Bren O'Callaghan » short film

Don’t Look Back…

bren — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:44:58 +0000

HEALTH "We are Water" from Eric Wareheim on Vimeo.

Astonishing. Not safe for work. Not safe if children are present. Not recommended for anyone of a nervous or squeamish disposition. Quite simply one of the most horrifying music videos you will see this year, if not ever. And yet kudos for the design, direction, acting and soundscape. When cornered by a murderous psychopath wearing only his underpants and human-skin pumps, every Girl Guide should take a leaf from this lady's resourceful response. Sweet Holy Lord.

Peaky Lady

bren — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 08:55:02 +0000

image: Linda Matthew

I love this picture, it only recently arrived amongst the final batch from our photographer at The Call of Cthulhu event at the EIFF. No reason to post, other than it being MY website and you SEE what I decide. Tomorrow, a picture of a kitten in a blender.

Did you do Cthulhu?

bren — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 20:48:08 +0000

photo: Linda Matthew

We set the bar high with Blood Tea and I wasn't sure we could match it - at least not in volume of free-flowing alcoholic juju - but by crikey almighty, we did! The first pictures are back from our talented snapper Linda and they capture what was a brilliant group effort during Arkham Sanitarium's open evening for our expanded screening of The Call of Cthulhu. From Kev's extraterrestrial idol (actually modelling clay and spray paint rolled in dirt) to the moans and insane mutterings of The Dungeonettes, we sipped orange vodka from urine pots and scoffed enough Jelly Belly prescription beans to entice a sugar coma. But at least medical assistance was on hand!

photo: Linda Matthew

: photo: Linda Matthew

photo: Linda Matthew

moves10

bren — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 12:11:58 +0000

From Liverpool to Manchester and across the UK on screens, on site and online, moves celebrated its 6^th successful year by reaching out to more audiences than ever. With nearly 500 submissions from over 40 countries from around the globe, this boutique festival’s impact is greater than ever, encouraging even more talent from across the region, UK and around the world to discover and exchange new methods of telling stories centered around movement on screen through films, installations, forums and live events.

Hot Circuit: Christina Corfield

This year’s theme Framing Motion explored how practitioners choose to frame movement through their choice of setting and context to define the boundaries for screen-based works. These could be real worlds or imaginary, abstract, impossible or augmented environments defined by a specific visual intent. In looking at methods of capturing a sense of pulse and energy, the curatorial outlook also addressed definitions of stillness: the pause-and-relinquish through which motion occurs.

When We Meet Again: Clara Garcia Fraile & Sam Pearson

For the first time a series of installed works studded the halls, rooms and courtyards of Liverpool’s creative hub the Bluecoat, from Charlotte Gould and Paul Sermon's tasty AR buffet Urban Picnic, to the one-on-no-one intimacy of video goggle installation When We Meet Again (Clara Fraile & Sam Pearson). Christine Corfield’s Hot Circuit told the 10-screen tale of a 2D teenage pregnancy while viewers automatically flinched and stepped back from the violent crack of a rope pulled with gunshot force through an urban assault course, curling and lashing like an angry electric bolt (Space Drawing No.5, Sai Hua Kuan).

The Colour of Pomegrantes (Sayat Nova): Sergei Parajanov, 1968

Nowhere was the festival theme more apparent that within the rare, feature-length screening of Armenian auteur Sergei Paradjanov’s The Colour of Pomegranates. A useful and highly accessible introduction by Daniel Bird, co-lecturer in Russian and Eastern European Film at Sheffield University equipped us for what lay ahead by encapsulating the life and career of this persecuted visionary, warning us not to expect a story, sense or understanding. Instead we were asked to allow the images to wash over us, like listening to music or the view from a train.

