INTERIM

Between festivals, BIMI occasionally organises events that are part of the Essay Film Festival project, although they take place outside of the festival dates.

Part one – screening of Bright Eyes and Comrades in Arms

3 June 2016, 18:00, Birkbeck Cinema


Films: Bright Eyes, Stuart Marshall, UK, 1984, digital, 80 minutes, English
“Bright Eyes takes up the topic of AIDS but differs from previous coverage by examining the disease’s social and historical context. … Taking a newspaper article from the summer of 1983 as its starting point, Bright Eyes examines the way in which homosexuality has been described as a disease since the late-nineteenth century. … The final part of the programme uses interviews and drama to describe the anti-homosexual reporting of AIDS by the media and other contemporary threats to the gay community.” (LUXonline)
 
Comrades in Arms, Stuart Marshall, UK, 1990, digital, 48 minutes, English
“The Second World War is re-examined through the eyes of a group of gay servicemen and servicewomen, whose experiences range from ENSA-style entertainment to the River Kwai prison camp. Personal reminiscences, archive material and stage recreations of gay romances shot in the style of a 1940s back and white movie are combined in a humorous reclamation of a hitherto unrecorded history.” (Rebecca Dobbs)
 
With an introduction by Conal McStravick (artist), and a post-screening conversation with Bruce Bayley (actor, writer and dramatherapist)


Part two – Stuart Marshall symposium with screenings

4 June 2016, 10:00, Birkbeck Cinema 

In creative partnership with LUX Artists Moving Image, this TV research symposium offered a meditation on the TV video essay, with a particular focus on Stuart Marshall and his documentaries made for television broadcast on Channel Four. The event looked at works that offer a critique of television and media practice, and the way TV represents sexuality and illness, queer histories and public activism. In identifying Marshall’s idea of a “committed television”, the symposium explored issues of experimental TV, the public sphere and public service television, and the artist film on television.
 
Morning session: Channel Four, Public Activism and the Public Sphere in the 1980s (context and history)

Film: Over Our Dead Bodies, Stuart Marshall, UK, 1991, digital, 50 minutes, English 

“This film documents the origins of the AIDS activist movement in the US and the UK and the day community’s growing anger and frustration with the totally inadequate response of the US political and medical establishment to the epidemic. While the film celebrates the real successes of this movement, it also examines the problematic debates within it concerning democracy, representation, power differentials, and the relationship between homophobia, racism and sexism. Finally, the film describes the birth of groups such as Queer Nation in the US and Outrage in the UK, which have spring out of a newly politicized sense of pride and community fuelled by the AIDS activist movement.” (LUXonline)

Introduced by Rebecca Dobbs (Maya Vision), the film will be followed by a response from Daniel Monk (School of Law, Birkbeck).

Afternoon session: the TV essay, television art and the artist film
 
In 1991, Stuart Marshall compared working on a television commission to setting up his early sound and video installations, as, “a terrific tension – to know that one’s learning in this fantastically public medium” (Queer Looks; 56). This session will compare continuities and discontinuities in Marshall’s early practice in sound, installation and video with that of his later television documentary and AIDS activism. It will look at how these forms configure audiences and publics and what place models of production, reproduction and distribution have in engaging forgotten vanguard futures, taking into account the differing ethical and political potentials of the distribution collection and the archive, more social forms (such as the reading group, the video workshop and the support group) or ephemeral forms (the script, the manifesto, the petition or the political protest). What role does contemporary art practice play in exploring the horizons of Marshall’s practice, past, present and future and given his commitment to a “signifying and oppositional” practice, what is material for Marshall?
 
Films: The Love Show, Stuart Marshall, UK, 1980, digital, 23 minutes, English
“A narrator describes the beginning of a television programme. It sounds like a ‘made for TV’ movie. He then describes a series of seemingly disconnected scenes, which are illustrated by clichéd sounds effects. A memory test follows. A number of characters—writer, designer, make-up artist who are all played by the same actor—describe their part in the television production process. They seem to have trouble keeping their minds on the matter and their monologues slide away from a description (… the love of their craft to ideological statements about the representation of sexuality in Realist drama production).” (Video Artists on Tour catalogue, 1980)

The Love Show, Part Two, Stuart Marshall, UK, 1980, digital, 11 minutes, English
“The narrative of part one taken up and reworked. The gaps within and the limits of heterosexual representations of sexuality. The articulation of sexuality by the mode of the narration.” (Video Artists on Tour catalogue, 1980)
 
The screenings were introduced by Charlotte Procter (Collection Manager, LUX Artists Moving Image), and followed by a panel discussion with Conal McStravick (artist), Colin Perry (Central Saint Martins) and Helena Vilalta (Central Saint Martins).
 
Closing session: Legacy, Preservation, Institutions

Film: The Love Show, Part Three, Stuart Marshall, UK, 1980, digital, 12 minutes, English
“An illustrated news report of a rape. A simulation of ‘committed television’ which produces analysis rather than reportage. What if the news were to be read differently? Would ‘committed television’ produce an analysis rather than a ‘reportage’? What kinds of images would it use?” (Video Artists on Tour catalogue, 1980)

Followed by a concluding roundtable chaired by Laura Mulvey (Film, Media and Cultural Studies, Birkbeck), with Catherine Elwes (University of Arts London), Isaac Julien (installation art and filmmaker) and Simon Watney (writer, art historian and AIDS activist).