Cloud of Skin ‘Making Of’ Featurette

A documentary/behind-the-scenes featurette that sheds light on the creative processes behind

Maximilian Le Cain's upcoming feature film "Cloud of Skin".

Watch here

Rouzbeh Rashidi's "Ten Years in the Sun" is now complete

Statement by the filmmaker:

"I am happy to announce that my feature film “Ten Years in the Sun” (2015) has been completed. The project was one year in production and has drastically mutated and deviated in various ways from the idea initially conceived. In this film I have tried to radically minimalize genre elements such as science fiction, horror and perhaps erotic drama. My hope was to attain what could be called a ‘ground zero of drama’ through the systematic removal of narrative structures.

On this project I have intentionally worked with a wide range of collaborators and actors, and without their tremendous support this film would have been impossible to make. At this point I do not have any emotional feeling towards the film and I can only see it as a pure technical, audio-visual work that I engineered. I would very much like to share the film with an audience in any cinematic situation possible and hopefully they would approve of the finished piece.

I want to sincerely thank Jann Clavadetscher, John Curran, Dean Kavanagh, Maximilian Le Cain, Alice Kavanagh, Jennifer Sharpe, Ora Kolmanovsky, Atoosa Pour Hosseini, Patricia Klich, Fardideh Aram, Reza Rashidi, Eadaoin O’Donaghue, Mohsen Pour Hosseini, Ehsan Safarpour & Claudia Siefen." 

- Rouzbeh Rashidi

Read Maximilian Le Cain's review Here

Official Trailer

Film Website

Filmmaker's Website

Feedback on "A Harbour Town" (2013)

Feedback on "A Harbour Town" (2013) by Chayanin Tiangpitayagorn (translation by Jit Phokaew):

A HARBOUR TOWN (2013, Dean Kavanagh, Ireland)

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There are some moments in this film (actually nearly half of the film) which make the film resembles a mystery-detective movie, because the character whom I assumed the protagonist of the film seems to change his face and hairstyle all the time, as if he is a detective or a spy, or as if the film was made in a twelve-year period like BOYHOOD, because in one scene his face looks clean, but in another scene he wears a moustache; in one scene he wears glasses, in another scene his hair grows longer and its color has changed. I just realized later that this is not the same character, but they look like each other very much, because they are siblings in real life.

Though I misunderstood about this thing, the film still has other elements which resemble a detective movie, especially the middle-eastern character (I guess this character is played by Rouzbeh Rashidi) who seems to come to search for something in an empty builiding. He also looks out from the rooftop filled with bird droppings and records what is happening out there with his camera. Similarly, the protagonist goes to a harbour town, venturing into a forest, meeting other characters, and receiving something. But when the audience sees the protagonist smoking, the audience will never know what he is thinking about, whom he is thinking about, or what he is looking for.

Maybe we don’t have to focus on the story of this film, because the film has no dialogues. (Though we can see that the characters are speaking in some scenes, we cannot hear them, and we don’t even know who these characters are.) The owner of the most prominent sound in this film is the nature—the sound of water, wind, rain, flocks of birds, or the storm which rages through the harbour town. The nature devours all the atmosphere and living things in this film and makes them become a part of the story of sound and light.

The last part of the film seems like a game of haunted ghosts, which puts people inside a haunted house or an enclosed dark space which has very few light sources, in order to search for some truths or to solve a mystery. But in this film we don’t know what the mystery is or who the owner of the mystery is. We don’t even know if we should solve the mystery or not. There is one scene in this film which is extremely scary, though there is a very bright sunshine in this scene. It is as if the film has become a zombie film for 15 seconds before it returns to the previous state.

In conclusion, while we are watching this film, we may feel as if we are thrown into a mysterious harbour town with a small population. We meet a few inhabitants of the town, who live under the control of the story of sound of light. There may be some mysteries, may be not. Even if there are some mysteries, we are not sure if we should solve them or not. We don’t even know how well these townspeople know one another.

