Year of release: 2017
Original format: black and white 16mm
Running time: 1 minute loop
Screening format: single channel digital screening versions available (silent)
Credits: A film by Kayla Parker
Production: Sundog Media
Distribution and sales: Sundog Media sundogmedia@gmail.com
Description
An open-form film poem in which views of a landscape - leaves blown by a gust of wind, birds in flight, a sycamore tree, and shifting cloud shapes - engraved directly into the emulsion of 16mm black film, are transformed into lines of light in motion.
Views of a landscape engraved directly into the emulsion of 16mm film leader using the blade of a surgical scalpel. The length of each filmstrip is determined by the distance between points on the artist’s body, such as from fingertip to fingertip between outstretched arms, and bisecting the body along a posterior/anterior axis. During the audience's experience of these drawn moving images, the length of a strip of film becomes a measurement of time as the static marks incised into the black 16mm frames are perceived to be lines of light in motion.
Production notes
I engraved black leader using a surgical scalpel, from the head (the beginning) of each strip to the tail (the end), scratching the emulsion in a gestural response to the world seen outside through the glass pane of the window - leaves blown by a gust of wind, birds in flight, a sycamore tree, shifting cloud shapes. I worked frame-by-frame with the film the ‘right way up,' but at times I disregarded the frame boundaries and cut into the emulsion layer lengthways to create the visual effect of opening and closure. In the areas inscribed, the black emulsion has been removed to leave the clear cellulose acetate base, allowing light to pass through the film and an image to be seen. KP
Exhibition
2021
Cine Sisters South West Take Over short film programme, screening in the solar-powered cinema Studio 74, Exeter Phoenix, Exeter (26 May 2021).
2019
On The Surface of Things large scale outdoor film projection, Access Space, Sheffield; "exhibition of artworks that relate to our environment, either through our dependency on it, our relationship to it, our interactions with it, or our experiences of it. It is an action affiliated with Extinction Rebellion Sheffield, in response to the declaration from Sheffield City Council of a climate emergency." (Programme notes). Reach also shown, 20 September 2019)
Spike Island Salon, selection of films from Go Go Go! presented by Dr Vicky Smith; Bristol (12 September 2019)
NAUTILUS: BEEF Shed at Supernormal Festival 2019; showcase of films and performances presented by Bristol Experimental Expanded Film (BEEF) artists and friends; Braziers Park School of Integrative Social Research, Ipsden, Reading, UK. Sunset Strip also shown (2 to 4 August 2019)
Go Go Go! - The Crafty Animator programme 3: The Crafty Animator, The Cube, Bristol; hosted by Bristol Experimental Expanded Film: BEEF, curated by BEEF member Vicky Smith with input from Marcy Saude and Sam Francis, support from Cressida Williams and made possible by the support of Arts Council England; programme introduced by Dr Caroline Ruddell, whose book of the same name interrogates the role of the maker/animator in craft-based practices, along with ideas that craft is a gendered practice (11 July 2019)
2018
'Drawing with film: gestures in time, place and memory' The Embodied Experience of Drawing Symposium, Ocean Studios, Royal William Yard, Plymouth; exhibition includes Reach and Heirloom (13 April 2018)
Particles in Space, Edge of Frame Weekend 2018, Barbican, London; curated by Edwin Rostron. "Featuring work from 1963 to 2018, this programme explores ideas of space, line, shape and form, through an eclectic range of techniques. Formal abstraction mixes with the personal and fantastical, often within the same film. Celebrating the breadth and potential of experimentation in animation, the programme presents works by artists unafraid to push the medium into new territory." (Programme notes, 3 March 2018)
One Minute Artists Moving Image Festival North Wales, curated and organised by Kerry Baldry (programme 1, 23 to 25 February 2018)
2017
Being Human exhibition, Exeter Arts Week; Spacex, Exeter; with Rachael Allain, Laura Hopes, Juliet Middleton-Batts, and Karen Pearson (13 to 21 May 2017)