Tuesday 13 June 2023

Unfound Peoples Videotechnic on Substack

Mr Cole's roaming absurdist film academy, Unfound Peoples Videotechnic - essentially a splinter organisation from the Institute proper - is currently delivering a free, weekly program of esoteric filmmaking knowledge via the Substack newsletter platform.

You can subscribe for free here:

https://unfoundvideo.substack.com/

The current program is called Advanced Amateury: Clumsy Loving in the Age of Competent Content. Future programs, should they be forthcoming, are likely to cover sound design, image rot, and other essential aspects of filmmaking, in a manner intended more to inspire than to instruct.

Here is an excerpt from lesson one of Advanced Amateury:

It’s a slick century. Everybody’s producing ‘content.’ Pros and amateurs fetishise clean edges and stock affectations. The language of authenticity has been shrink-wrapped, digitised, and delivered by 3D fax machine. 

Amateurism is often defined as a lack of professionalism. But even the non-professional defaults to professionalised tendencies. Amateurism may be defined by its lack of infrastructure. But way out beyond the movie industry, the artist-filmmaker is tempted to toil towards the freshly-showered images of Hollywood and Indiewood.

Couldn’t we reveal more by channelling our inner shitness? Aren’t we wasting valuable energy trying to cover up the cracks in our reality? The misalignments in our imagination?

To be crap requires the power to resist. In these conditions, it takes courage to allow your ineptitude to show. But might the filmmaker go further and cultivate a practice of worse-ness? Embrace the messy principles of love and humility over profit (of whatever kind) and vanity?

A bold word or phrase indicates that an instruction of the same name and concept will appear later in this module.

Not to fake it/slum it. But to advance (or perhaps settle in to) a working appreciation of all that is:

  • vulnerable
  • naive
  • inept
  • broken
  • broke
  • poor
  • wrong
  • inconsistent
  • incoherent, and
  • bad taste

about your practice, your crew, your resources, and your environment.

What tools are available to the sincere amateur-filmmaker? Or more precisely, how can this figure make a tool of anything and everything? What techniques are available for drawing out the messy business of love, tenderness, and symbiosis in filmmaking?

For more details and to subscribe:

Sunday 14 November 2021

The Curse of the Phantom Tympanum in Istanbul and Marseille

With the reopening of venues, a backlog of unfulfilled UNIVERSAL EAR bookings is unleashed.

To be precise, two (2) screenings of the latest episode, The Curse of the Phantom Tympanum, will take place next weekend. One in Istanbul, Turkey, and the other in Marseille, France.

EVENT: UNIVERSAL EAR: The Curse of the Phantom Tympanum at Istanbul International Experimental Film Festival
PROGRAM: Competition: Fresh Air 2
WHERE: Pera Museum, Asmalı Mescit, Meşrutiyet Cd. No:65, 34430 Beyoğlu/İstanbul, Turkey
WHEN: Friday 19th November, 2021, 14:00
COST: 25 TL/10 TL

EVENT: UNIVERSAL EAR: The Curse of the Phantom Tympanum at 4th Marseille Underground Film & Music Festival
PROGRAM: Fréquences visuelles
WHERE: Videodrome 2, 49 Cr Julien, 13006 Marseille, France
WHEN: Sunday 21st November, 2021, 19:00
COST: Free with €5 membership to Videodrome 2 cinematheque.

Thursday 12 August 2021

Letters from the Ends of the World in Sarajevo

Mr Cole has contributed a cinematic letter from quarantine to a new omnibus feature film from the Bistrik7 collective - and it will premiere as it opens the Sarajevo Film Festival.

Sarajevo is a particularly beloved city to the filmmakers of Bistrik7, as they are united in having graduated as the first generation from Béla Tarr's film.factory in that very city. Mr Cole has also had the pleasure and the privilege of screening It's Nick's Birthday and Amateri at the festival in previous years.

Mr Cole will be in town to present the movie with his colleagues on the opening night.

The film is called Letters from the Ends of the World.

EVENT: Letters from the Ends of the World at 27th Sarajevo Film Festival.
PROGRAM: Special Screening (Opening Night Film)

WHERE: Summer ScreenHamdije Kreševljakovića, Sarajevo 71000, Bosnia & Herzegovina
WHEN: Friday 13th August, 2021, 21:15
COST: 9.00 KM
NOTES: Opening night film. Four filmmakers in attendance, including Mr Cole.

Additional screenings:

WHEREMeeting PointHamdije Kreševljakovića 13, Sarajevo 71000, Bosnia & Herzegovina
WHEN: Sunday 15th August, 2021, 15:00
COST: 6.50 KM, 7.50 KM, 10.00 KM

WHERE: Cineplexx Sarajevo 1, Zmaja od Bosne 4, Sarajevo 71000, Bosnia & Herzegovina
WHEN: Thursday 19th August, 2021, 12:30
COST: 7.00 KM, 8.00 KM

Wednesday 23 June 2021

The Curse of the Phantom Tympanum in Niš

The most recent UNIVERSAL EAR episode to be resuscitated will breathe again in Niš, Serbia, this weekend. The Curse of the Phantom Tympanum won a hastily-invented audience award at the Kinoskop Festival of Analogue Experimental Film in 2019, and is playing in a special 'best of' reconstruction at a real in-person event some 250km to the north-east of the original screening venue.

