Rose Lowder
2021After 1977, Lowder worked on the visual aspect of the cinematographic process and had Jean Rouch, as well as his department from the Université Paris X, and presented a part of her research for a PhD entitled ‘Le film expérimental en tant qu’instrument de recherche visuelle/Experimental film, a tool for visual research’ (1987).
In action since 1977, she has been programming rarely shown films as the co-founder of the Archives du film expérimental d’Avignon (AFEA, 1981), aiming to acquire 16mm films and paper documents, as well as publishing several books; Lowder was thus able to make these works more accessible to the public: ‘La part du visuel, films expérimentaux canadiens/ The Visual Aspect, Canadian expérimental films’ (AFEA, 1991), ‘L’Image en mouvement’ (AFEA, 2002), ‘Images/discours’ (AFEA, 2006).
From 1996 to 2005, Lowder was an associate professor at the Université de Paris I and taught practice, history, theory and aesthetics.
By focusing her research on visual perception in relation to the cinematographic means of expression, Lowder concentrated on the various ways in which one can alter the graphic and photographic visual features of the images as it metamorphoses in time. As a result of this work, she was able to compose the image in the camera by interweaving the frames as the film strip passes the lens several times. This method of working is meticulous and complex because it consists of recording a series of images, frame by frame, in the camera, in order for them to appear simultaneously when projected on the screen.
Bouquets 11-20
Rose Lowder
An entry, filmed in Italy, Switzerland and France, in Rose Lowder's series collecting one minute episodes, each composed of footage shot around a general geographic location that has been alternately woven, frame by frame, into a single film reel. In spite of its numbering, this collection was completed later than Bouquets 21-30 (delayed, Lowder explains, "by the weather and a series of related technical/aesthetics incidents").
Bouquets 11-20
Rue des Teinturiers
Rose Lowder
The film is composed of twelve reels, each filmed on a different day throughout a six-month period along the eponymous street, joined in a slightly nonchronological order to avoid accentuating anecdotal aspects of the scene. The focus of each image, recorded frame by frame in the camera, is adjusted to highlight different items in each moment.
Rue des Teinturiers
Retour d'un repère
Rose Lowder
The procedure of separating and extracting certain aspects of a scene by adjusting the focus of a series of frames in succession according to various organizational patterns is developed in Retour d'un repère. While the filmic operations are structured in relation to a limited space (a branch over a 19c duck pond), the filmic process rests on a visual transformation of a pantoun, a verse form borrowed from literary rhetorics, which characteristically transforms itself gradually and continuously in a precise manner. - Lightcone
Retour d'un repère
Voiliers et Coquelicots
Rose Lowder
Little is necessary for everything to appear differently. The date, the hour, the weather, the space's layout, one's glance or presence of mind . . . can make everything change. The boats sail out of the Vieux port in Marseille to be amongst the poppy fields.
Poppies and Sailboats
Bouquets 1-10
Rose Lowder
Bouquets 1-10 is Lowder’s first collection in an ongoing series of one minute episodes, each composed of footage shot around a general geographic location that has been alternately woven, frame by frame, into a single film reel and connected through the interstitial still life image of a flower that cues the beginning of each integrated film Bouquet. Each bouquet of flowers is also a bouquet of frames mingling the plants to be found in a given place with the activities that happen to be there at the time. Lowder uses the film strip as a canvas with the freedom to film frames on any part of the strip in any order, running the film through the camera as many times as needed.
Bouquets 1-10
Couleurs mécaniques
Rose Lowder
Couleurs mécaniques presents, in the order they were filmed, six different viewpoints of a merry-go-round. In each case the focus is adjusted so as to select, isolate and inscribe parts of the filmed scene onto the film strip in a way that allows elements of color in movement to be recombined in a particular manner during the projection of the film.
