How to Enjoy Experimental Film H2EEF

Vivian Ostrovsky is a truly international filmmaker (as well as curator). Born in New York to a Belarusian father and Ukrainian mother, Vivian has been somewhat nomadic all of her life, regularly finding herself in Rio, Paris, New York and Tel Aviv. “Home”, she writes “is wherever I feel at home – and that might be in a hotel or on a plane or on my way to an unknown destination with a camera and recorder in my bag”.



Her works freely combine footage she has shot herself with an array of found footage, featuring both heartfelt affection and laugh-out-loud humour. Starting as an exclusively Super-8 based filmmaker, she now favours her mobile phone as the primary instrument for her work.



Here we discuss her filmmaking practice ranging from her first experiments to her current work-in-progress (a film about the poet Elizabeth Bishop) as well as some of Vivian's own favourite films.



Information about her films as well as excerpts can be found at http://vivianostrovsky.com

Two DVDs featuring her films are available from Re:Voir

https://re-voir.com/shop/en/frederique-devaux-michel-armager-cineperimentaux/78-rousset-rey-ostrovsky-chodorov-cineperimentaux-1-4-.html

and

https://re-voir.com/shop/en/vivian-ostrovsky/1026-vivian-ostrovsky-plunge.html

The latter of which is also available to stream from Re:Voir's video on demand page.

A continuation of our discussion of the films of Louise Bourque. In this episode, we take a closer look at a handful of Louise's films (including her latest film "Bye Bye Now"), focusing in particular on the images of houses that recur regularly in her filmography. Additionally, we discuss some of the formal concerns informing her work, including both the physical interventions with the film strip itself and the methods by which the results are presented to the viewer.

Here are a few links to her films that are viewable online:

From Light Cone

Fissures

⁠https://lightcone.org/en/film-3475-fissures⁠

Going Back Home

⁠https://lightcone.org/en/film-3512-going-back-home⁠

From Massachussetts Cultural Council

Self Portrait Post Mortem

⁠https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nr4-LaUy1tk⁠

From Vidéographe

Bye Bye Now – Trailer

⁠https://vimeo.com/808805153⁠



A video essay on her work by Stephen Broomer can be found here:

https://vimeo.com/533753926

Broomer and Clint Enns co-edited the book Imprints: The Films of Louise Bourque which can be purchased on Amazon as well as Lightcone and various other sources. This book is quoted from throughout these episodes.

This interview was facilitated through the help of Dave Beaumler. With sincerest thanks for his help.

Louise Bourque is one of the most distinguished film artists currently working in Canada. She was born in Edmundston New Brunswick and has been making films since the late 1980s. Her body of work, by her own admission, is not vast, but it reveals a filmmaker of incredible focus  and determination when it comes to producing the work she desires.

Hers are not films that always give themselves over to analysis very easily. Instead, they are instantly gripping, compelling the audience’s full attention from start to finish, often using intense visual and auditory means to bring the viewer to a point of cathartic release, upon which we reflect afterwards.

Here are a few links to her films that are viewable online:

From Light Cone

Fissures

https://lightcone.org/en/film-3475-fissures

Going Back Home

https://lightcone.org/en/film-3512-going-back-home

From Massachussetts Cultural Council

Self Portrait Post Mortem

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nr4-LaUy1tk

From Vidéographe

Bye Bye Now – Trailer

https://vimeo.com/808805153



A video essay on her work by Stephen Broomer can be found here:

https://vimeo.com/533753926

Broomer and Clint Enns co-edited the book Imprints: The Films of Louise Bourque which can be purchased on Amazon as well as Lightcone and various other sources. This book is quoted from throughout these episodes.

This interview was facilitated through the help of Dave Beaumler. With sincerest thanks for his help.

Helga Fanderl returns to discuss her work, focusing on some specific films that can now be seen on a new DVD from Re:Voir, as well as conversations about how she programmes her work. We discuss both how she assembles programmes of her short films as well as the long process of selecting the films for inclusion on this disc. In addition, Helga shares a number of stories giving background for several of her films in this in depth and occasionally emotional discussion about the making of Helga’s films.

https://re-voir.com/shop/en/helga-fanderl/1564-helga-fanderl-constellations.html

Her book Constellations (De: Konstellationen) is available in multi-lingual editions from Re:Voir as well as Amazon.

Born in Ingolstadt in Germany, Helga Fanderl studied German, Italian and French languages and literature in Munich, Paris and Frankfurt, with an interest in becoming a poet herself. However, quite by chance, she was introduced to super-8 filmmaking via a friend and would soon find herself in the classes of Peter Kubelka.

Since then, Helga has carved a unique career as a film artist, discovering an intensely visual engagement with the world around her. Consistently working with the Super 8 medium, she produces films by in-camera editing, meaning that most of her films are the length of a single reel of film (3-4 minutes) and has now produced over a thousand of these stunning miniature works.

In this episode, Helga discusses her discovery of film as an artistic medium, her first realisations that she could make a "visual poem" and the various fascinations that prompt her to make a film.

At the time of recording, Re:Voir in Paris were about to release a DVD featuring 50 of her films which can now be purchased here:

https://re-voir.com/shop/en/helga-fanderl/1564-helga-fanderl-constellations.html

Her book Constellations (De: Konstellationen) is available in multi-lingual editions from Re:Voir as well as Amazon.

UK based film and video maker Ruth Novaczek has developed a distinctive style of montage, in which she freely combines material she photographs herself with an array of found footage from near innumerable sources. The style, which she describes as "Bricolage" has come to characterise much of her mature work. Photographing material on super-8, lo-res video, camera phones etc. and editing on free software, particularly iMovie, Ruth's work emphasises the accessibility of media tools to an ever increasing number of people, while acknowledging our existence in a multimedia society.

Her methods are combined with regular themes: explorations of feminist perspectives on culture and history, references to lesbian romantic relationships, a diasporic, (rootless) cosmopolitan sense of self, and a strong thread of international Jewish heritage.

Described by Chris Kraus and Denah Johnston as "The Patti Smith of Film", these are works that interpret and reinterpret media fragments to deepen (and question) our understanding of the cultural artefacts that surround us.

For more about Ruth and her films, visit:

https://www.ruthnovaczek.com/home

View a selection of her films here:

https://vimeo.com/ruthnovaczek

For DVDs of Ruth's films visit:

https://shop.bfi.org.uk/radio-dvd.html

or

https://luxmovingimage.square.site/product/ruth-novaczeck-the-new-world/48?cp=true&sa=false&sbp=false&q=true