EVENT: UNIVERSAL EAR: The Curse of the Phantom Tympanum at Niš Cultural Centre
PROGRAM: Kinoskop: Apsurd, pank & subverzije (Absurd, Punks & Subversives)
WHERE: Niški kulturni centar, Small Hall, Stanoja Bunuševca, 18000 Niš, Serbia
WHEN: Saturday 26th and Sunday 27th June, 2021
COST: Enquire at venue
NOTES: Please refer to Kinoskop's Facebook presence for further information & updates.


Tuesday 5 May 2020

Epizoda ? in a virtual Mayfield

Our daft orphan episode of an unfound cop show Epizoda ? is playing as part of Slow Film Festival's online retrospective for 24 hours, until noon tomorrow. The film originally played as part of Mr Cole's exhibition/sideshow during the 2018 edition of this splendid event. Anyway, hurry! The clock is already ticking!


If it doesn't work, you've missed the SFF boat - but a standard web search should find you an alternative viewing platform.

"Mr Graeme Cole has cornered the cardboard market of sublime lo-fi effulgence: his films are forever falling apart. And as they crumble so do the conventions and aspirations of all of the rest of cinema. Epizoda ? (please observe that untethered question mark) is as destructive as the rest of his oeuvre."


Monday 4 May 2020

The Curse of the Phantom Tympanum briefly available to watch online

Our fine colleagues and overlords at the Bandits-Mages organisation have seen fit to make an online copy of UNIVERSAL EAR: The Curse of the Phantom Tympanum available as a salve for the general public during the coronavirus lockdown. It will be public for just two weeks. One of those weeks has already passed. The video is posted below this text; if you can't see it there, you've missed the boat.

At the same time, the good people at the Moving Image Artists organisation have included UNIVERSAL EAR: A Flea Orchestra In Your Ear in their online MIA Screens series. It features a new written introduction by Mr Cole.

These events coincide with the ten year anniversary of the first production of UNIVERSAL EAR in May 2010.


Sunday 23 February 2020

Two Bosnian films, Murmurs and Epizoda ?, now online

The online availability of two of the Institute's Bosnian-made pictures has shifted dramatically in the past few weeks.

Epizoda ? can now be watched for free on Vimeo. This absurdist detective show pilot was written and directed by Graeme Cole at Béla Tarr's film.factory, and was previously available for VoD on Tao Films, an art film and 'slow cinema' platform, which is currently enjoying a creative pause.

Murmurs is available online for the first time, to rent or buy on Vimeo On Demand. The ASMR-tinged experimental feature film was also written and directed by Mr Cole at film.factory, and just like Epizoda ?, features Elma Selman in a leading role. The male lead is the Institute's regular player, Stewart Lockwood.


Epizoda ?

Video | 39'09" | BiH/UK | 2016
Cast
Vladimir Kajević
Elma Selman

A TV detective who's lost the plot drives aimlessly around the city. Negotiating time and space seem achievable next to solving a murder in a factory, the only witness a robot with the ability to get under the skin with its only two programmed lines: “That interests me” and “What are you afraid of?”

Murmurs

Video | 72'42" | BiH/UK | 2015-2020
Cast
Elma Selman
Stewart Lockwood

Hana is an ASMR artist, creating intimate videos for millions of online followers – and she hasn’t left her house for 18 months. Ed is a remote security image analyst, and Hana’s first online hook-up. When Ed arrives at Hana’s home, they begin to nurture an awkward togetherness. But for these lonely weirdos, building trust might take more than endless days of cooking and fucking.

Saturday 7 December 2019

The Curse of the Phantom Tympanum & From The Ground To The Stars in Dhaka

UNIVERSAL EAR: The Curse of the Phantom Tympanum will finally get out of Europe for a screening at the International Short & Independent Film Festival in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The Institute's friend and colleague Ghazi Alqudcy will present his experiences at Béla Tarr's film.factory along with a program of films from Bistrik7, the artist collective formed by the school's first generation of graduates. Along with Curse, Mr Cole has contributed From The Ground To The Stars - his episode of film.factory's Lost In Bosnia omnibus feature.

EVENT: UNIVERSAL EAR: The Curse of the Phantom Tympanum and From The Ground To The Stars at International Short & Independent Film Festival in Dhaka
PROGRAM: Introduction of film.factory  + Film Screening
WHERE: Central Public Library, Dhaka, Bangladesh
WHEN: Sunday 8th December, 2019, 15.00
COST: FREE

The Curse of the Phantom Tympanum


From The Ground To The Stars