"A Harbour Town" is available from EFS "Video On Demand" Here

EFS 2015

"2015 is set to be a very important year for Experimental Film Society with a number of new feature films being completed and others going into production. The calendar will also be punctuated with many screenings, performances, and collaborations with other international film collectives around the world. 2015 will also see the launch of an “EFS Film Journal” and we will release almost all of the EFS feature films as ‘Video On Demand’ on Vimeo. Watch this space for more info!"

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In The Mood For List: 2014

10 Best new films seen in 2014

1. Damp Access (Maximilian Le Cain)
2. Mutual Admiration Society (Rouzbeh Rashidi & James Devereaux)
3. Welcome To New York (Abel Ferrara)
4. Rearrangement Trilogy: Hypothesis, Conditions, Poetics (Rouzbeh Rashidi)
5. Under The Skin (Jonathan Glazer)
6. The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese)
7. Investigating the Murder Case of Ms. X/Y (Rouzbeh Rashidi)
8. Jauja (Lisandro Alonso)
9. Jealousy (Philippe Garrel)
10. Maps to the Stars (David Cronenberg)

 -- Jean-Luc Godard’s “Adieu au langage” (watched in 2D) shares a top slot.

Special Mention:

There (James Fotopoulos)

Bastards (Claire Denis)

Norte, The End of History (Lav Diaz)

Best Short film:

Night Regulation (Maximilian Le Cain)

The Nest (David Cronenberg)

Pitpony (Jason Marsh)

Murder (Michael Higgins)

Worst 2014:

1. Calvary (John Michael McDonagh)
2. Nymphomaniac (Lars Von Trier)
3. The Double (Richard Ayoade)
4. Frank (Lenny Abrahamson)
5. Boyhood (Richard Linklater)
6. The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson)
7. Two Days, One Night (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne)
8. The Dance of Reality (Alejandro Jodorowsky)
9. Magic in the Moonlight (Woody Allen)
10. Only Lovers Left Alive (Jim Jarmusch)

Best TV Series

1. Boardwalk Empire
2. Hannibal
3. Trailer Park Boys (Season 8)
4. True Detective

Performance:

1. Bahar Samadi & Navid Salajegheh: “Non-Pacific Coexistence of Numbers and Dates” @ The Guesthouse, Cork, Nov 30^th.
2. Karen Power & Maximilian Le Cain: “Gorging Limpet” @ TDC, Cork, May 30^th.
3. Susan Stenger’s flute piece, a Solo from “Concert for Piano and Orchestra” (1957-58, John Cage), Schizo-Culture Event, Space Gallery, London, Dec 13^th.
4. “Clarence Darrow”, performed by Kevin Spacey @ The Old Vic, London.

Events:

1. EFS Iranian Programme, Cork Film Festival, curated by Max Le Cain, 8^th & 9^th Nov.
2.  “A Weekend of Schizo Culture at Space Gallery”, (12^th-14^th Dec) London, Curated by Katherine Waugh.
3. “Devoted Songs: The Films of Nathaniel Dorsky”, curated by Lumiere Magazine/Esperanza Collado, Experimental Film Club, IFI, Dublin, April 22^nd.
4. The shooting of Rouzbeh Rashidi's “Ten Years in the Sun”/Max Le Cain’s “Cloud of Skin” back-to-back @ Bray Head hotel. A grotesquerie of illness and a carnival of madness.

Favourite Installation:

“Last Phase”, video/sound installation by Atoosa Pour Hosseini, as part of “Recollections” research project, NCAD, June.

