Jeff Keen
1923 - 2012Keen was a veteran of the Second World War, and his work powerfully evokes the violence, colour, speed and noise of the 20th century. He transformed cinema into a riotous collage of comics, drawings, B-movie posters, plastic toys, burning props and extravagant costumes. His early 8 mm and 16 mm films are built for speed, combining footage of Beat-era motifs – jazz, motorbikes and car culture – with experimental animations in which the achievements and atrocities of the 20th century seem to flash by within a few short, cacophonous seconds. A single frame could not contain the frenzied energy of Keen’s imagination, and by the mid-1960s he began to use multiple screens and live action in presentations of his work.
Mad Love
Jeff Keen
Jeff Keen had a chance encounter with a collection of old 78 speed records at a Brighton flea market and used it as an opportunity to create a surrealist film (naming it after the poetry collection by André Breton). A requiem for B movies and the marginalised popular side of cinematic history.
Mad Love
Family Star (The Mutt & Jeff Icecream Sundae + Mothman)
Jeff Keen
Various different holiday locations ar joined together through the pleasures of ice cream in The Mutt & Jeff Icecream Sundae, while in Mothman the strange title character crawls through roof-top windows and we see footage of a funfair. These two films have many similarities with the other Keen diary movies but have always been shown in this pairing, and under this title.
Family Star (The Mutt & Jeff Icecream Sundae + Mothman)
Rayday Film
Jeff Keen
Rayday Film was shown projected in several 100-foot length parts from multiple projectors. The friends and family who featured in costume and character within - like Motler, the Word Killer who reflects Keens preference for action over thinking - performed similar actions in front of the screen. After a final performance in 1976, Keen spliced the parts together so it could be shown according to normal cinematic convention.
Rayday Film
Artwar Fallout + Artwar 3
Jeff Keen
Footage of the first Iraq War is jarringly intercut with shots of the artist painting at the local tip and at home. Drawing upon pivotal moments in Jeff Keen's own life - serving in WW2 - these explosive films are a distillation of the themes and concerns that run throughout his work. These compelling titles stage a frenetic attack on our sense of modern culture.
Artwar Fallout + Artwar 3
The Dreams and Past Crimes of the Archduke
Jeff Keen
Jeff Keen's daughter gave him some music and sound effects recorded at the cinema and invited him to use it as the basis for a film. He added a plastic Hitler mask from Brighton pier and created this red and blue-dominated film that runs at a distinctly different pace to the rest of his work. Its reflective tone matches the mood of its title and features such imagery as a blindfolded artist painting.
The Dreams and Past Crimes of the Archduke
