OCATILLO AUDIOVISUAL
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  • THE AUDIOVISUAL SERIES

New book due out in early 2014

13/10/2013

 
Picture
Just been informed by my great editor at IB Tauris that Cinema and the Audiovisual Imagination is going into production - now looking forward to checking the proofs and preparing the index - it's all good fun. And here's the blurb:
So far, the study of cinema has been overwhelmingly visual. In this book Robert Robertson presents cinema as an audiovisual medium, based on Eisenstein’s ideas on the montage of music, image and sound. Robertson applies an audiovisual focus to key works by film directors such as Spike Lee, Maya Deren, David Lynch, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, and Fritz Lang, as well as exploring the audiovisual in avant-garde animation, in landscape in cinema, and in films beyond the European tradition. Recent developments in technology have for the first time enabled practitioners to work extensively with music and sound on an equal level with the visual track, so Robertson also explores the audiovisual creative process in opera, a music/film collaboration, and in his music/films Oserake and The River That Walks.

This illuminating book has relevance for practitioners in any work that involves the audiovisual, especially cinema and its future multiple forms.

Robert Robertson is a composer and filmmaker. He is also the author of Eisenstein on the Audiovisual (I.B. Tauris), winner of the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation’s And/Or Award. 


Research Presentation, Canterbury Christ Church University, 9/10/13
Very warmly received by Dr Andy Birtwistle, Reader in the Department of Media, Art and Design, and author of Cinesonica - Sounding Film and Video (Manchester University Press, 2010), for a research seminar about the audiovisual imagination in cinema.
It was held in the Powell Building, named after Michael Powell, the famous film director who was born in Canterbury. Consequently there's a lot of interest here about landscape in cinema, so the discussions during the seminar continued in a very interesting and fruitful exchange of ideas afterwards.
The audiovisual system responded very well to the demands of Oserake and the River That Walks, making it one of the best screenings of this work so far.
On the way to the university I enjoyed again (from when I taught at the School of Arts at the University of Kent last year) the main street of Canterbury, heaving as usual with throngs of shoppers, tourists and school parties from all over Europe, clutching their maps of Canterbury and worksheets. I also popped in to the newly renovated Beaney House of Art and Knowledge, the oddly-named local library and museum.
Many thanks to Andy and everyone who made my visit so pleasant and thought-provoking. 

Poetry interweaves with films

13/10/2013

 
An altogether convivial and most successful screening at the Poetry Cafe London, featuring a collection of evocative short 16mm films set in China, shot and edited by Nick Collins.
Also set in China, Chris H. Lynn's Summer Trilogy features early morning mists, a monsoon rainstorm, and calm reflections, lotus leaves and lotus flowers in the lake at Peoples' Park, Shanghai.
Memoriam, a set of new poems by the filmmaker and poet Maureen Kendal were read by her, interwoven with the films. Visual rhymes between poetry and films appeared, as in the 'light glinting on waves' which also featured powerfully in Dennis Dracup's lyrical film, On The Spent and Silent Sand.
Steve Dracup's hypnotic Two.Words. stimulated a wide range of emotions through pairs of words presented in different colours and styles, in a crossfading procession over his sonic score. 
And then the poet Spike Hawkins appeared, and rounded off the evening with a flourish, with his inimitable readings from his collection, 250 Grams of Poetry.
(For the evening's complete programme, see my previous post, below).

Programme from the Poetry Cafe, London

5/10/2013

 
POETRY & FILMS at The Poetry Café                                                                   30th September 2013
                                                                      Memoriam        Maureen Kendal
A tapestry of six poems interweaving with films   
Invocation (Ancient Harps)      Nick Collins                                               6 min
Rhythms of summer light and ancient stone.
Memoriam                                                                1
Dream Within a Dream    Film and sound: Chris H. Lynn                          12 min
Masters of hallucination, Poe and Baudelaire meet in a library in Alençon.
Memoriam                                                                 2
Anima Grado     Film and music: Dennis Dracup                                       7 min
Grado, a resort on the Adriatic, captured in a choreography of light.
Memoriam                                                                 3
On The Spent and Silent Sand     Film and sound: Dennis Dracup              5 min
Odd distortions seen during the heat-haze of late summer.  
Mosque of Xian     Nick Collins                                                                2 min
A poetic and complex interweaving of Arabic and Chinese cultures.   
Memoriam                                                                 4
Empedocles   Act 1, Scenes 3 & 4                                                        13 min
Robert Robertson: Music, Dennis Dracup: Film                                      
Scenes from the life and ideas of Empedocles, the philosopher poet.
Suzhou          Nick Collins                                                                       3 min
These empty clothes and shadows are amusing, whimsical, but on occasion unsettling.
Memoriam                                                                 5
Lyangungang            Film: Chris H. Lynn                                                13 min
Lyrical views from a boat; the brides on the beach are wonderful and poignant.
Memoriam                                                                 6
Summer Trilogy      Film and Sound: Chris H. Lynn                                   9 min
Mist, rain, a lake in a park in Shanghai: three forms of water, inspired by the Chinese Literati     
                                                                                       Interval
Two.Words      Film and sound: Steve Dracup                                          7 min
A hypnotic montage of highly evocative words, visuals, audio. 
Familiar Pond     Nick Collins                                                                  3 min
Games of light and reflections provide avenues of spatial ambiguities in this local pond.
Tunxi         Nick Collins                                                                          1’ 30” 
Umbrellas take on a life of their own on a rainy day in Tunxi.

Spike Hawkins reads from his collection of poems 250 Grams of Poetry (Harwood)
                                                 With thanks to Ely Ahamed at The Poetry Café

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