Year of release: 1989Original format: U-Matic video (4.3)
Running time: 2 minutes 50 seconds
Screening format: digital screening versions available
Credits: A film by Kayla Parker
Electro Acoustic Sound and Moving Image (ESMI) residency, Plymouth Arts Centre
Distribution and sales: Sundog Media sundogmedia@gmail.com
Description
Images of many hands - frottage, montage; echoes of poetic remembrance. Repetitive action, life extinguished. In memory of my grandfather's death and his musical cigarette lighter, which sparks but never lights up.
Production notes
My grandfather Jack’s musical cigarette lighter which sparks a tune but does not produce a flame. Sequences of frottage drawings, rubbings of old floorboards, images of many hands - all my own - filmed onto lo-band U-Matic videotape, using the pause function on the portapack recorder, cut down in the two machine edit suite to as few frames as possible - instances of half seconds being as close to animation as we could get. Many hands make lighter work. A stream of almost-animated images: whilst not quite brought to life, he is remembered.
The ESMI project at Plymouth Arts Centre brought together artists and musicians from Britain and France for a week of concentrated creative activity. Shortly after the ESMI event took place, the video workshop at Plymouth Arts Centre was shut down.
Publication and comments
Exhibition selected
1989
Edinburgh Fringe Film and Video Festival Filmhouse, Edinburgh, Scotland UK (June 1989)
Plymouth Arts Centre, Plymouth, UK (premiere, March 1989)