20 January 2017, 18:00, Birkbeck Cinema

Film: Video Letters, Stephen Dwoskin and Robert Kramer, France, 1991, digital, 100 minutes, English

The screening was introduced by Bernard Eisenschitz, film historian.

In the first Essay Film Festival Prelude we presented the rarely screened series of video letters between the filmmakers Robert Kramer and Stephen Dwoskin made between February and June 1991. 

Steve Dwoskin said of the video letters: “It was more like writing, in that you didn’t have to involve anyone else in it. Not including editing was again like doing a written letter – you don’t really edit your letters when you write to friends – so the idea was simply to just do whatever we could in the camera.”

Robert Kramer said: “I used to spend a lot of time thinking about the letter, and where to start and how to do it. I would plan this whole thing out. There’s a lot of that feeling which does merge film and performance. I like the tension that’s in that situation and try and work it all out physically. It’s another way of thinking about mise en scène.”

Supported by Documentaire sur grand écran and LUX Artists Moving Image.