Experimental Film Society has issued a statement,
written with input from Dean Kavanagh, Maximilian Le Cain & Rouzbeh Rashidi,
that stands as a manifesto for their thinking about cinema.
Saturday, 24 January 2015
Thursday, 22 January 2015
Cinema Cyanide's "Group Enema" (2015)
Denn die einen sind im Dunkeln
Und die andern sind im Licht
Und man siehet die im Lichte
Die im Dunkeln sieht man nicht
Short film "Friends with Johnny Kline" (2015) complete
17 minutes, 16:9, B&W, Dslr, 16mm found footage
Sunday, 18 January 2015
HSP 191-199 Completed
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Rouzbeh Rashidi's "Homo Sapiens Project" instalments 191-199 have been completed.
These short films were a collaboration between Rouzbeh Rashidi, Maximilian Le Cain and Dean Kavanagh.
"Cloud of Skin" additional scenes wrapped
Several additional scenes featuring Dean Kavanagh
have been shot for Maximilian Le Cain's "Cloud of Skin" over the past three days.
EFS listed in The Senses of Cinema online journal World Poll 2014
"Max Le Cain, Dean Kavanagh and Rouzbeh Rashidi continued to prove how much they’ve raised the bar for filmmaking in Ireland. "
The great film critic and cinephile FERGUS DALY has listed three films from Experimental Film Society
in his favourite films of the year for Senses of Cinema 2014 World Poll.
He listed "HSP: There Is No Escape From The Terrors Of The Mind" (2013, Rashidi),
"Night Regulation" (2014, Le Cain) and "Return of Suspicion" (2014, Kavanagh).
Cloud of Skin ‘Making Of’ Featurette
A documentary/behind-the-scenes featurette that sheds light on the creative processes behind
Maximilian Le Cain's upcoming feature film "Cloud of Skin".
EFS @ Temple Bar Gallery + Studios (III): Le Cain Solo Screening
Tuesday 17th February 2015, 6pm
Studio 6 | Free admission, all welcome.
The third of six bi-monthly Experimental Film Society (EFS) screenings, taking place at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios under the Studio 6 Open programme, foregrounds the work of Irish-based EFS member Maximilian Le Cain.
The first half of the programme is a special presentation of Le Cain’s Super-8 film work, here assembled under the title Image Turned Down and projected on celluloid. Intensely materialist and experiential, his approach to working with Super-8 radicalises the relationship between sound, image and the spectator’s body, often suppressing and withholding imagery to place the viewer in an immersive, sonically charged void. The sound for this screening is by Cinema Cyanide, the noise project formed by Le Cain and fellow EFS members Rouzbeh Rashidi and Dean Kavanagh. And the star of these films is sound/performance artist Vicky Langan, who collaborates regularly with Le Cain.
This is followed by the public premiere of the video "Now Then: Notebook of a Decade (1997-2008)". This lyrical and intense collage of the first ten years of Le Cain’s work with moving image uses portraits, video notes and chunks of broken narrative to conjure a turbulent inner universe. Le Cain has described this video as a spectacular ‘ruin’, alive with ghosts.
For more information on Maximilian Le Cain, please visit: maximilianlecain.com
Image Turned Down (2010-2014) Super-8 / Ireland & Greece / 20 minutes
Now Then: Notebook of a Decade (1997-2008) / Ireland / 49 minutes
EFS is a not-for-profit entity that promotes, archives and sometimes produces work by a dozen filmmakers operating in several different countries. Although each member has a distinctive vision, they are united by an uncompromising devotion to personal, experimental cinema. They have in common an exploratory approach to filmmaking where films emerge from the interplay of sound, image and atmosphere rather than traditional storytelling techniques. EFS was founded by Dublin-based filmmaker Rouzbeh Rashidi, who continues to curate and run the organization.
More info:
Rouzbeh Rashidi's "Ten Years in the Sun" is now complete
Statement by the filmmaker:
"I am happy to announce that my feature film “Ten Years in the Sun” (2015) has been completed. The project was one year in production and has drastically mutated and deviated in various ways from the idea initially conceived. In this film I have tried to radically minimalize genre elements such as science fiction, horror and perhaps erotic drama. My hope was to attain what could be called a ‘ground zero of drama’ through the systematic removal of narrative structures.
On this project I have intentionally worked with a wide range of collaborators and actors, and without their tremendous support this film would have been impossible to make. At this point I do not have any emotional feeling towards the film and I can only see it as a pure technical, audio-visual work that I engineered. I would very much like to share the film with an audience in any cinematic situation possible and hopefully they would approve of the finished piece.
I want to sincerely thank Jann Clavadetscher, John Curran, Dean Kavanagh, Maximilian Le Cain, Alice Kavanagh, Jennifer Sharpe, Ora Kolmanovsky, Atoosa Pour Hosseini, Patricia Klich, Fardideh Aram, Reza Rashidi, Eadaoin O’Donaghue, Mohsen Pour Hosseini, Ehsan Safarpour & Claudia Siefen."
Feedback on "A Harbour Town" (2013)
A HARBOUR TOWN (2013, Dean Kavanagh, Ireland)
A++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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There are some moments in this film (actually nearly half of the film) which make the film resembles a mystery-detective movie, because the character whom I assumed the protagonist of the film seems to change his face and hairstyle all the time, as if he is a detective or a spy, or as if the film was made in a twelve-year period like BOYHOOD, because in one scene his face looks clean, but in another scene he wears a moustache; in one scene he wears glasses, in another scene his hair grows longer and its color has changed. I just realized later that this is not the same character, but they look like each other very much, because they are siblings in real life.
