We’re delighted to announce final shortlist for our inaugural Northern Artists’ Film Programme!
Our esteemed panel came from the best arts organisations in the North (FACT, BBC, Cornerhouse, Arts Council England, Manchester Metropolitan University, University of Salford. For a full list click here). They spent a lovely couple of days debating the merits of some of the most innovative artists’ films coming out of the North.
Here it is! The final shortlist, and a selection screen shots to pique your interest. Don’t forget, you can see the shortlist of films in full 1 NOVEMBER, MEDIACITYUK PIAZZA, 11AM UNTIL 6:30PM
Student Strand
For 3rd year student artists
‘Young Angry Men’
John Wannehag
Dance on film, 5’06mins
When we are lost we seek to find the truth, we turn to science, we turn to god and we turn to places that shares our loneliness. When I was younger I was angry and lost. A solo project inspired by the raising debate about the Young angry men of Sweden. Does anger have two sides? Are we not all afraid?
‘Global Amensia’
Tessa Green
Experimental, 3’18mins
From the specific (Transient Global Amnesia) to the general (Global Amnesia) – can we afford to forget? The work was produced in response to the Lorna Simpson exhibition at Baltic and was shown there in the Gateshead College Kybosh show.
‘Untitled Google Searches (Runaway)’
Alexander Morrison
Experimental Animation, 0’01mins (loop)
The animation, lasting only 1.2 seconds takes influence from structuralist films of the 60s. Starting with a doughnut JPEG, using Google’s visually similar image searches and ending with an image of a sucrose molecule. The animation seeks to explore the disposability of online images and create, an inevitably failed, tangible form.
‘Mania’
Abigail McVeigh
Moving Image, 3’22mins
Mania is based around the fragmentation of the self, from one woman’s perspective. An isolated, unknown space is contrasted with domestic sounds to give a sense of her distorted mind.
‘The Swendenborg Institute’
Kevin Craig
Moving Image, 9’17mins
The Swedenborg Institute draws on notions of the Sublime, science-fiction, mysterious institutions, pseudo-science, meditative practices and hoaxes. The film is an introduction to the fictional Institute and its human experiments in ‘secular transcendence’.
General Open Call
For all emerging/established artists
‘Double Over’
Amelia Crouch
Experimental, 1’23mins
A playful short video of hands manipulating a ‘magic cube;’ a structure that can be folded in various ways. As it is folded words combine to suggest different actions and different meanings.
‘Dream Machine’
Sarah Hill
Experimental, 7’20mins
This film uses footage from Ralph Steiner’s ‘Mechanical Principles’ from 1930, overlapping clips to create a Surrealist-inspired fictional machine with imaginary interconnecting parts. ‘Dream Machine’ was made in response to Jeremy Deller’s exhibition ‘All That is Solid Melts into Air’ for Video Jam at Manchester Art Gallery, scored live with an original accompaniment by Bernard + Edith.
‘Kitchen Collider ‘
Joe Stokes
Experimental/Projection, 0’52mins
Computer generated 3D animation projected onto a bag containing small pieces of polystyrene fixed to a moving electric fan. I use computers, projection, animation, video, objects and paint to produce extended notions of the term collage
‘Untitled (Radial)’
Jesc Bunyard
Experimental, 0’50mins
This film is the continuation Jesc Bunyard’s Cinematic Series. The series explores cinema, in particular the transitions from one scene to the next i.e The Wipe. The series takes the transition and continually repeats them, transforming the transitions into a place of endurance and perceptual focus for the viewer.
‘Chalk Trace’
Esther Johnson
Photography/animation/Creative documentary, 2’27mins
As a child in the 1950s, Ron Cockroft drew a chalk line from his school in Oldham to his home in Chadderton. Chalk Trace commemorates and reanimates his graffiti journey through a now much-changed network of streets.
‘Composition’
Chris Hall
Experimental, 5’20mins
Taking the words of senior planners inside the U.S. State Department in a classified memo from 1948, Composition is a meditation on the structural injustices of the system of global finance and the human consequences of a system designed to serve the interests of the few. Composition is assembled from 8mm film that has been subject to decomposition, re-filmed and re-animated. It is set to an untitled poem written and read by Ian Harker.
‘The Fair’
Rose Butler
Moving Image, 2’47mins
Filmed from the quiet edges of a city centre car park The Fair documents the rotating arm of fairground ride appearing and then disappearing behind old industrial buildings and the John Lewis department store.
‘How To Choose’
Cecilia Stenbom
Moving Image, 3’00mins
How To Choose is a film about insignificant every day choices, what to wear, what crockery to choose, wat to bring with you for the day, told as an instructio rather than personal reflection. Commissioned by Northern Film & Media in association with Channel 4 through Artist Cut, this was my first narrative film work.
‘Nature House Inc’
Nick Jordan
Experimental, 6’12mins
A short film which centres upon the proliferation of bird houses, erected to attract the Purple Martin – ‘America’s Most Wanted Bird’. The extraordinary abundance of man-made habitats reflects a desire to live in close proximity to nature, in a suburban, small town setting.
‘Josephine and the Leopard’
Jade Monsterrat
Moving Image, 6’01
Josephine and The Leopard lurk but are hunted and forms part of a series that research ownership of body and persona, representations and possible manipulations of the body through a quest for equality and freedom. Essentially, the research and subsequent work issuing from ‘Josephine and The Rainbow Tribe’ is looking at radical approaches to freedom: of expression, of speech, to actively participate as community.
‘The Day She Danced for Survival’
Sois de Traca
Experimental Animation 1’00
Short animation depicting the aftermath of a burst of spontaneity.
Quays Culture 
love the lights theme love media city all year round
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