Wednesday 31 January 2024, 7.30pm
Sonic Cinema presents a unique screening of Gaëlle Rouard’s atmospheric film diptych Darkness, Darkness Burning Bright, projected by the artist from her personal 16mm print.
Unfolding across two acts, Prelude and Oraison, Darkness Darkness, Burning Bright is a personal and poetic work full of expressive solarized nightscapes and pastoral unreality. The film draws us into a crepuscular landscape, where animals and plants appear luminous and rendered in chiaroscuro, with the movements playing out through a series of tableau vivant composed from the combination of photochemically manipulated still and moving images. Produced using found sounds and drawing on the traditions of musique concrète and cinéma pour l’oreille (cinema for the ear), Rouard’s soundtrack oscillates between supporting ambience and pronounced narrative emphasis.
Gaëlle will be in conversation with Simon Field following the screening.
Programmed by Oliver Dickens for Sonic Cinema. Special thanks to Isabelle Manci & Angela Blanc at the Institut français.
Gaëlle Rouard will also present the Darkness, Darkness, Burning Bright diptych with BEEF at Cube Microplex (Bristol) on 3rd February and at Star & Shadow (Newcastle) on 7th February.
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PROGRAMME:
Amy Cutler (DJ)
Darkness, Darkness Burning Bright – Prelude, Gaëlle Rouard, 39 min, 2022, 16mm
Darkness, Darkness Burning Bright – Oraison, Gaëlle Rouard, 30 min, 2022, 16mm
Q&A with Gaëlle Rouard & Simon Field
Generously supported by Institut français du Royaume-Uni
Gaëlle Rouard (France) is a filmmaker and artist based in Grenoble. Since 1991 she has been making films, specialising in photochemical processing and the possibilities of live multi-projection. She ran the Atelier MTK DIY film laboratory in Grenoble from 1996 to 2006, and is a longtime member of Le 102, rue d’Alembert, a venue dedicated to experimental music and film. Gaëlle’s work has been presented internationally at festivals and art centres such as the Centre Pompidou Paris, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Syros SIFF Film Festival and Brisbane Institute of Modern Art. Her latest film Darkness, Darkness, Burning Bright (2022) has received awards in various festivals, including the Istanbul International Film Festival Award, the Experimental Competition Award at the Curtas de Vila do Conde and Best Sound Design at the Ann Arbor Film Festival (2023).
Sonic Cinema is a research project and event series by Oliver Dickens, exploring the intersection of moving-image, sound art and music practice. It is dedicated to the memory of Louis Benassi.
Oliver Dickens is a film programmer based in the UK and a graduate of the Central Saint Martins/LUX MRes Art: Moving Image course. He is currently Director & programmer of Sonic Cinema (2021-present) alongside undertaking freelance work. Previously he was cinema programmer at Close-Up Film Centre (2016-2020) and Assistant Director for the 25th Media City Film Festival (2022).
Simon Field is a producer and film programmer based in the London. He was Director of Cinema at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (London), from 1988 until 1996 when he became Director of the International Film Festival Rotterdam until 2004. In 2005 he joined Keith Griffiths’ UK-based Illuminations Films and as a producer has been primarily involved with the films of the Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, director of Memoria (2021). From 1970 to 1987 he was editor of the irregular film journal Afterimage devoted to new and radical cinema. The Visible Press recently published the Afterimage Reader.
Amy is an artist, cultural geographer, and live cinema artist who works with ideas of geography and nonhuman others. In her career in the GeoHumanities she has completed a PhD, a post-doc, and an ECR fellowship, and she has exhibited her work or run live events with organisations including Somerset House, Sheffield Doc Fest, the Natural History Museum, and Kew Gardens. Her geography training impacts her work as a musician, performer, and designer, and she works frequently on the production of immersive and live cinema and exhibition events provoking and changing the public conversation around ideas of space, geography, and nature-cultures. She is also a cross-disciplinary lecturer and teaches more publicly too, often developing unusual live sessions and field-trips for museums, festivals, and galleries.
