Charlotte Pryce
2021Concerning Flight: Five Illuminations In Miniature
Charlotte Pryce
A kinematographic film comprised of five brief fictions in which the mystery of insect flight is explored. Interpretations of a mythological and fantastical nature are illuminated in motion and time. Includes: Thin Breath-quivering, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, Departure from the Garden, Conjuring Forth the Firefly and Keepers of the Labyrinth.
Concerning Flight: Five Illuminations In Miniature
The Final Exit of the Disciples of Ascensia
Jonni Phillips
Charlotte Pryce, Victoria Vincent
After receiving a VHS tape claiming she's a disciple of an alien species known as the "True Mothers," Amy joins a local UFO cult, donning the name Celisse and befriending a number of other members while under the watch of the cult's peculiar founder, Ascensia.
The Final Exit of the Disciples of Ascensia
The Parable of the Tulip Painter and the Fly
Charlotte Pryce
An intoxicating flower; a metaphorical insect; a longing reach across the centuries. The Parable of the Tulip Painter and the Fly is a philosophical search drenched in luminous colours and sparkling light. The film was shot on colour reversal, entirely hand-processed and re-printed on the optical printer. "Having grown the exquisite tulip, I feel deeply under its spell--an affliction shared by an artist from another time and place, yet the dilemma we faced was shared: to fall for such a luxurious and temporary beauty raised a fear (a reminder--a fly) of the transience of life" - CP
The Parable of the Tulip Painter and the Fly
Looking Glass Insects
Charlotte Pryce
The film takes its title from chapter three of Lewis Caroll's Through the Looking-Glass. This play of observation makes use of magnifying glasses, used by both entomologists and filmmakers alike. The magnifying glasses can be seen as a visual metaphor for the cinematic process. Yet the insects of the story dissolve into darkness.
Looking Glass Insects
Curious Light
Charlotte Pryce
A metaphorical exploration of Tenniel’s illustrated edition of Lewis Caroll’s Through the Looking-Glass. Through careful illumination, the book’s illustrations retreat into the fibre of the page, and a fleeting light dissolves into the chemistry of the film’s emulsion, revealing and yet concealing a story that is but glimpsed.
Curious Light
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Charlotte Pryce
A dirge, a dance. A portrait of stillness and silence disturbed by the urgency of sadness. The film is composed of paintings from the Northern Renaissance, collaged and combined with hand-painted, hand-processed and optically manipulated images of seashells, hands and dolls. The Ave Maria is sung by Rosa Ponselle, the dancer is Annie Morad.
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Of This Beguiling Membrane
Charlotte Pryce
Charlotte Pryce's innocent observations of striders dancing on the water's surface in "Of This Beguiling Membrane" conceal darker glimpses of what lurks beneath. Inspired by Scottish folklorist Robert Kirk's "The Secret Commonwealth" (1671), Pryce arranges a meeting with the mysterious spirits lying in wait. What happens when we tempt fate and provoke that which we aren’t supposed to see? A reminder of the dangerous seduction of beauty.
Of This Beguiling Membrane
Prima Materia
Charlotte Pryce
Delicate threads of energy spiral and transform into mysterious microscopic cells of golden dust: these are the luminous particles of the alchemist’s dream. Prima Materia is inspired by the haunting wonderment of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura. It is an homage to the first, tentative photographic records that revealed the extraordinary nature of phenomena lurking just beyond the edge of human vision.
Prima Materia
The Tears of a Mudlark
Charlotte Pryce
This live, vintage magic lantern performance tells the colourful story of a reluctant outlaw, a scavenger, a visionary. It is a science-fiction fable for the Anthropocene told with the delicate light of the magic lantern. It is a work of pre-cinematic moving images, with slides that are handmade and hand processed.
The Tears of a Mudlark
W.H. Hudson’s Remarkable Argentine Ornithology
Charlotte Pryce
A live performance with vintage magic lanterns and handmade lantern slides tells the tale of famed naturalist Hudson's spellbinding recollection of birds seen as a child from the pampas of his native Argentina. But the magic lantern also brings out other, hidden layers, including an encounter with nature teetering between joy and dread.
W.H. Hudson’s Remarkable Argentine Ornithology
Discoveries on the Forest Floor 1-3
Charlotte Pryce
Three Miniature, Illuminated, Heliographic studies of plants, observed and imagined. Fragile leaves and very fine threads of fungus string together in Charlotte Pryce’s three plant studies. Plants and images of the plants, and their envisioned environments, are intertwined. The title is taken from an obscure genre of 17th century painting: Forest Floor Paintings, which placed plants into a 'real' environment as opposed to a vase.
Discoveries on the Forest Floor 1-3
Pwdre Ser: the rot of stars
Charlotte Pryce
Pwdre ser is the Welsh name for the mythical substance star jelly that has been observed since the 1400s. The film depicts an encounter with a mysterious, luminous, electrical substance. Inspired equally by medieval accounts of visionary experiences and by 19th-century photography of the invisible, Pwdre Ser joins coronal Kirlian photography with hand-processed images.
Pwdre Ser: the rot of stars
