Press
Release for Avant Kinema (Sarahjane Swan & Roger Simian)'s
performance at this year's Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival
>>>>
May
The Fourth Be With You!
Borders
artist-filmmakers, Sarahjane Swan & Roger Simian, return to the
Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival this coming Friday, 4th May,
with "Ghost Worlds (Animal Rites)", an Expanded Cinema
performance, part of the festival's free-entry "Celebrate Super
8" event at the Auld Baths.
https://alchemyfilmfestival.org.uk/2018/celebrate-super8
Sarahjane:
"We've been experimenting with analogue filmmaking for a couple
of years now and we've turned into a couple of Super 8 Geeks. It's
shocking! We buy up long-expired filmstock on ebay, shoot our films
using vintage cameras, do our own processing using household products
and even handcraft the footage by directly colouring and scratching
the film itself."
Roger:
"Yeah, a year or two ago we uploaded an instructional video to
our Avant Kinema YouTube page. It's basically our step-by-step guide
to home-processing Super 8 film using the Caffenol recipe (cheap
coffee, vitamin c & washing soda). We just discovered the other
day that it's had 10,600 views! We had no idea. So that means there's
at least 10,600 other Super 8 Geeks out there wanting to spend their
days setting up Pop-Up Super 8 labs in their kitchens and bathrooms."
Sarahjane:
"It's a growing trend. Anybody can shoot a full HD, high
resolution video on their mobile - that's easy! - but it takes
determination and dedication to use all these old, abandoned 20th
century technologies, filmstocks and techniques to create something
fresh and vivid."
Roger:
"We've had some great help in this from VACMA (the Visual
Artists and Craft Maker Awards) who gave us a grant to buy more
filmstock and equipment, including a telecine machine so that we can
make digital scans of our films."
The
pair also recently received support from an unlikely source when
local MSP, Michelle Ballantyne, put forward a motion relating to
their work in the Scottish Parliament.
Motion
S5M-09501,
lodged 12/12/17:"That the Parliament wholeheartedly applauds the
film-makers, Sarahjane Swan and Roger Simian, both of Galashiels, on
being shortlisted for the 2018 Margaret Tait Award; believes that the
Margaret Tait Award is the pinnacle of experimental moving image art
in Scotland; is aware that the eponymous award is in honour of
Margaret Tait, the eminent Orcadian film-maker, who died in 1999;
recognises that Swan and Simian have
screened films throughout the UK, Europe and North America in 2017
alone, and extends its emphatic best wishes to them in their pursuit
of the award and for the future."
Sarahjane:
"We were quite blown away when we discovered that on line. We
couldn't work out how it had happened, but we're honoured to have our
work highlighted in this way."
Roger:
"Yes, we're more than happy to accept the support of the
Scottish Parliament in our filmmaking endeavours."
Swan
and Simian are joined in the "Celebrate Super 8" event by
Dutch filmmaker, Jaap Pieters, and Canadian, Kyle Whitehead.
Sarahjane:
"We were also invited by Alchemy to host a couple of workshops
with local kids on how to put together a video-art installation,
along with film-artist, Kerry Jones. It's mindblowing to see the
young talent out there. The kids have a real understanding of what
makes a good artwork and have come up with some great visual and
conceptial material for their installation at the Alchemy Festival."
https://alchemyfilmfestival.org.uk/2018/installations/
Fr@gile,
by the Young Alchemy Moving Image Makers, is presented between the
3rd tand 6th May, 11am to 6pm, at the Alchemy Space, 39-41A High
Street, Hawick, TD9 9BU. The installation "explores
communication throughout the analogue and digital ages – the
barriers we face expressing ourselves in everyday life and how we
perceive and translate words and actions into our own understanding."
The project was funded by Cash Back for Communities and Youthlink
Scotland.
Swan-Simian
Website:
http://www.thebirdandthemonkey.com/swansimian
Avant
Kinema blog:
http://avantkinema.blogspot.co.uk/
Avant
Kinema on Vimeo:
https://vimeo.com/avantkinema
Avant
Kinema Group on FaceBook:
https://www.facebook.com/AvantKinemaExperimentalArts
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