Alex Pearl
Menagerie, 2011
5' 29"

Menagerie is loosely inspired by Nénette, a documentary by French filmmaker Nicolas Philibert, which focuses on the life of a 40 year old orangutan living in the menagerie of Jardin des Plantes, Paris. In Pearl's Menagerie, the action is filmed and acted by robots, self powered automata cobbled together from found objects. Carrying cameras and gaining movement through the use of clockwork or battery power, these 'creatures' seldom perform as expected, breaking, failing and surprising in turn.


Hyewon Kwon
Untitled # 1 from the series Eight Men Lived in the Room, 2010
5' 56"

Kwon's film makes use of 45 seconds of archive footage filmed in 1962, documenting the completion of the Municipal Workers Dormitory in Seoul, demolished in 1999. Kwon builds up a multi-layered narrative associated with the dormitory which is delivered like a news bulletin over this repeated stock footage. The narrative is constantly revised but the image remains the same, highlighting the absence of any appropriate historical document in the present.


Daniel Jacoby
Cuculi, 2011
11'

The Zenaida Meloda is a common type of dove from the South American Coast known as 'cuculi' due to their particular cooing sound. Throughout the film personal anecdotes, trivia and insignificant events from the artist's recent stay in Japan are recounted. These stories are interspersed with factual information about different birdcalls, how they have come to be identified and recognised as particular phrases, or how they have come to form the etymology of their names.


Laura Buckley
Chroma / Levante, 2011
2' 46"

Chroma/Levante was shot in Tarifa, a small Spanish town on the southernmost tip of Europe, famed for its two opposing winds. These winds are known for their distinctive characteristics and it is said that prolonged exposure to their conflicting forces produces feelings of anxiety in those who live there. The work's title references Chroma: A Book of Colour by filmmaker Derek Jarman, whilst Levante is the name given to one of the winds of Tarifa.


Daniel Shanken
Blossom, 2011
9' 39"

The external member is extended to the limits of what is physically possible. What is a natural appendage of man's sexuality can be altered and extended into a realm beyond the reach of the average man. The hyperextension of the penis intern, externalised through a series of exercises, becomes a hyperextension of the self - the very nature of super-nature. Blossom guides the viewer through some modern possibilities of transcendence, revealing how belief systems and ritual can take one beyond their natural form.


Sara Bjarland
Take-off, 2010
4' 30"

The movements of a damaged butterfly are examined in close range as it struggles to take flight one last time. Each frantic exertion made by the butterfly is recorded, and every sound amplified as it attempts to flap its wings. The film documents the insect's slow exhaustion as it moves from determination to acceptance of its fate.


Part Two
Selected by Linder

Linder has explored the terrain of socially and culturally reinforced norms and expectations of gender identity, sexual commodification and represented desire since the mid-1970s. Her position has uncompromisingly embraced radical feminist perspectives, rethinking the cultural treatment of the female body in particular, and in the collages, photomontages and performances Linder has made since this time, she sets about recasting the ideals of commercially and culturally rendered expectations of gender-specificity and identity. Linder has exhibited internationally with recent solo shows at Stuart Shave / Modern Art, London, Sorcha Dallas, Glasgow, PS1/MoMA, New York and BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead. There will be a retrospective exhibition of her work at the Mus ée d'Art Moderne, Paris in 2013.

 
Anne Severson
Near the Big Chakra, 1971
17'

This feminist film takes an unhurried view of 37 female vaginas from women ranging in age from three months to 56 years. Near the Big Chakra sought to demystify the female body by presenting on screen a cross section of women in society. These images sought to confront the male gaze and to reach an understanding of the female form outside the overtly eroticised representation of women in mainstream cinema. The film addresses body politics and reacts against puritanical ideas of the human body.

Courtesy of Canyon Cinema.


Fernand Leger
The Girl with the Prefabricated Heart, 1947
8' 30"

A section from the experimental collaborative film, Dreams that Money Can Buy directed by surrealist artist Hans Richter, The Girl with the Prefabricated Heart is a dream sequence, depicting a flirtation between two mannequins. Set to a playful soundtrack whose lyrics warn of fickle females only interested in material possessions, a male mannequin desperately tries to woo the female. He offers her flowers, trinkets and dancing, but she is indifferent to his charms and soon takes flight. Rejected and abandoned by his love, he literally falls to pieces, limb by limb.

Courtesy of BFI.