Wednesday, January 16 2008630pm
Cinémathèque Québécoise (335, boul. De Maisonneuve Est, Métro Berri-UQAM)
The Hart of London [Can., 1970, 79 min]
Director: Jack Chambers
"The Hart of London is a sprawling, ambitious film that combines newsreel footage of disasters, urban and nature imagery, and footage evoking the cycles of life and death. It is on of those rare films that succeed precisely because of its sprawl; raw and open-ended almost to the point of anticipating the postmodern rejection of "master narratives," it cannot be reduced to a simple summary, and changes on you from one viewing to the next." (Fred Camper)
INTRODUCTION BY FILMMAKER RICHARD KERR
ABOUT JACK CHAMBERS -
"Jack Chambers is one of Canada's most famous and greatest living painters. Why then have his films been as neglected as they have been? I feel that it is because his films do not arise as an adjunct to his painting (as is true in the case of most other painter film-makers) but that, rather, Jack Chambers has realized the almost opposed aesthetics of paint and film and has created a body of moving pictures so crucially unique as to fright paint buffery: thus his films have inherited a social position kin to that of the films of Joseph Cornell in this country. The fact is that four films of Jack Chambers have changed the whole history of film, despite their neglect, in a way that isn't possible within the field of painting. There are no 'masters' of film in any significant sense whatsoever. There are only 'makers' of film in the original, or at least medieval, sense of the word. Jack Chambers is a true 'maker' of films. He needs no stance, or standing, for he dances attendance upon the coming-into-being of something recognizably new: (and as all is new, always, one must question the veracity of all works, whatever medium, which beseem everything but that truth)." -- Stan Brakhage
Cinémathèque Québécoise (335, boul. De Maisonneuve Est, Métro Berri-UQAM)
The Hart of London [Can., 1970, 79 min]
Director: Jack Chambers
"The Hart of London is a sprawling, ambitious film that combines newsreel footage of disasters, urban and nature imagery, and footage evoking the cycles of life and death. It is on of those rare films that succeed precisely because of its sprawl; raw and open-ended almost to the point of anticipating the postmodern rejection of "master narratives," it cannot be reduced to a simple summary, and changes on you from one viewing to the next." (Fred Camper)
INTRODUCTION BY FILMMAKER RICHARD KERR
ABOUT JACK CHAMBERS -
"Jack Chambers is one of Canada's most famous and greatest living painters. Why then have his films been as neglected as they have been? I feel that it is because his films do not arise as an adjunct to his painting (as is true in the case of most other painter film-makers) but that, rather, Jack Chambers has realized the almost opposed aesthetics of paint and film and has created a body of moving pictures so crucially unique as to fright paint buffery: thus his films have inherited a social position kin to that of the films of Joseph Cornell in this country. The fact is that four films of Jack Chambers have changed the whole history of film, despite their neglect, in a way that isn't possible within the field of painting. There are no 'masters' of film in any significant sense whatsoever. There are only 'makers' of film in the original, or at least medieval, sense of the word. Jack Chambers is a true 'maker' of films. He needs no stance, or standing, for he dances attendance upon the coming-into-being of something recognizably new: (and as all is new, always, one must question the veracity of all works, whatever medium, which beseem everything but that truth)." -- Stan Brakhage
