CLOSE-UP OF WHAT?

13th April 2003. 4pm-8:30pm.13th April 2003. 4pm-8:30pm.13th

i m p r o v i s a t i o n s & f i l m s

process based works
processed presents:

at
GEC Gallery
18 Punderson Gardens, red door, 3th floor. Bethnal Green, London
13th April 2003. 4pm-8:30pm. £5. tel.0208 510 18 56

IMPROVISATIONS:

4pm
a sound of music- tone generator + analogue stuff

Takehiro Nishide- guitar
Matthew Hyland- guitar
Simon H. Fell- Double Bass

5pm
John Butcher- Saxophone
Kaffe Matthews- computer
Mattin- computer feedback

FILMS:

6pm
"Displaced" by William English
"Specters of resistance" by Mattin

7pm
CLOSE-UP by PETER GIDAL
1983;Sound;Colour 70 mins.

After three years this film;attempting yet again to deal with the problematising of filmic
representation in sound and image:the overtly politically-polemical soundtrack from
Nicaragua must not synchronise with,nor must it find a separate continuum of reality away
from,the image sequences.
Without avoiding the interrogation of narrative/anti narrative cinematic structures (the way
the images,and the sounds,at times hold/do not hold ...or the way they attempt to force a
position contradictory to any representational imaginary or homogeneity,of constructed
space,time,ego,language,film)an attempted materialist use of sound and image must be
at the same time an anti-individualist work.
Both the sound-contradictions,and the image-contradictions,of subjectivity in this film
(and of this film)must be in constant process with/against the political polemic:the film
can not allow for a final exclusion of either (neither some pure documentary reality nor
some pure formal dialectic).The viewer ’s attempts,via her/his/the cultural context of
meaning making (political/sexual;narrative)are worked against by the film ’s process.
The work against the capitalist patriarchal position of narrative,in other words,is (still,and
in specificity)the main interest.-P.G.,August 1983.
“At a time when British cinema in the independent sector provides a dismal,visually
illiterate and politically dubious product,Close Up is crystal hard,intransigent,and film in
extremis.In short,one of the best ‘political ’ films made in this country..” --Michael O ’Pray,
Monthly Film Bulletin,Jan 1984.