Darklight DVD

DARKLIGHT Compendium Vol.1
Animation.Film.Art.Design.

The Darklight Festival is Ireland's premier festival for filmmakers, animators and artists who use contemporary filmmaking techniques. Since its inception in 1999, Darklight has brought new and exciting work to Irish and international audiences through cinema, exhibition, touring, networks and performance.

The Darklight programme focuses on work that challenges; concepts, visual aesthetic, narrative, access, methods of production and dialogue, work that pushes boundaries, displays creative excellence and creates new possibilities for the imagination.

Compendium Vol. 1 is a collection of animation, film and video works that we hope will inspire and entertain you. The selection varies from the sublime to the hilarious - abstract animation to live action short films.

When curating the compendium, we wondered how could we represent the essence of Darklight? How can we illustrate the diversity of the programme? So in Vol. 1 we decided to include works largely from
Darklight alumni, directors and artists who have contributed regularly to the festival programme over the years, we have included some new works and some favorites from past festivals.

New to the Darklight catalogue are celebrated artists Al and Al, whose work investigates the mysterious heart of technology. We also welcome Ruth Meehan with her award winning film 'And the Red Man Went Green'.

During Darklight Festival 2006 we are featuring work from the Electronic Arts Intermix catalogue. To accompany this we have included an excerpt from 'Sketches' by Steina and Woody Vasulka, 1970. The Vasulkas are pioneers of electronic image processing, and 'Sketches' illustrates some of the earliest experimentations with video manipulation.

This compendium of work spans across many disciplines, some pieces even redefine those boundaries; Delicious 9, Crab Salad, Desperate Optimists, Dog Media, David Phillips and Paul Rowley, Richard Fenwick, Glenn Marshall, Ruth Meehan, Robert Seidel, Tim Redfern, Al and Al and the Vasulkas. Each piece on this compendium has contributed to defining this era of filmmaking, seminal works from around the world, selected for your viewing pleasure.


Curated by Nicky Gogan, Gavin Murphy and Andrew Keogh.

Grau

Grau is a personal reflection on memories coming up during a car accident, where past events emerge, fuse, erode and finally vanish ethereally. Various real sources were distorted, filtered and fitted into a sculptural structure to create not a plain abstract, but a very private snapshot of a whole life within its last seconds.

The living paintings (Tableaux Vivants) of growing structures branch out over 10:01 minutes (a reference to the binary system by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, where he ascribes 1 to god and 0 to the devil) without ever reaching pure black or white respectively. Every element originates from real experiences and is adapted from my sketches, my own body fragments or scientific visualization methods. For example the first, still colored seconds are the prismatic halos of the collision fading into gray (grau in german) The musical framework connects the memories born out of the dramatic moment to clusters. These are unleashed from the image flux partially - to ease the desired, free associations of the beholder. www.grau1001.de

Born 1977 in Jena, Germany Robert Seidel studied at the Bauhaus Universität Weimar, and as an artist works in the field of organic-digital graphics.

Revolution

Joe Lawlor and Christine Molloy (desperate optimists) spent two years creating a series of films that capture different places and communities in daring long takes. Working with 35mm equipment, complex film rigs and environments, not to mention hundreds of extras and a propensity for working with both children and animals, they have generated a body of work that is both theatrical and deeply cinematic, experimental and highly accessible. Revolution is the third film in the series and is a technically astonishing circular shot that tracks over the activities at a community fete. All appears calm and well until dogs die, electricity cables cross, giant books topple and mayhem and chaos descend. Revolution involved 91 people from Lambeth in the shooting and was filmed on location at the YMCA on Stockwell Road during a sunny afternoon in September 2004.   Revolution was funded by Arts Council England. 

My Browser

My Browser is a short film about a man and his browser. A man realises his life coming to an end. He is looking back at a life in which his browser was the one thing he could always count on. Now that the end is coming ever closer, he has to say goodbye to his browser. He finds this very difficult. But the fact that his browser will stay behind to tell the world about him makes his departure a little easier.

My Browser was the winner of the 6th International Browserday held at Paradiso, Amsterdam .

Crabsalad is a small Motion Graphic Design and VFX Company in Amsterdam founded by Bob Stel, Laurens Orij and Merijn Verhagen. Apart from making all sorts of design work for film, TV and print, crabsalad every now and then makes short (fiction) films. Other films include I TRY NOT TO BREATHE, 2002 and De Twee Minuten Krabsalade 2003.

