Light Reading
This month Early Monthly Segments is delighted to be presenting three films that are distinguished by their political and critical resonance while exhibiting a profound, poetic and unique handling of the materials and form of film. In LIGHT READING Rhodes uses a series of still photographs to suggest a mystery, or perhaps more accurately to explore the tropes of the language of mystery. Layering images and text both still and moving, and playing with repetition and image registration and measurement LIGHT READING is as much about the characteristics of film and photography and who is the subject and/or the object of such as the story it skirts. Similarly layered and elliptical A COLD DRAFT functions as a multifaceted poetic reportage of the experience of those left behind in the trickle down dystopia of the 1980s UK. The voice of a single narrator comes to embody a chorus of defeated subjects surviving perpetual oppression. Susan Oxtoby’s ALL FLESH IS GRASS revolves around the exploration of the ruin of a 19th century shopping arcade in Buffalo NY, combined with footage of spaces, friends, children and characters in Toronto and in New York City. Shot on super 8 and blown up to 16mm Oxtoby allows the rhythm of her editing and the texture of the grain to dance with her own camera movements, layering gesture upon gesture while her generous eye finds tenderness and beauty among the ruins, guiding us out of the gloom and into the light of day.
Programme:
All Flesh is Grass, Susan Oxtoby, 1988, Canada, 16mm, 15 min.
Light Reading, Lis Rhodes, 1979, UK, 16mm, 20 min.
A Cold Draft, Lis Rhodes, 1988, UK, 16mm, 30 min.
@ Gladstone Hotel, Ballroom | 1214 Queen St West
Monday May 12, 2014 | 8:00 PM screening | $5-10 suggested donation