Martha Jurksaitis
2021The Hex of Ergot (Popping Corn)
Martha Jurksaitis
"A Super 8 work entirely edited in camera, and shot and processed in one day during the Spur Exchange artist residency, ‘The hex of ergot (popping corn)’ is a musing on the connection between grain, ergot (a poisonous and sometimes hallucinogenic fungus that can grow when grain is damp), the witch-hunt trials in Salem in the 1690s, and consumerism in Leeds. While popcorn and cinema have a long and well-known affinity, the Spur Exchange residency took place in the Corn Exchange, where corn and other grains used to be traded. It’s now full of shops and restaurants, and has a carefully monitored aesthetic and ambience." — M.J.
The Hex of Ergot (Popping Corn)
Salt
Martha Jurksaitis
"A film in my ‘Alchemy’ series. A vision of women enjoying the sea in Saltburn in North Yorkshire becomes a celebration of the material nature of film. The silver salts in film that react to light also react to the metallic salts in film toners, and a multi-coloured seascape emerges from the salt of the sea. Filmed on a part of the beach that was once notorious for shipwrecks, Salt is a love letter to film and to the churning, crashing, passionate sea." — M.J.
Salt
Bad Blood
Martha Jurksaitis
"A Brutalist film-poem about the nature of a family tree and the macabre ancestral tales that work their way into your identity, whether you like it or not. A collaborative work that blends the poetry of Adelle Stripe, the music of C.A.R., and my hand-processed Super 8 imagery." — M.J.
Bad Blood
Foss
Martha Jurksaitis
"A short piece I made in Malham in springtime. Malham is in the Yorkshire Dales, and is a place of dramatic natural beauty that is defined, for me at least, by the waters that run through it; those same waters that formed it slowly but surely over thousands upon thousands of years. ‘Foss’ is Yorkshire-speak (from Old Norse) for ‘Falls’. There’s even one waterfall there that has bored a hole right through the very centre of a huge rock. My film is a personal response to this place, a simple Super 8 work edited entirely in camera. I offer it up to the goddesses and gods of the Yorkshire Dales. Yes, I suppose I do worship at their feet, because Malham is the kind of church I go to." — M.J.
Foss
Sight by Sonar
Christian Hardy, Martha Jurksaitis
"A collaboration by Cherry Kino and Alchemy. The human body, as observed by bats, is explored in extreme close-ups on hand-processed Super 8 film with a sonar soundtrack. Images of love, death and regeneration combine in an intimate homage to a dead bat." — M.J.
Sight by Sonar
Peach
Martha Jurksaitis
"A deeply personal film about my complex feelings about my boyfriend’s daughter Jojo, who is synaesthetic. Synaesthesia is an experience of cross-modal sensuality – of ‘seeing green’ or ‘tasting pink’, hearing colours or feeling smells as shapes. I think everyone is latently synaesthetic, and that certain ways of making cinema might be able to trigger the experience. Peach combines artisanal Super 8 filmmaking with complex emotions in an attempt to create ‘Cinesthetic Synaema’. The film’s title comes from a combination of things – the peachy colour of the film which is caused by the way it was made, Jojo’s different experiences of peach as a colour, and an affectionate name my mum gave me as a kid." — M.J.
Peach
Anningella Queen of Cups
Martha Jurksaitis
"The Queen of Cups is a tarot card that featured heavily in my unconscious while this film was growing inside me. She is the tarot equivalent of the Queen of Hearts from the deck of playing cards, who also presented to me in a dream as part of myself. The Queen of Cups is associated with the water signs of the horoscope – Pisces, Cancer, and Scorpio (for those interested in astrology, I am a Cancer sun with Scorpio rising). I shot the film at Spurn Point where the North Sea meets the Humber River, while artist in residence at the Three Points of Contact residency. It is filmed on Super 8, hand-processed, and hand-edited." — M.J.
Anningella Queen of Cups
A Ramble in Serralves Park
Martha Jurksaitis
"On visiting the gardens at Serralves Contemporary Art Museum in Porto, Portugal, I found myself completely and utterly sexually turned on. It was a sunny afternoon, and there weren’t many people in the park at all. My desire consumed me, and I had a strong impulse to retreat to the overgrowth and phone my lover, and to pleasure myself until I came. But something in me pushed me to use this libidinous drive to make a film, and see if I could channel it and make something creative from the desire, rather than simply satisfy a powerful craving. The result is this film." — M.J.
A Ramble in Serralves Park
Silva Shade
Martha Jurksaitis
"This film, made in a Finnish forest in April this year, was hand processed in coffee developer to a black and white negative, fixed using sea salt water for 20 hours, and I then hand-painted it with photographic watercolours. I wanted to use a filmmaking process that was gentle on the magnificent environment I was in, and that’s what I came up with. I then inverted the film to create a positive image, where instead of being black, the trees are coloured. This is a new technique I developed, and have since shared with the artist analogue filmmaking community. ‘Silva’ is Latin for forest, and ‘silver’ is the essence of cinema, in all its many shades. I recorded the sound in the same forest, just as the snow began to slowly melt and the cranes were flying back for the beginning of Spring." — M.J.
Silva Shade
Alana and the Carnival
Martha Jurksaitis
"A short film I made for my niece Alana, on her 4th birthday. It was filmed at Chapeltown Carnival in Leeds, set to ‘Amor en Jacumã’ by Brazilian musician Lucas Santtana. It was entirely edited in camera – all the double and triple exposures were done using my Nikon R10 camera. I hand-processed the film too." — M.J.
Alana and the Carnival
Nail Art
Martha Jurksaitis
"A 16mm film made entirely using nail varnishes and nail stickers as my materials. It’s a visceral response to the craze for nail art, made on Ektachrome film stock. The film you see is the original, which I processed with my hands, and which will progressively become more and more worn by the projector each time it is played. I won’t try to ‘patch it up’, I will let it gloriously scratch and wear off through being well and truly used. Nothing is pristine. Underneath their attractive coatings, nails are full of bacteria and dirt. My film is living and dying at the same time, perpetually moving. Nails keep growing after death. Is the same true for analogue film?" — M.J.
Nail Art