Recent Collage Cinema

Collage and its contemporary relations, sampling and culture jamming, are so ubiquitous today that it may be hard to recall that collage techniques radically changed ideas about art by embracing the everyday, questioning authorship, and celebrating simultaneity and juxtaposition. Collage films endure in part because the deconstruction and analysis of images continue to produce surprises and revelations-whether turning ideology on its head, finding beauty in abandoned images, or encouraging us to observe the familiar with fresh eyes. Tonight's program of collage films features artists who draw on recycled images from newsreels, educational films, and narrative features, as well as artists who cut up and remix printed images including newspapers, illustrations, and children's books. Matthias Müller and Christoph Girardet's Play (Germany, 2004, 7.5 mins, Color/B&W, Video) elegantly examines the depiction of audiences in cinema, while Charlotte Pryce's exquisite Concerning Flight: Five Illuminations in Miniature (2004, 9 mins, Color, 16mm) draws on nature footage. Lawrence Jordan's recent films Chateau / Poyet (2004, 6 mins, Tinted, 16mm) and Enid's Idyll (2004, 17 mins, Tinted, 16mm) beautifully and meticulously animate engravings by Doré and Poyet, among others. Janie Geiser's haunting assemblage Terrace 49 (2004, 5.5 mins, Color, 16mm) suggests an impending disaster or a fractured memory. Anaconda Targets (2004, 12 mins, B&W, Video) consists of documentation of aerial bombings in Afghanistan that filmmaker Dominic Angerame has appropriated. Julie Murray deliriously rearranges fragments of nature, work, and war films in Deliquium (2004, 14.5 mins, Color, 16mm).

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