Film London Artist's Moving Image Network

UK | 2013 | 12 min
Film by Seamus Harahan

Cold Open is six sequences from a larger series, filmed over a year. Notable are the points of view characteristic of Harahan's style: the camera points either upwards or looks down. When his lens is pointing up, it is usually at a feature of the sky or nature, with a sense of freedom from the anxiety which accompanies his CCTV-like scrutiny of youngsters in slightly menacing gatherings. The opening sequence of this short film has a couple discuss the husband's drinking habits and public image, with a morning scene of rain-soaked branches. The mood is easy-going. Later, a group of young teen boys are observed play-acting violence towards each other, or perhaps not play-acting. The music varies between traditional gaelic and rock. In the final sequence, a group of youngsters is gathered around a pram. The novelty here is the presence of teenage women, perhaps including a young mother. The film ends with Harahan widening the view to place this group of youngsters in their surroundings, which look alarmingly like the middle of a busy road. Once again Harahan, though not unsympathetic to his anonymous subjects, places them in the viewer's mind as possible outcasts within their society and definitely alienated from the viewer's own.

UK | 2014 | 15 min
Film by Bedwyr Williams

The film Hotel 70 Degrees features a replica of full-length top of the legendary Hotel 70 degrees, which once stood on a towering ledge of the mountain near Colvin Bay. The hotel is remarkable for its distinctive architecture, where everything from carpets to stairs was tilted by 70 and 110 degrees. According to the architect's point of view, fewer materials are spent on the construction, but for many local residents the hotel is inextricably linked with cherished memories and gentle impressions, because of its unusual location along the embankment, excellent lunches and service. Reconstruction of the building in full size became possible thanks to the computer simulation of the restoration of the hotel, which was demolished in 2007.

UK | 2016 | 25 min
Film by Bedwyr Williams

The hypnosis master becomes dependent on his own CD-records of hypnosis and finds himself in the space of the familiar Macclesfield districts being influenced by the well-known yoga teacher. The short film by Bedwyr Williams talks about space, travel and the ways we cope - or do not cope with our small lives of the scale of the universe.

UK | 2013 | 2 min
Film by James Richards

Lilies and Carnations wilt and decay against an oil painting of writhing animals. Silent and meditative, the film presents different arrangements and shots of the same flowers continually swelling, falling and expiring in a late night still life for television viewing.

UK | 2011 | 3 min
Film by Emily Wardill

Eitienne, a neuroscientist who is working around ideas of self awareness, is haunted by his patient, who he calls 'Marathon Man' a man who cannot move his own body unless he sees it. Eventually he meets Georgia, a woman with whom he is able to connect and they fall in love.

UK | 2015 | 3 min
Film by Ed Atkins

The senseless computer graphics prism (CGI) tries to convey the tenderness of the melancholic scene. The numbers are trying to "rework" and "hold", providing this service for both human and computer - this is the exact capacity of the video sequence that contains the ideological concentration of the film, which is born on the verge between lost memories, love, image projection and technology.

UK | 2011 | 7 min
Film by Butler and Mirza

Hold Your Ground is a companion piece to a larger film work by Karen Mirza & Brad Butler, scripted in conjunction with the author China Miéville. Inspired by the events of the Arab Spring, and triggered by the artists' discovery in Cairo of a pamphlet of instructions for pro-democracy demonstrators, called 'How to Protest Intelligently', the piece dissects the 'semantics' of the crowd, and the resulting performative 'speech act'. Conceived for the site at Canary Wharf, this work calls forth the struggle to turn 'fugitive sounds' into speech, addressing an audience predominantly in transit.

UK | 2015 | 28 min
Film by Larissa Sansour

In the Future They Ate From the Finest Porcelain resides in the cross-section between sci-fi, archaeology and politics. Combining live motion and CGI, the film explores the role of myth for history, fact and national identity. A narrative resistance group makes underground deposits of elaborate porcelain - suggested to belong to an entirely fictional civilisation. Their aim is to influence history and support future claims to their vanishing lands. Once unearthed, this tableware will prove the existence of this counterfeit people. By implementing a myth of its own, their work becomes a historical intervention - de facto creating a nation. The film takes the form of a fictional video essay. A voice-over based on an interview between a psychiatrist and the female leader of the narrative resistance group reveals the philosophy and ideas behind the group's actions. The leader's thoughts on myth and fiction as constitutive for fact, history and documentary translate into poetic and science fiction-based visuals. As the film progresses, the narrative and visuals alternate between the theoretical and the personal. The resistance leader's deceased twin sister makes a crucial appearance as the story takes the viewer deeper and deeper into the resistance leader's subconscious.

UK | 2014 | 3 min
Film by Rachel Maclean

'Eyes To Me' is a 3-minute short, which follows a doll-like protagonist named Sophie who moves through an enchanted garden inhabited by a race of cuddly Cyclopes known as the Eeblebops. As the video shifts between different formats (a children's television programme, a fashion shoot and a probing interview), Sophie is surveyed, coerced and reprimanded by an omnipresent male voiceover, whose treatment of her moves from a tone of benign paternal care to one of cold, militant disapproval. Shot entirely using green-screen, Maclean is the only figure in the work, miming to recorded audio and warping her features to create uncanny, cartoonish characters that exist within an oversaturated digital world.

UK | 2013 | 3 min
Film by Shezad Dawood

7669 is an exploratory film tracking recalled memories of alien Naseer Khan, a character from Shezad Dawood's feature film Piercing Brightness. As one of the 'Glorious 100' Khan has been on planet Earth for 55 years in various humanoid manifestations observing mankind. The film charts his dream state before he finally leaves Earth.

UK | 2007 | 10 min
Film by Seamus Harahan

The Valley of Jehosephat is a roots reggae track by Max Romeo from the late seventies - referring to a biblical valley of judgment. The other is Bryan Ferry's In Your Mind, which suggests a philosophical quest for personal resolution. The songs accompany footage of the Bloody Sunday Commemoration in Derry. The alternating soundtracks destabilise our reading of the work and force us to
re-evaluate /question what it is we think we see, when we realise how the atmosphere is inflected by the different pieces of music.