Couleurs mécaniques
Quiproquo
Rose Lowder
Quiproquo is a dialogue on the balance to be found between nature and social-industrial technology. As the film refers to the economy of the means involved in relation to what is expressed, it is both a reflection on the potentialities of the medium and an enquiry concerning the implications of the reality portrayed. It is a question of limits and possibilities, the beauty and tragedy of the world, with a critique of contemporary society’s dominant choices constantly in the background. Filmed in Berre l’Etang, Bouches du Rhône, in the villages of Orgon, Bouches du Rhône and La Coucourde, Drôme, on the roads to Beaumont-du-Ventoux and Carpentras, Vaucluse, and Tarascon, Bouches du Rhône.—Canyon Cinema
Quiproquo
Impromptu
Rose Lowder
The title of “Impromptu” reflects both its creating process and the trait of life taking an unexpected course. This film intertwines time and space by being filmed frame on frame, in surprising locations, during a surprising time… but exactly this was the idea of the creator: contingency and visual improvisation. —Kaunas International Film Festival
Impromptu
Cinématon
Gérard Courant
Gérard Courant, Alain-Alcide Sudre
Cinématon is a 156-hour long experimental film by French director Gérard Courant. It was the longest film ever released until 2011. Composed over 36 years from 1978 until 2006, it consists of a series of over 2,821 silent vignettes (cinématons), each 3 minutes and 25 seconds long, of various celebrities, artists, journalists and friends of the director, each doing whatever they want for the allotted time. Subjects of the film include directors Barbet Schroeder, Nagisa Oshima, Volker Schlöndorff, Ken Loach, Benjamin Cuq, Youssef Chahine, Wim Wenders, Joseph Losey, Jean-Luc Godard, Samuel Fuller and Terry Gilliam, chess grandmaster Joël Lautier, and actors Roberto Benigni, Stéphane Audran, Julie Delpy and Lesley Chatterley. Gilliam is featured eating a 100-franc note, while Fuller smokes a cigar. Courant's favourite subject was a 7-month-old baby. The film was screened in its then-entirety in Avignon in November 2009 and was screened in Redondo Beach, CA on April 9, 2010.
Cinématon
Roulement, rouerie, aubage
Rose Lowder
This reel consists of three short films, two in black and white and one in color, that treat of a water wheel on the Sorgue. The essence of the work rests on a series of cross-references that are set up between the operational mechanisms of the filmed object and the recorded characteristics foregrounded by the choice of film stocks and filming circumstances. The title reflects the process involved. Roulement = rotation, rouerie = wiliness, aubage = paddle wheel unit. - Film Makers' Coop
Roulement, rouerie, aubage
Foryannfromrose
Rose Lowder
With this film I wanted to pay homage to Yann Beauvais for his having, on top of his own work as an artist, against all odds, lack of funds or recognition concerning the field in question, made an important contribution to make known, as much by his writing as by his presenting and distributing, works by other authors. In hurrying and neglecting an infection on my right thumb, I had to film more or less with one hand and then spend two days in hospital. I can only think that the making of this little film reflects all the difficulties previously faced by Yann himself.
Foryannfromrose
Bouquets 21-30
Rose Lowder
BOUQUETS 21-30 is a part of the ecological BOUQUETS series, consisting of one-minute films composed in the camera by weaving the characteristics of different environments with the activities there at the time. The filming basically entails using the film strip as a canvas with the freedom to film frames on any part of the strip in any order, running the film through the camera as many times as needed. Thus each bouquet of flowers is also a unique bouquet of film frames.
Bouquets 21-30
Les tournesols
Rose Lowder
The film presents a field of sunflowers. The focus is adjusted frame by frame in succession according to a series of patterns on particular plants situated in different parts of the field. The diverse configurations placed on separate frames of the film strip appear, when projected successively, simultaneously on the screen. Thus, filmed one after another at different focal lengths, the sunflowers combine during projection to form one spatiotemporal image. LES TOURNESOLS COLORES is a capricious version of the film. - Film Makers' Coop
Les tournesols
Parcelle
Rose Lowder
Composed frame by frame in the camera, Parcelle (fragment, particle or bit) rests upon the alternate appearance and variable duration of tiny colored squares or circles placed on black backgrounds and inserted in series between plain white or colored images, creating optical superimpositions on the screen.
Parcelle