Dean Kavanagh
1989 (36 лет)Kavanagh’s films are said to reduce cinema to its principal elements of structure, genre, narrative and apparatus; while also setting these elements against one another to create a mechanism that has been described as part of ‘an important new direction in Irish cinema’ that explores ‘cinema’s plastic nature’ ; a non-traditional storytelling, 'that generates a slow throbbing ache that invades viewers'. ‘Feeling around in the darkest recesses of what cinema can be’ Kavanagh re-appropriates found footage to create a narrative that continues to shift perspective. Paralysed in a continuum of beginnings and endings, the viewer is asked to submit to the rhythm of the film to glean yet another dimension, ‘nothing is stable here’. In his filmmaking Kavanagh utilises a palette of digital and analogue technologies including celluloid film, Hi8, VHS, Betamax, digital cinema camera, DSLR, action camera, CCTV and camera phone. His working with celluloid IMAX, 70mm, 35mm, 16mm, 9.5mm and 8mm involves burning, bleaching, scratching and hand-painting the material. He has repurposed and customised projectors for the telecine of materials. This image capture process plays a vital role in the dramaturgy of his cinema. His expressive use of found footage is a pivotal aspect of his work, in particular the films made under the alias Johnny Kline.
Kavanagh developed a successful practice, independently and collaboratively, resulting in a filmography that consists of 63 experimental short films and 5 experimental feature films to date. These have exhibited worldwide at film festivals, museums, galleries and cultural institutions including the Director's Lounge in Berlin, Spectacle Theater in New York, Alchemy Film Festival in Scotland, Fronteira Film Festival in Brazil, Bogotá Experimental Film Festival in Colombia, Museum of Modern Art in Brazil, Tehran Museum of Modern Art, Galway Film Fleadh, Cork Film Centre Gallery, Quad Cinema in New York, Gardunha Festival in Portugal and the Philippines Film Institute.
Only Human
Rouzbeh Rashidi
Atoosa Pour Hosseini, Farzad Fahim
A tale of people unfolds under the night sky. These doomed couples and lost individuals begin journeys and attempt to find resolution in their lives. Love is observed from a distance, sadness is in the air. With little sympathy for the loss and destruction caused to the characters, the stories progress and become neatly woven into a minimalistic portrayal of modern life.
Only Human
HSP: There Is No Escape from the Terrors Of the Mind
Rouzbeh Rashidi
Dean Kavanagh, Rouzbeh Rashidi
There is no escape… From one side of the globe to the other, there is no escaping the faces, the visions, the ever-watchful camera. There is no escaping the mask, there is no escaping the resonating echoes of images and sounds that cross each other over time. There is no escaping the cinema. There is no escaping the terrors of the mind. “A mysterious loner, perhaps a poet, journeys through a series of uncanny surrealistic landscapes with an unclear purpose. His adventure is divided into three sections. The main theme of this experiment is to compare the eerier qualities of different landscapes and interpose the characters within them, elaborating the project’s ongoing preoccupation with extracting sinister moods from ordinary settings. In a way, these can be seen as experimental horror films in which an atmosphere of dread is evoked and sustained without the expected narrative trappings.”
HSP: There Is No Escape from the Terrors Of the Mind
Animal Kingdom
Dean Kavanagh
Cillian Roche, Anja Mahler
Earth. Wind. Fire. Water. Sacrifice. In Animal Kingdom a ritual carves a dimension that melds character, object, landscape and the very tactile makeup of the film itself into one mutating, symphonic mass of spell casting, storytelling, living and dying. An explosive account of cinema as witchcraft.
Animal Kingdom
TRAILERS
Rouzbeh Rashidi
Vicky Langan, Maximilian Le Cain
TRAILERS unites the most personal and experimental aspects of underground filmmaking with a scope that is as cosmically vast as a science fiction epic. Rashidi’s ongoing exploration into the nature of cinema sees a group of characters adrift in space, each locked into their own sexual rituals while a cataclysm of universal proportions unfolds. Humanity has become a mysterious burlesque show for alien eyes: the gaze of the film camera. This visionary spectacle uses multiple formats and visual textures in weaving an erotic anti-narrative suspended in its own space and time.
TRAILERS
Ten Years In The Sun
Rouzbeh Rashidi
Dean Kavanagh, Rouzbeh Rashidi
An assortment of obscure private obsessions, conspiracies and perversions flicker on the verge of incoherence against the context of vast cosmic disaster in Rouzbeh Rashidi’s boldest film to date. This sensory onslaught combines a homage to the subversive humour of Luis Buñuel and Joao Cesar Monteiro with the visionary scope of a demented science fiction epic.
Ten Years In The Sun
Return of Suspicion
Dean Kavanagh
A man investigates a memory of places and people. The evidence drifts deeper and deeper into an unforgivable jungle; he might not be the true owner of his memories, his thoughts may not be of his own, it may not even be his body. (IMDb)
Return of Suspicion
Circumcision of Participant Observation
Rouzbeh Rashidi
Dean Kavanagh, Atoosa Pour Hosseini
One of Rashidi’s freest and most mysterious films to date, CIRCUMCISION OF PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION weaves a series of humorous, frightening and ultimately hypnotic vignettes into a visionary tapestry of cinematic dreaming.
Circumcision of Participant Observation
Forbidden Symmetries
Rouzbeh Rashidi, Dean Kavanagh
Maximilian Le Cain, Rouzbeh Rashidi
Three witnesses to the invasion. Three accounts. Are they observing the same thing? Were there any warning signs? And, after all they’ve seen and heard, are they even competent to offer a reliable report? The purpose of this film is to demonstrate that an effort to construct functions known not to exist may on occasion produce interesting frauds.
Forbidden Symmetries
Cloud of Skin
Maximilian Le Cain
Dean Kavanagh, Eadaoin O’Donoghue
Haunted by the memory of a blind woman with visionary powers, a man revisits the sites of their love affair. Rather than unfolding as a traditional narrative, Le Cain’s first feature is an immersive and dreamlike exploration of memory and vision. Shot in a series of time-warped Irish locations the otherworldly atmosphere is intensified by composer Karen Power’s compelling soundscapes.
Cloud of Skin
Cut to the Chase
Dean Kavanagh
Cut to the chase was a phrase used by Hollywood studio executives, meaning “don't bore us with the dialogue - get to the interesting scenes without unnecessary delay." Cut to the Chase is a film crafted through images captured from a customised telecine apparatus and combines archival found-footage material with newly generated footage.
Cut to the Chase
