Alex Porter / Len Lye Shorts - 25 may

Listing details: Alex Porter / Len Lye Shorts screening
When: 7pm, Saturday 25 May
Where: The New Zealand Film Archive, 84 Taranaki St, Wellington
Ticket price: $8 public / $6 concession

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Alex Porter / Len Lye Shorts

Three shorts by Canterbury-based filmmaker Alex Porter screen alongside three Len Lye films. Porter is the creator of Porter's Cinebooth, an individual screening device with a plush interior, currently on display in the Film Archive cafe. The screening will be followed by a Q&A session with Alex Porter and Sarah Davy (Director Collect Division, Film Archive, and our resident Len Lye expert).

The screening will take place at 7pm, Saturday 25 May.

Len Lye (1901-1979) was a painter, filmmaker, writer and sculptor, a maverick artist who dedicated his life to exploring expressions of movement. Porter is inspired by Lye’s idea of “composing motion,” especially the linear sequence of still images passing at high speed across a beam of light, causing the optical illusion of movement.

The evening's programme will consist of the Len Lye shorts: N or NW (1937), Kaleidoscope (1935) and Kill or be Killed (1942), followed by Porter's shorts: Super8man (2005), A Sense of Place (2009) and N or Nor W (2011).

Kaleidoscope (1935) is one of several avant-garde commercials in which Lye applied his direct filmmaking technique creating abstract, lively dances of shape and colour accompanied by popular jazz music. The sound track for this advertisement for Churchman Cigarettes is a rumba called Beguine d'Amour by Don Baretto and his Cuban Orchestra.

Lye also directed many “public information films” for the General Post Office Film Unit of Great Britain through the 1930s and early 1940s. These films were shot on black and white 35mm film, often live action and mixed with animation or edited with found footage. Porter's favourite film from this period, N or NW (1937) is a surreal, romantic comedy stressing the importance of using correct postal codes. The sound track includes popular swing from the 1930s, I'm Gonna Sit Right Down (and write myself a letter) by Fats Waller, T'Aint No Use by Benny Goodman and his Orchestra and Give Me a Break by Bob Howard and his Orchestra.

Kill or be Killed (1942) is a documentary made in co-operation with the British Army, produced by the Realist Film Unit of Great Britain and sponsored by the Ministry of Information. It was used to train soldiers by providing a sense of combatant reality in a scenario between a British soldier and a German sniper. For Porter it offers a third dimension to Lye’s filmmaking practice.

Porter's films Super8man (2005), A Sense of Place (2009) and N or Nor W (2011) developed out of autobiographical reflections and an interest with early European cinema and merging genre. From early cinematic device devised by British pioneers like G.A. Smith to the post-industrial cinematic innovations of ex pat Len Lye, an on-going investigation of cinematic history fuels her fictu-mentary styled, non-traditional narrative pictures.

Super8man focuses his camera for the ultimate shot of a bird in flight, propelled into a cyclical journey his focus literally remains on infinity. The film screened at national and international film festivals over 2006/7.

A Sense of Place is a fantastical observation of fine wine and art experimenting with merging genre and early cinematic device. A Sense of Place screened at international film festivals over 2010/11.

N or Nor W, study of a Canterbury wind is set in 1950s New Zealand where the infamous local nor’ westerly wind is explored through a young girl’s perspective and her father’s interview, broadcast over the wireless. N or Nor W (2012) pays homage to Len Lye’s public information film of the name N or NW (1937).

ENDS

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