About

The films included in ‘Articulating Images’ take a performative approach to filmmaking through changes in motion, frame rate and camera positioning. Using a combination of unexpected visuals and abstract narratives, the selected films by Australian experimental filmmakers, Arthur and Corinne Cantrill and the late Canadian filmmaker and visual artist, Michael Snow, push the limits of the medium to offer new ways of seeing and experiencing film.

Please note: Patrons, especially those sensitive to flickering and strobe light sources, are advised that some of these films contain flashing light effects and swirling motions.

Articulated Image 1996

‘This is one of a series of films investigating single-frame possibilities, and the challenge they offer to reading the film image (beginning with '4000 Frames - An Eye Opener' in 1970 and continuing with 'Bouddi' and 'Airey's Inlet'). These films demand of the viewer a total attentiveness if they are to be fully registered. This film focuses on a set subject: a still life of a banana palm on the window sill of a large window on a stairway. The images are filmed in a sequence of two frames of image, then two frames black, with the black frames giving the 'articulation' to the image, rather than a continuous flow of images superimposing on the retina of the eye. The images are clustered in groups of two or three alternating details of the subject, moving on to another set of two or three alternating details. Further into the film the frame pattern changes to one frame image, one frame black.’ National Film and Sound Archive of Australia.

4 minutes | All Ages

<---> (aka Back and Forth) 1969

A dizzying exploration of perception and the possibilities of cinema. In a nondescript classroom a static camera swivels back and forth, back and forth panning across the room. Speeding up and slowing down this back and forth arc, the empty classroom appears at times blurry, sometimes populated with one or more people moving through the frame unconcerned with the camera. This repetition attunes the viewer to the variances in the image and the feeling of motion, turning a cinematic work into something akin to sculpture.

52 minutes | All Ages