Malcolm Le Grice

Abstract Cinema

Keith Griffiths

Stan Brakhage, Jules Engel

Several well-known and pioneering abstract filmmakers discuss the history of non-objective cinema, the works of those that came before them and their own experiments in the field of visionary filmmaking.

Birth of a Nation

Jonas Mekas

Chantal Akerman, Kenneth Anger

Filmmaker Jonas Mekas films 160 underground film people over four decades.

Whitchurch Down (Duration)

Malcolm Le Grice

This film is the beginning of an examination of the perceptual and conceptual structures which can be dealt with using pure colour sequences in loop forms with pictorial material. In this case the pictorial material is confined to three landscape locations, and the structure is not mathematically rigorous.

Emily - Third Party Speculation

Malcolm Le Grice

Margaret Murray, Judith Le Grice

Emily - Third Party Speculation is the second of a ‘domestic trilogy’ exploring the relationship between the restricted camera viewpoint and the construction of documentary narrative. The other two films in the series are Blackbird Descending - tense alignment and Finnegan's Chin - temporal economy. Constructed around the repetition of ‘neutral’ domestic scenes, this film attempts to address the problems of identification in cinema.

Berlin Horse

Malcolm Le Grice

Two fragments of 8mm home-movie footage shot by the artist near Berlin weave together in repeating cycles of action, temporal manipulation, and colour distortion, heightening the viewer’s awareness of film-time and the film-image, and perception of colour in motion.

Blind White Duration

Malcolm Le Grice

Blind White Duration is a film concerned with constructing an experience from limited perceptions. The viewer is introduced to a limited range of images (a snowy day in Harrow, walking to the Metropolitan Line station) shown in brief fade-ins and outs or quick flashes. For most of the film, the screen remains white. This is a film about the light of the projector, the white screen and the white image which emerges out of it.

After Lumière – l'Arroseur arrosé

Malcolm Le Grice

William Raban, Judith Le Grice

"Like all the works I have done which refer directly to another artist, After Lumière… is not directly 'about' the Lumière original. It is the starting point for an investigation. In this case it is an investigation into consequentiality, or at least the significance of sequentiality in the construction of meaning and concept. As such, the film encroaches on 'narrative' cinema, but in a way which treats narrativization as problematic, not transparent." - Malcolm Le Grice

Threshold

Malcolm Le Grice

Le Grice no longer simply uses the printer as a reflexive mechanism, but utilises the possibilities of colour-shift and permutation of imagery as the film progresses from simplicity to complexity… With the film’s culmination in representational, photographic imagery, one would anticipate a culminating “richness” of image; yet the insistent evidence of splice bars and the loop and repetition of the short piece of found footage and the conflicting superimposition of filtered loops all reiterate the work which is necessary to decipher that cinematic image. - Deke Dusinberre

Yes No Maybe Maybe Not

Malcolm Le Grice

A double projection of images of lapping water and the Battersea Power Station all transformed by negative positive superimposition creating a moving Bas-Relief effect.

Little Dog for Roger

Malcolm Le Grice

A nostalgic exploration, comprising fragments of reworked 9.5mm home movie footage. The deterioration of the original film, like memories, contributes to the film’s meaning.

60 Seconds of Solitude in Year Zero

Edmund Yeo, Oliver Whitehead

An anthology of one-minute films created by 60 international filmmakers on the theme of the death of cinema. Intended as an ode to 35mm, the film was screened one time only on a purpose-built 20x12 meter public cinema screen in the Port of Tallinn, Estonia, on 22 December 2011. A special projector was constructed for the event which allowed the actual filmstrip to be burnt at the same time as the film was shown.

Blackbird Descending

Malcolm Le Grice

A brilliantly constructed, melancholic ode to the passing of time by Malcolm Le Grice.

Spot the Microdot

Malcolm Le Grice

This film was made by punching circular holes into fully opaque film stock and laying discs of colour film into some of the punched holes. Only the original copy of this film exists – it cannot be printed and is therefore projected only on rare occasions. As with other Le Grice films from the late 1960s, Spot the Microdot is marked by a radical rejection of ‘illusionism’, choosing to focus instead on the material properties of the film medium itself.

Absinthe

Malcolm Le Grice

In October 2009 I did a show in Prague. I returned to the Kafka house of my ‘Benefit of Mr K’ but found the whole street and Castle area had become a tourist trap – so I wandered into the back-streets at the bottom of the hill and found a little local bar for a plate of sausage, mustard and strong brown bread. Intending to drink some wine I noticed that Absinthe was included in the drinks list so ordered it. I admitted to the bar-keeper that I had never had it before and he showed me how it should be mixed and flamed with sugar – and I recorded with my pocket video camera. With a little gesture to Picasso and Degas, I became the Absinthe Drinker.

H2O-0C-24.02.06-12.01GMT - 03,50.40W - 50.16.30N

Malcolm Le Grice

A simple event becomes rhythmically complex through changes of speed and multiple superimposition. The title refers to the inevitable inclusion of detailed meta-data in all future digital recordings – locating for example global time, place, temperature for example.

After Manet, After Giorgione – Le Dejeuner sur l'Herbe or Fete Champetre

Malcolm Le Grice

Malcolm Le Grice, Gill Eatherley

Le déjeuner sur l’herbe is simultaneously perceived from four different camera positions in a work which engages with the pro-filmic in order to question documentation, illusion and the film viewing process.