvizor and lead by resident artists Anton Kats and The Rainbow Collective.
The programmes curated by Minou Norouzi were organized thematically. To reflect the interests of the participants we made a selection based on six keywords: dreams, poetry, portrait, music, history, and performance, around which we structured the programmes.
Mile End Purgatorio | Guy Martin Doyle | UK 1991 | Video | 1 min 25s
This work represents a collaboration between filmmaker and poet responding to tensions between film and the spoken word. The scene is a parade of shops in Grove Rd., Mile End, London: the voice a male mid-life crisis. Shop fronts and other images provoke and externalise the many themes of conflict. Biblical and literary allusions reinforce the humour and sense of anxiety. M.D
Film For Tom | Stephen Connolly | UK 2005 | Video | 12 min 12s
A lyrical homage to a friend and formative influence. Tom is eloquent and effusive, yet finds no resolutions to the issues that haunt him.
Yet to whom is he speaking and how – is his speech a lecture or a conversation? How do we understand the domestic space shown – is it home or the scene of a crime?
Blight | John Smith | UK 1996 | Video | 14 min 25s
Blight was made in collaboration with the composer Jocelyn Pook. It revolves around the building of the M11 Link Road in East London, using images and sounds of demolition and road building in conjunction with the spoken words of local residents. But although the film is constructed from images and sounds of real events, Blight exploits the ambiguities of its material to produce new meanings and metaphors, fictionalizing reality through framing and editing strategies. The emotive power of music is used in the film to overtly aid this invention. It played at many film festivals including Oberhausen and Leipzig. In 2013 John Smith won the prestigious Jarman Award. He lives and works and still teaches in London.