Guy Sherwin
2021Four Films about Music (Silent Jazz / Orchestra / Pause / Interior Music)
Guy Sherwin
Many of my films evolve from a single shot, and quite often that shot is an immediate response to a situation unfolding in front of me. This is about the closest I get to improvising, a musical form I sometimes aspire to, but is difficult to attain as a filmmaker. That was how I shot the majority of films in this programme, using the convenience of the mobile phone in my pocket. I often sense immediately that something might be made from the situation I find myself in, but only after studying the shots on my computer do I discover the direction they might take. The third film Pause clearly involved some planning, but again, after the initial recording, I had to work with the fragments of sound and image to see where they might lead, in a lengthy process of trial and error. In Interior Music I am using the camera in direct response to music emanating from the Trinity Conservatoire in Greenwich. (EXiS — Experimental Film and Video Festival in Seoul, 2026)
Four Films about Music (Silent Jazz / Orchestra / Pause / Interior Music)
Animal Studies (Egret / Seagull Reflection / Midges / Spider / Swans in a Line)
Guy Sherwin
Animal Studies relates to and overlaps the Short Film Series, which I began in 1975. The beauty of working in a series is its flexibility; films can be added to or dropped, the order and manner of projection can be varied. Each film is like a brick, insignificant in itself, but can be combined into all kinds of structures. My filmic interest in animals is that they are unselfconscious, authentic, and can’t act. (EXiS — Experimental Film and Video Festival in Seoul, 2026)
Animal Studies (Egret / Seagull Reflection / Midges / Spider / Swans in a Line)
Messages
Guy Sherwin
Made during my daughter’s early childhood. It’s not about her, but it’s a response to her questions about the world that implicitly challenge things we take for granted – the visual appearance of the world, ambiguities in language, the ways we communicate. – Guy Sherwin
Messages
Newsprint
Guy Sherwin
A film made without a camera: A newspaper glued onto clear film is projected as audio-visual typography. "For NEWSPRINT I glued a newspaper onto clear 16mm film then punched out the sprocket holes to enable the film to run through the projector. Using a strong light I printed ‘newspaper-film’ to copy it onto another strip of film. This shows up the letters and words clearly, which can also be heard as they pass over the sound-head in the projector. Newsprint #2 is a live projection event for two 16mm projectors and two loudspeakers [...] Two identical prints are shown superimposed onto the same screen." -GS.
Newsprint #1
Views from Home
Guy Sherwin
I had rooms at the front and back of the house and I recorded sunlight passing through them in the course of the day, as well as across the buildings seen from the windows. Sometimes I would set the time-lapse camera running and go off to work, leaving it to record the sunlight in the empty rooms. Another room in the flat was used for rehearsal by the saxophone player Alan Wilkinson. The soundtrack comes from recordings I made while walking from room to room as he was playing. This is mixed with a variety of music from the street, reflecting the multi-ethnicity of the location - Greek music, reggae, country & western. G.S. (LUXONLINE)
Views from Home
At the Academy
Guy Sherwin
A found-footage film made entirely from Academy leader, which is normally used to cue the start of films. The film was hand-printed on a home-made contact printer. It was rolled back and re-printed several times over, to create a complex layering of both image and sound.
At the Academy
Cycles #1
Guy Sherwin
A hand-made film of a circular form that fluctuates in rhythms of light and sound.Cycles 1 is made by sticking paper dots onto the surface of the film and to its (optical) sound track. On projection these separate instants are converted simultaneously into picture and sound.The gaps between the dots gradually decrease until a fusion of the material occurs; the separate image-moments coalesce into a pulsating ball of light; simultaneously we hear rhythmic sounds fusing into a continuous rising drone.These transformations are taking place in our perceptual systems, for if we examine the physical strip of film, no such change is seen. Apparently we register time through our optical and our aural senses in very different ways, one chemical, the other mechanical.
Cycles #1
