DAY 1: CINEMA DESPITE Festival - Reviewing artists’ film and video in Scotland
Face-Kicking: surviving the documentary
Day 1 of CINEMA DESPITE, a 3 Day Festival
Luke Fowler, David Hall, Lutz Mommartz, Margaret Salmon, Tako Taal, and Margaret Tait.
The tradition of documentary filmmaking in Scotland casts a long shadow over the moving image in Scotland. Against this dominant mode, this programme looks at the ways in which artists have challenged and survived the documentary image. Thinking through film as a kind of poetry, a diary, an intervention or an archive, these works capture everyday life in ways that disrupt conventional media. Commenting on how we record and are recorded, they point to the act of observation to ask questions of power and representation.
PROGRAMME
David Hall, Interruption Piece, 1971. 2 minutes 20 seconds.
Lutz Mommartz, Das Atem des Schafes, 1970. 9 minutes 20 seconds.
Margaret Tait, Colour Poems, 1974. 11 minutes.
Luke Fowler, Depositions, 2014. 24 minutes 30 seconds.
Margaret Salmon, Lens Diary, 2020. 20 minutes.
Tako Taal, DUMP_outthroughthemouth_, 2020. 2 minutes.
Running time: 69 minutes
+ Q&A
Access
All works include descriptive captions except for Lens Diary.
Audience note: This programme features dead animals and flickering images.
ABOUT CINEMA DESPITE
Featuring the contribution of twenty-nine artists, filmmakers and collectives working across a seventy year period, CINEMA DESPITE (1-3 September) attempts to expand and trouble an underexposed history of artists' moving image practice in Scotland.
Including examples of contemporary work alongside rarely seen historic material drawn from archives and newly scanned for digital presentation, this one-off festival imagines an intergenerational dialogue between artists.
The programme is organised into five episodes screened over 3 days: the documentary; imperial legacies; protest; cultural identity; and sexuality. Each screening will be followed by a conversation with participating artists and a free publication of newly commissioned writing accompanies the programme.
Curated by Marcus Jack and presented in partnership with Tramway, CINEMA DESPITE follows a five-year research project and is supported by the Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities and the School of Fine Art, The Glasgow School of Art.
Image: Still from Margaret Tait, Colour Poems, 1974. Courtesy of the artist’s estate and LUX.