Favourite Album:

“Rock or Bust” (AC/DC)

Maximilian Le Cain's Favourite Films 2014

1. Return of Suspicion (Dean Kavanagh)
2. Polar Nights (Dean Kavanagh)
3. Welcome to New York (Abel Ferrara)
4. Hypothesis/Conditions/Poetics (a trilogy by Rouzbeh Rashidi)
5. Maps to the Stars (David Cronenberg)
6. Mutual Admiration Society (James Devereaux/Rouzbeh Rashidi)
7. Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer)
8. There (James Fotopoulos)
9. The Homesman (Tommy Lee Jones)
10. Bastards (Claire Denis)

 Read the full Close Watch post here

Experimental Film Society in Limited Access Festival, Tehran

Experimental Film Society (EFS) is an independent, not-for-profit entity specializing in avant-garde, independent and no/low budget filmmaking. It was founded in 2000 in Tehran by Rouzbeh Rashidi and has been based in Dublin, Ireland since 2004.

Thanks to a collaboration with Parking Gallery & Limited Access Festival, EFS is pleased to announce its first public screenings in Iran since 2004. Rouzbeh Rashidi, head of EFS, will be represented by his 2012 feature Structures, Machines, Apparatus and Manufacturing Processes. There will also be a programme of short works by EFS members from all over the world, encapsulating the range and radical vision of this unique group of filmmakers. Their films are distinguished by an uncompromising devotion to personal, experimental cinema and have in common an exploratory approach to filmmaking where films emerge from the interplay of sound, image and atmosphere rather than traditional storytelling techniques.

Programme One: EFS Short Films:

1 - Incubus (2013) By Atoosa Pour Hosseini / Ireland & Switzerland / 1:30mins

"Incubus is a highly saturated nightmarish unsettling video work that explores unconsciousness nature of memory and its relationship with moving image.”

2 - Les Yeux Disparus (2012) By Bahar Samadi / France / 10mins

“Found film and archival sound clips recount part of a life, pieces of the past of a grandmother suffering from Alzheimer’s. As with the illness, the film’s language, borne of its archival source, lacks continuity. The filmmaker reveals the fear of death when we are no longer able to recognize those around us.”

3 - Pitpony (2014) By Jason Marsh / UK / 4mins

“Sombre, wandering and intrusive thoughts.”

4 - The Illuminating Gas (2012) By Esperanza Collado / Spain / 7:30mins

“Specially conceived for its presentation in performance contexts, The Illuminating Gas is an ephemeral, collage film in which cinema is derailed and subject of stitching. The piece exploits the unique instability of film, which makes it performative in nature, as if the film itself and its indispenSÁBle support, the projector, were performers playing a limited role within the wider presentation.”

5 - Homo Sapiens Project (186) (2013) By Rouzbeh Rashidi / Ireland / 1min

“The 186th film in Rashidi’s ongoing Homo Sapiens Project, HSP (186) evokes, like much of his prolific output, the atmospheric unease and suspense of horror cinema removed from its contextual and narrative confines.”

6 - Murder (2014) By Michael Higgins / Ireland / 5mins

“An Unlawful Killing of a Human by Another Human with Malice Aforethought or Murder.”

7 - Late Hours of the Night (Part 5) (2013) By Dean Kavanagh / Ireland / 24mins

“Late hours of the Night (2013) is a 5 part mini-series that follows a character as he recreates and re-enacts old memories while crawling through a small town at night. The fifth and final instalment is a confrontational exploration of personal history, and a hypnotic drift through nocturnal semi-hallucination.”

8 - Night Regulation (2014) By Maximilian Le Cain / Ireland & USA / 25mins

“The last ghost in New York, all on permanent vacation. Saw it myself. Starring Vicky Langan.”

9 - Turtle (2011) By Hamid Shams Javi / Iran / 9mins

“A mysterious and disturbing image of contemporary alienation in which the everyday is rendered bizarre and intolerable.”

Total Running Time 87mins

Programme Two: An EFS Feature Film:

Structures, Machines, Apparatus and Manufacturing Processes (2012) By Rouzbeh Rashidi / Iran & Ireland / 93mins

“As in a number of his recent films, Rashidi uses images accumulated over years to explore memory and cinematic form. In this case, he creates an elaborate and haunting montage that mainly interrogates still images.”

Total Running Time 93mins

More info HERE

experimentalfilmsociety.com

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