Naughtix  

Naughtix is a 'generative' video for an electronica track by Dublin duo Ambulance (Dunk+Trev). It is also a rare example of a audio-visual piece where the music and the visuals were composed simultaneously. Naughtix has come about as a result of Tim's unique approach to making realtime music visuals (i.e. 'VJing') using custom coded plug-ins for a free screen-saver program. Performing live, Tim uses a MIDI controller as well as audio + MIDI input from the music and short, minimalist footage alongside techniques such as video feedback to create improvised graphic projections. In the production of Naughtix, the process involved performing a number of 'takes' of the video to the finished track in realtime before finally editing conventionally. Naughtix uses the MIDI of the track to control the compositing of simple geometric elements with feedback- this creates a complex pseudo-3D landscape which also be considered a type of abstract music notation. The basic audio/visual combination of Naughtix arose unexpectedly while Dunk, Trev and Tim were jamming, and the final track is influenced by this visual discovery almost as the visuals are influenced by the music. Naughtix can also be performed live with unpredictable results.
   

Love Letter

Craig can't bare it any longer, he has to let Tracey, the girl of his dreams, know that he exists... Staking out her place of work - the local supermarket- Craig waits for her to turn up for her daily shift. Then, heartfelt and unspoken he delivers his all-important letter. Now all he has to do is wait. Set in a supermarket, Love Letter is a bittersweet drama about two teenagers' unrequited love. Stars Jaime Winstone, Daniel Appleby and Nicola Blackwell.

  To date Richard Fenwick has directed critically acclaimed music videos for some of the very best bands around - including Death in Vegas, Funeral For A Friend, Teenage Fanclub, Bent and Timo Maas. Fenwick has also received nominations for several directing awards, including best new director at the CADS and the Kinsale awards (2001 and 2002 respectively) and best music video at the MTV Dance/Dancestar awards (Timo Maas, 2002) and the Rushes Short Film Festival (Funeral For a Friend, 2004).

http://www.richardfenwick.com

Microfiche: Diamond Trade    

On the night of the 27th of April, 1974, members of an IRA gang stole nineteen paintings from Russborough House worth a total of £8 million, including works by Gainsborough, Vermeer, and Velásquez. The gang demanded the return of Irish Republican prisoners, and £500,000 in ransom. Police recovered the paintings a week later, and arrested the ringleader, an Englishwoman, Dr. Rose Dugdale.  

The genealogy of the event is re-traced using the outdated library microfiche system. Images from news reports are edited in a sequence of pairings that enables us to piece together the break in while on the soundtrack, the drama of the robbery is re-enacted.  

Of interest here in this exercise in spectatorship is the history of exchanges; European art masterpieces (bought with profits from diamond mining in South Africa ) are traded for political prisoners, and later bargaining chips for negotiations with the state.      

David Phillips and Paul Rowley have been working together collaboratively since 1998, primarily with film, video installation and sound. Their work shows in exhibitions and festivals all over the world. www.condensate.net  

The Confession Sessions

The Confession Sessions' is a satirical 20-minute comedy that follows a lonely aphetic character around the churches of Dublin while he smuggles a camera into his confessions in an attempt to impress a string of priests with lies about his self-declared exciting life. Unaware of the camera, the priests offer some controversial words of wisdom to our characters dilemmas. The show ultimately comes full circle as the character finally confesses his one and only sin, that he is an actor who is recording his confessions on video camera.

Dogmedia Productions are an independent production company formed in 2003. Working primarily in digital format, Dogmedia have made numerous productions to date including documentaries, short fiction films, radio work, sketch comedy, animations and model making & are also involved in live music/visual performances with two Dublin-based groups. Dogmedias members have a background in graphic arts, music, retail video purchasing, and video production. Dog Media comprise of Andrew Keogh. Ger Staunton, Gary Bermingham, Andy Travers and Tim Hood. The bulk of Dogmedia's output is predominately created in-house however some projects have been collaborations.

