Rowley Gallery Blog
A beautiful short film shot on Super-8 and painstakingly woven together by Adam Scovell. He was inspired by Robert Macfarlane, Stanley Donwood, Dan Richards and their book Holloway. I first stumbled into it here and I find it hard to leave. Adam has written a great piece about his film here. It’s mesmerising.
A favourite clip from Louis Malle’s 1958 debut movie, Ascenseur Pour L’Échafaud, starring Jeanne Moreau with a wonderful improvised soundtrack by Miles Davis.
Davis was booked to perform at the Club Saint-Germain in Paris for November 1957. Jean-Paul Rappeneau, a jazz fan and Louis Malle’s assistant at the time introduced him to Malle, and Davis agreed to record the music after attending a private screening. On December 4, he brought his four sidemen to the recording studio without having had them prepare anything. Davis only gave the musicians a few rudimentary harmonic sequences he had assembled in his hotel room, and, once the plot was explained, the band improvised without any precomposed theme, while edited loops of the musically relevant film sequences were projected in the background. www.discogs.com
I have to admit I’ve not yet seen the film (though I did once see Jeanne Moreau looking in our gallery window) but I’ve listened to the soundtrack countless times. I bought the LP years ago after reading a recommendation by Richard Williams and I agree with him that it’s one of Miles Davis’s best.
A short trailer for the forthcoming Holloway film by Adam Scovell, inspired by the book of the same name by Robert Macfarlane, Stanley Donwood & Dan Richards, in which they go in search of an ancient Dorset holloway – previously visited by Macfarlane with Roger Deakin. They were looking for the hide where the hero of Geoffrey Household’s novel ‘Rogue Male’ went to ground.
Read more about the project on Adam Scovell’s website – Celluloid Wicker Man – and there’s another link on Frames Of Reference – Holloway.
Henry Moore’s Large Spindle Piece, a cast bronze sculpture from 1974, now installed in the newly reappointed King’s Cross Square. For the past forty years the station was hidden behind an “awful tin shed” temporary canopy. It’s eventual removal, and the long overdue revelation of Lewis Cubitt’s elegant facade, is celebrated by the arrival of this captive “flying shuttle”. Continue reading “From Moore To Serra”
David Hockney IN THE NOW (in 6 minutes)
A film by Lucy Walker for Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).
The story of David Hockney, an artist who is adamant about living life in the now.
At the beginning of Stan Brakhage’s filmmaking career, he read all the writings of Sergei Eisenstein he could locate, and this dense montage film is one result. A record of an encounter between Brakhage, Jane, and their friends James Tenney and Carolee Schneemann, it intercuts fragments of each with a cat, floral wallpaper, an embroidered fabric. The figures, the cat, and inanimate objects are made to collide with each other, but they also seem to mysteriously commingle, almost as if alchemically transforming themselves into each other, people becoming objects and animals, and inanimate things seemingly becoming human.
The very next morning, right after I finished patching together Out Along Lee, my post about walking the River Lea and the Lee Valley, I found this lovely and fascinating film by Michael Smith thanks to Caught By The River. It felt like synchronicity but this is much better. It was commissioned by The Floating Cinema and UP Projects; it’s a wander along the Lea, all along, down along, out along Lee.
The premiere screening of Learning to Listen, a documentary experimental-music/sound-art film by Dan Linn-Pearl, at Café Oto, 4pm January 18th 2014, Free Entry (RSVP deafpictures@gmail.com).
I’d intended to post this video by Alonzo Mosley last November to celebrate two years of Frames Of Reference, but I forgot! It’s in the same spirit as the earlier Frames Of Reference video posted to mark our first birthday, and according to Peter Bradshaw it’s why the internet was invented! But nevermind, now we can use it as a New Year countdown. It runs for 9 minutes and 30 seconds so don’t start until 23:50:30. Happy New Year!
This is a trailer for my favourite film of 2013, La Grande Bellezza (The Great Beauty), a kind of modern day equivalent to Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, full of gorgeous and spectacular images together with a sublime soundtrack featuring music by David Lang, Arvo Pärt, John Tavener and many more. Continue reading “The Great Beauty”