Though I misunderstood about this thing, the film still has other elements which resemble a detective movie, especially the middle-eastern character (I guess this character is played by Rouzbeh Rashidi) who seems to come to search for something in an empty builiding. He also looks out from the rooftop filled with bird droppings and records what is happening out there with his camera. Similarly, the protagonist goes to a harbour town, venturing into a forest, meeting other characters, and receiving something. But when the audience sees the protagonist smoking, the audience will never know what he is thinking about, whom he is thinking about, or what he is looking for.
Maybe we don’t have to focus on the story of this film, because the film has no dialogues. (Though we can see that the characters are speaking in some scenes, we cannot hear them, and we don’t even know who these characters are.) The owner of the most prominent sound in this film is the nature—the sound of water, wind, rain, flocks of birds, or the storm which rages through the harbour town. The nature devours all the atmosphere and living things in this film and makes them become a part of the story of sound and light.
The last part of the film seems like a game of haunted ghosts, which puts people inside a haunted house or an enclosed dark space which has very few light sources, in order to search for some truths or to solve a mystery. But in this film we don’t know what the mystery is or who the owner of the mystery is. We don’t even know if we should solve the mystery or not. There is one scene in this film which is extremely scary, though there is a very bright sunshine in this scene. It is as if the film has become a zombie film for 15 seconds before it returns to the previous state.
In conclusion, while we are watching this film, we may feel as if we are thrown into a mysterious harbour town with a small population. We meet a few inhabitants of the town, who live under the control of the story of sound of light. There may be some mysteries, may be not. Even if there are some mysteries, we are not sure if we should solve them or not. We don’t even know how well these townspeople know one another.
EFS 2015
"2015 is set to be a very important year for Experimental Film Society with a number of new feature films being completed and others going into production. The calendar will also be punctuated with many screenings, performances, and collaborations with other international film collectives around the world. 2015 will also see the launch of an “EFS Film Journal” and we will release almost all of the EFS feature films as ‘Video On Demand’ on Vimeo. Watch this space for more info!"
In The Mood For List: 2014
10 Best new films seen in 2014
- Damp Access (Maximilian Le Cain)
- Mutual Admiration Society (Rouzbeh Rashidi & James Devereaux)
- Welcome To New York (Abel Ferrara)
- Rearrangement Trilogy: Hypothesis, Conditions, Poetics (Rouzbeh Rashidi)
- Under The Skin (Jonathan Glazer)
- The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese)
- Investigating the Murder Case of Ms. X/Y (Rouzbeh Rashidi)
- Jauja (Lisandro Alonso)
- Jealousy (Philippe Garrel)
- Maps to the Stars (David Cronenberg)
-- Jean-Luc Godard’s “Adieu au langage” (watched in 2D) shares a top slot.
Special Mention:
There (James Fotopoulos)
Bastards (Claire Denis)
Norte, The End of History (Lav Diaz)
Best Short film:
Night Regulation (Maximilian Le Cain)
The Nest (David Cronenberg)
Pitpony (Jason Marsh)
Murder (Michael Higgins)
Worst 2014:
- Calvary (John Michael McDonagh)
- Nymphomaniac (Lars Von Trier)
- The Double (Richard Ayoade)
- Frank (Lenny Abrahamson)
- Boyhood (Richard Linklater)
- The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson)
- Two Days, One Night (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne)
- The Dance of Reality (Alejandro Jodorowsky)
- Magic in the Moonlight (Woody Allen)
- Only Lovers Left Alive (Jim Jarmusch)
Best TV Series
- Boardwalk Empire
- Hannibal
- Trailer Park Boys (Season 8)
- True Detective
Performance:
- Bahar Samadi & Navid Salajegheh: “Non-Pacific Coexistence of Numbers and Dates” @ The Guesthouse, Cork, Nov 30th.
- Karen Power & Maximilian Le Cain: “Gorging Limpet” @ TDC, Cork, May 30th.
- Susan Stenger’s flute piece, a Solo from “Concert for Piano and Orchestra” (1957-58, John Cage), Schizo-Culture Event, Space Gallery, London, Dec 13th.
- “Clarence Darrow”, performed by Kevin Spacey @ The Old Vic, London.
Events:
- EFS Iranian Programme, Cork Film Festival, curated by Max Le Cain, 8th & 9th Nov.
- “A Weekend of Schizo Culture at Space Gallery”, (12th-14th Dec) London, Curated by Katherine Waugh.
- “Devoted Songs: The Films of Nathaniel Dorsky”, curated by Lumiere Magazine/Esperanza Collado, Experimental Film Club, IFI, Dublin, April 22nd.
- The shooting of Rouzbeh Rashidi's “Ten Years in the Sun”/Max Le Cain’s “Cloud of Skin” back-to-back @ Bray Head hotel. A grotesquerie of illness and a carnival of madness.
Favourite Installation:
“Last Phase”, video/sound installation by Atoosa Pour Hosseini, as part of “Recollections” research project, NCAD, June.
Favourite Album:
“Rock or Bust” (AC/DC)
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