Stars

Stars tells a tragic story of Sophie an ill young woman who experiences synesthetic hallucinations. Using animation the film constructs a dual reality between our perception and the woman's altered perception of reality through treatment induced hallucinations. The film uses the concept of synesthesia (a condition where one sense is confused with another) to explore our inner relationship with the outer world. This allows the film to visualise Sophie's fears and dreams, eventually leading the viewer into a place where neither life nor death exists. The film was first shot using live action with actors, the footage edited and used as both the storyboard and animation reference for the film. The style of the film switches from 2D rotoscoped animation to fully rendered CGI to motion graphics in order to reflect the experience of the characters. 'Stars' is an emotionally driven film dealing with themes that have traditionally been the subject of live action. The implementation of the actors performances and the animated world add the emotional weight needed to drive such a theme. It is the first film from Delicious 9 director Eoghan Kidney.      
     

Butterfly

Butterfly is a journey from life to death and back. It is a kaleidoscope of colour, sound and movement that lies somewhere between art and entertainment, speaking eloquently and subtly of the cycle of life and the transience of the moment. Nothing lasts forever but there is always hope in beauty, form and harmony.  

Irish computer artist Glenn Marshall has been producing award winning experimental animation and documentary soundtracks for over ten years. His first short film 'Butterfly' won several awards in New York and has been screened internationally at over 30 festivals.  

Other works include 'The Drop' music video for Peter Gabriel, promo videos for Panasonic ( Japan ), Ninja Tune Records ( UK ).  

Glenn is currently developing his first feature film 'Bardo', with the Irish Film Board - an IMAX scale journey of spiritual rebirth through heaven, hell and earth, using ground breaking time-lapse 70mm photography and CGI.

Sketches

Steina and Woody Vasulka are major figures in video history, technical pioneers who have contributed enormously to the evolution of the medium and who continue to be major practitioners of video as art. The Vasulkas' technological investigations into analog and digital processes and their development of electronic imaging tools, which began in the early 1970s, place them among the primary architects of an expressive electronic vocabulary of image-making. Applying an informal, real-time spontaneity to their formalist, often didactic technical research, they chart the evolving formulation of a grammar and syntax of electronic imaging as they articulate a processual dialogue between artist and technology.  

The Vasulkas' early collaborative efforts, produced from 1970 to 1974, include phenomenological explorations that deconstruct the materiality of the electronic signal and analyze the imaging capabilities of video tools. Central to these increasingly complex exercises are explorations of the malleability of the image, the manipulation of electronic energy, and the interrelation of sound and image.  

In the mid-1970s the Vasulkas developed electronic tools specifically for use by artists, they developed the Digital Image Articulator, a device that allows the digital processing of video imagery in real-time.   

AL + AL

AL and AL met in a chance encounter whilst visiting Derek Jarman's garden in Dungeness in 1997.

Since graduating from Central Saint Martins in 2001, AL and AL have embarked on a journey in to the mysterious heart of technology. Building their own blue screen special effects studio in the east end of London , AL and AL have substituted reality with a computer-generated simulation. From this blue screen void AL and AL probe the infinite possibilities this technology offers and investigate the political, psycho sexual and mystical consequences of this seduction.

AL and AL perform all the characters, program all the computer simulations and create all of the sound in order for the works to contain an authorship which no other computer generated moving image desires to acquire. AL and AL occupy an innovative space in the development of this new form and how it may be applied to the language of contemporary fine art.

AL and AL's work has utilised a number of platforms including gallery exhibitions, site-specific installations, film festival cinema screenings and television broadcasts. AL and AL have received numerous awards from Arts Council England, Channel 4 television, Film London, ACAVA, ACME and the Centre of Attention.

And the Red Man Went Green

Ruth Meehan wrote and directed this 100 second film 'When The Red Man Went Green' for BreakThru Films, commissioned by Universal Studios, UK. An old woman negotiates the hectic streets of London, fearful of being knocked over... this film features as part of 'Wildlight' - Darklight's mobile film channel.

"And the Red Man Went Green" was the winner of the Special Jury Prize for best short film at the Tehran Film Festival, Iran and winner of Canal Plus prize at the Brest Film Festival.

Ruth has also directed numerous television work for Ireland's state broadcaster RTE including: 'No Place Like Home' filmed in Cameroon, Africa; The documentary 'Art For Sale' about the Irish art market; 'Stealing Beauty' about the Russborough House robberies in Ireland; and wrote & directed 'What In The World' a 5 part documentary series about poverty and globalisation which covered stories in Ecuador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, India and Malawi. She has received funding from the Irish Film Board to develop the feature 'West Of Eden' for Breakthru Films in London and Rubicon Films in Dublin.