Leeds International Film Festival is now in its 23rd year and prides itself on showcasing a wide range of cinema, from the beautiful to the bizarre. With a mixture of strands representing types of film from anime to arthouse to horror, Culture Vulture met up with Programme Coordinator Martha Jurksaitis to talk about Cherry Kino, the “wondermental” experimental/avant-garde film strand.
The fledgling manifestation of Cherry Kino came into being during the 2007 film festival, when Martha held an evening entitled KiNETIKA! at the Adelphi pub. This was a transformative night, set on changing experimental film from something distant and unreachable to something that could be accessed by all; held in casual settings, with a relaxed atmosphere and a bar close-by. The aim was to challenge people’s ideas about what cinema was and could be, and to help them to see it as part of a wider spectrum of the arts, with the pub also showcasing arts installations utilising other media. The night quickly sold out and was deemed a roaring success.
Seeing that there was obviously a demand for this type of film, the one-night-only event was developed the following year into a full strand, again called KiNETIKA! Meanwhile, Martha’s personal interest in experimental film was deepening, and on top of joining Leeds-based, not-for-profit film collective EXP24, she spent the few months of the year that were not devoted to the film festival travelling around Europe and visiting DIY film labs in Germany and France. These labs were very hands on, she explains, and put the power back in the hands of the film maker. In this type of structure, the producer is removed and the film maker takes on full control of the product, being taught how to do things by the lab and then being left entirely to their own devices. This approach truly showcases the plasticity of the medium and what it is capable of; without having to go through a middle-man, the film maker is able to transfer their ideas directly, achieving a purer result and getting as close to their original vision as possible. It is an approach that is all about closeness and proximity, enabling the film maker to work directly with the film without any barriers.
A lot of the problem in getting this type of film seen by a wider audience lies in the funding. Feeling fuelled by her experience in Europe, Martha returned to England and decided to begin showing films based around the themes of consciousness and collectives. The Arts Council refused funding, however, and so everything was done on a very tight shoestring and on a completely DIY basis, with film makers from Europe sleeping draped across her floors. The result was collaborations between EXP24 and German collective Sector 16, as well as intensive workshops run by the groups on hand-processing techniques.
Even now, the strand struggles with funding issues. Martha recounts an anecdote to me about trying to get funding, only to be told “it all sounds very 60s and 70s to me”. This is retro-thinking, she says, and completely unhelpful, though very much a product of the now: everything must be about the “cult of the new”, with little room for anything else. This type of film is simply not covered by the Leeds International Film Festival funders. Martha thinks this may be because it is not viewed as “proper” film – in essence it is closer to the sensory aesthetics of sculpture or poetry – but she believes it is not fair to delineate within the medium like this. Film, she says, is still a very young medium, and is capable of a lot more than we currently realise. Powerful and rich, the joy is in how much is left to discover about its possibilities, and that is what the experimental strand is all about. She stresses the diversity of cinema as a multisensory experience; for Cherry Kino, she has coined a new phrase, “wondermental”, finding the other terms available somehow lacking for what they are attempting to describe. “Wondermental” is film that is fills you with wonder and awe, that is cerebral and makes you think and yet is also very physical. It does not depend on narrative, or the classical story-based structure of tension/resolution; it does not rely on anything. The audience are not passive in watching it, they have to work, and in doing so they begin to play an active part in the film. It can be completely stark-raving mental. And yet it is undeniably wonderful.
Martha explains that her choices of short film for Cherry Kino are not necessarily all premieres, and rather they represent a wide-ranging ‘taster’ of the genre. Showcasing entirely new film is not the aim here, as much of experimental film is unknown and the genre untouched by so many people. Despite this, says Martha, it doesn’t have to be that way. Whilst she does feel that a lot of recent experimental and arthouse film can be very sterile and cerebral, out of the reach of the casual viewer, she doesn’t believe in this approach and feels that it sucks the joy out of the very visceral and very accessible experience that experimental film can be. Her aim in Cherry Kino is to bring some of that back, and to make it into a joyful experience, yet without dumbing it down in any way. It is, she tells me, all about “relishing the intellectual, the physical and the emotional”, and making it something that everyone can enjoy.
This year’s selection all plays around the theme ‘Revolting Bodies’, titled such because of the duality of language evident in the word ‘revolting’. “Our bodies can revolt in more than one way”, she explains. In Black Sun, the story is told of a French artist living in New York City, who is blinded in an acid attack. The film is a record of him recounting his experiences, and how, even though his body has turned against him and he cannot see, he turns this to his advantage and uses it to seek a deeper meaning in things.
In Cameraless Films!, the theme of blindness is continued, with a series of shorts made without the use of a camera lens. In these, the visual effect is induced through a number of techniques: dripping ink onto the film strip, scratching animations onto it like a flipbook, bleaching the strip; even growing crystals on it. These ideas are built upon in an interactive workshop from DIY film maker Alex McKenzie, who set up the Vancouver Underground Film Festival, where he will be teaching attendees how to use Man Ray’s rayograph technique on 16mm black and white film. This is done by simply placing objects on top of the film strip and then exposing it to light, creating a ‘photo’ of the object on the film.
These themes of blindness and sight are all about the body revolting, Martha explains, and particularly about “destabilising the idea of the sensory prominence of the eye”. In essence, making films without using a camera lens has parallels with seeing without an eye; something which sounds completely impossible and yet which we all do, in our minds-eye and in our dreams. This links experimental film to the realm of the imagination or dreamscape; the films can lack a traditional narrative approach in the way that our dreams do and can take the “mad ideas” of the mind and make them concrete. It also firmly places experimental film as a multi-sensory experience, with auditory sensation often taking prominence over visual. Here, unusually for something seen as primarily a visual medium, the eye can be usurped. One of Martha’s ambitions is to take this multi-sensory approach to film to the next level and curate films for blind people. “Film”, she explains, “isn’t just a visual experience, no more than anything else is”.
In another part of the strand, we will also see Alex McKenzie showcase his own film, produced completely from scratch. This harks back to those European DIY film labs where the entire creative power is placed back in the hands of the film maker. Indeed, Alex makes his own film and emulsion, and has even made his own hand-cranked projector which he calls The Wooden Lightbox. With the film maker actually in the room with you and controlling the speed and projection of the film, this can make for a very intimate and (literally) home-grown performance.
On the dual nature of ‘revolting bodies’, Martha points out that perhaps this points to a more telling conclusion – “Is revolution considered repulsive?” Experimental film is all about non-conformity, rebellion and revolution, and about getting an idea and running with it, however crazed it is and however little funding you have. “Anyone can have a mad idea, but to take that mad idea and actually make it into a film really takes something”, Martha enthuses. It is fitting, then, that the strand takes its name from that which the word ‘cinema’ itself was derived, the Greek word ‘kino’ – “to set in motion”.
The Leeds International Film Festival runs from 4th-22nd November 2009. For full programme information and to buy tickets, please visit the website.
Great festival! I’m glad they;re also screening experimental films.