Kinora Film Foundation
Saint Petersburg School of New Cinema
Saint Petersburg, Russia
- Laura Moreno Bueno, Ulía (2024)
- Mike Stoltz, With Pluses and Minuses (2013)
- Colby Richardson, Convolve (2016)
- Nan Wang, Oscillation in Sight #01 (2023)
- Allan Brown, Wishful Thinking (2017)
- Colby Richardson, Head (2019)
- Nan Wang, Liquid Landscape (2017–2018)
- Esther Urlus, Elli (2015–2016)
- Karen Akerman, Miguel Seabra Lopes, Confidente (2016)
Program:
Curatorial text:
76 min
This program is dedicated to the phenomenon of flicker — one of the most radical techniques of experimental cinema, which changes conventional ways of perceiving image and sound, transforming them into a liminal cinematic experience. The historical starting point here, of course, was Tony Conrad’s structural film The Flicker (1966), which opened up a new field of possibilities for the authors of experimental cinema, who subsequently used this technique with varying degrees of intensity.
However, it was important for me to intentionally expand the notion of flicker itself and to trace how this principle manifests across a variety of examples: in the pulsation of sound, ultra-rapid editing, phase repetition, color mixing, the duplication of text, and the layering of abstract imagery.
All of this makes it possible to address the potential fragmentation of film — its capacity to break apart into discrete impulses, ruptures, and intervals. Yet it is precisely through the rhythm and tension of these ruptures that filmmakers reassemble their works, transforming fragmentation into a unified sensory experience.
However, it was important for me to intentionally expand the notion of flicker itself and to trace how this principle manifests across a variety of examples: in the pulsation of sound, ultra-rapid editing, phase repetition, color mixing, the duplication of text, and the layering of abstract imagery.
All of this makes it possible to address the potential fragmentation of film — its capacity to break apart into discrete impulses, ruptures, and intervals. Yet it is precisely through the rhythm and tension of these ruptures that filmmakers reassemble their works, transforming fragmentation into a unified sensory experience.
Curator: Gevorg Galstian
FLICKER
2013
Wishful Thinking
Trotters come round the bend with Immanuel Velikovsky as race caller. Why can't we believe in “if” anymore.
“The audio interference that he (Brown) whips up and cycles has the effect of sounding like a brewing storm. The stuttering images of horse-drawn chariots again evoke a coming apocalypse. Is Brown wishing for the end of the world, or for aesthetic gale winds that can bring order to chaos?” Greg de Cuir
“The audio interference that he (Brown) whips up and cycles has the effect of sounding like a brewing storm. The stuttering images of horse-drawn chariots again evoke a coming apocalypse. Is Brown wishing for the end of the world, or for aesthetic gale winds that can bring order to chaos?” Greg de Cuir
2017
Allan Brown
Oscillation in Sight #01
Oscillation in Sight is a series of film experiments that opposed the idea of representation and reconstruction of the appearance of motion in the real world. By making her own 16mm camera, the filmmaker can capture images without restrictions such as frame size, gate, speed, and shutters. In Oscillation in Sight #1, we will be gazing at a small transparent piece of plastic on a spinning motor, that appears to be phasing in and out of existence, oscillating between the familiar and distorted visions.
2023
Nan Wang
Convolve
Filmed on Super 8, Convolve transforms pages from Greg Bright’s Fontana Mazes into a convoluted passage, using prisms, water refractions and warped chrome to obscure the already obscured path of The Maze. The score for this film is created by taking an analog-video feed of the film, and using the video output of the camera as an audio input. The black and white lines of the mazes sculpt the tone and structure of the audio in real-time, resulting in a jarring, alien.
2016
Colby Richardson
With Pluses and Minuses
A ground-less and boundless 16mm film in which a wall becomes a window to a swirling landscape.
Mike Stoltz
Ulía
The limits of the landscape are always the same, because they do not understand political borders, but geographical features. A line that separates the sea from the sky, mountainous waves that cut across the sky. Regardless of where you are, these limits follow the same pattern. This film proposes as a starting point the use of these limits to create a sort of landscape collage, to reconstruct the image of the landscape by combining space and time from the capture of the image; from the present, and not from the subsequent construction in post-production, hence the key role of the analogue image.
2024
Laura Moreno Bueno
Confidente
If I didn’t blossom, if I remained unbloomed, it’s because my roots were poisoned. I know it's false, an induced error, but... this is me.
2016
Karen Akerman, Miguel Seabra Lopes
Elli
Elli consists of a seascape shot from the spot that marks the start of World War II in Greece. However, it is mainly a follow-up to filmmaker Esther Urlus’s inquisitive interest in colour mixing in film. In this case, the optical mixing created by various flicker effects.
2015-16
Esther Urlus
Liquid Landscape
The result of a two-year research study on the aesthetics of liquid patterns. By using a mixture of liquid soap and film developer, rich visual patterns were created from the transit moments when liquid hits the 16mm film strip. Microscopic worlds and macroscopic landscapes emerge.
2017-18
Nan Wang
Head
Filmed on super 8 in an underground concourse located directly beneath Winnipeg's famous Portage and Main intersection. HEAD takes a structuralist examination of the often overlooked 360 degree concrete relief mural that spans the entirety of the underground passageway.
2019
Colby Richardson
Kinora Film Foundation
Saint Petersburg School of New Cinema
24 May / 18:00
17 May / 18:00