The Colour of Pomegrantes (Sayat Nova): Sergei Parajanov, 1968

The colour-drenched stream of static tableaux that followed quite legitimately justified the movie’s claim in Cahiers du cinéma’s top 10 films of all time. A biography of Armenian poet Sayat Nova’s life told in visual and poetic form, rather than pursuing a literal course, Orthodox iconography and Persian miniatures blinked into life. Newly dyed wool is slopped from steaming cauldrons, animals pour through a hive of catacombs, quasi-religious figures glow with an unearthly light, books lie scattered across impossible surfaces, pages turning in the breeze.

The Colour of Pomegrantes (Sayat Nova): Sergei Parajanov, 1968

At the heart of all burns the arresting image of Parajadov’s androgynous muse, Georgian actress Sofiko Chiaureli, playing no fewer than six roles, both male and female. More of a cultural spa experience than a standard visit to the cinema, watching The Colour of Pomegranates is a visual feast that we can pick at or gorge upon, a precursor to Derek Jarman’s rich visual style or Matthew Barney’s super-stylised filmic orgies (see The Cremaster Cycle).

Like a butterfly cupped in the palm of a hand, this painterly dream is the very definition of movement suspended, an intake of breath before release.

Tales of Two Cities

bren — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 22:27:48 +0000

With an OCD fury not seen since the woman in the Shake 'n Vac advert ground her Valium and mixed it with a glug of Bacardi, I've been plugging the cracks in this site and pasting up former production duties with a vengeance. My personal favourites A Wall is a Screen now have a page to themselves, as do the rapidly expanding MegaPhone team - flying the flag for those of us who see no reason why computer games should progress beyond the Atari era. Once upon a festival, The Light Surgeons conjured up a storm in a Gothic salon and The Royal Opera House treat us to no fewer than twelve outdoor relays in the past five years.

The Rose

bren — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 22:26:22 +0000

Caroline Parker: The Rose

I first saw Caroline Parker performing as Caro Sparks at the DaDaAwards 09, telling filthy jokes from the perspective of a deaf woman (let's just say it touched upon noisy sex), delivering an unexpected treat with her comic signed performance of the Kate Bush classic, Wuthering Heights. It was in direct response to that performance that I approached Ruth Gould at DaDa to explore the potential for deaf and disabled video art in public space, although I couldn't have imagined that twelve months later we would be unveiling four new works as part of DaDaVisions.

Caroline Parker: The Rose

With additional support from Arts Council England, for her contribution Caroline chose to perform The Rose by Bette Midler, minus the infamous music bed. Famously satirised using perfunctory sign in the cult movie Napoleon Dynamite, Sparkle Media added augmented images paired with gesture and movement – marrying visual with non-verbal language to release a world otherwise hidden to hearing viewers.

All four films are now appearing on the BBC Big Screens in Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Bradford, Rotherham, Derby, Cardiff, Swansea, Portsmouth, Plymouth, Bristol, Swindon, Dover, Waltham Forest (London), Greenwich Arsenal (London), Norwich, Middlesbrough, Edinburgh.

Who Do You Think You Are?

bren — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 22:37:19 +0000

So Many Excuses: Who Do You Think You Are?

...here comes DaDaVisions, a brace of opinionated new screen commissions developed right here in the North West and soon to appear upon TWENTY giant outdoor screens across the UK. Launching as a new strand of DaDaFest, four new artist film and video projects will face-slap shoppers with subversive and alternate interpretations of disability. I'll be posting further information upon each as the week progresses.

So Many Excuses: Who Do You Think You Are?

First up is influential agit-prop trio No Excuses, once fond of chaining themselves to buses to chant "Piss on Pity" and now reformed as So Many Excuses. Mandy Colleran, Mandy Redvers-Rowe and Ali Briggs (who some may recognise as Freda in Coronation Street) have revisited the classic Frost Report sketch from the 1960s featuring the Two Ronnies and John Cleese.

Then a comment upon the British class system but now playfully adapted to explore the stereotypes and labels that the disabled place upon each other, Who Do You Think You Are? is written and performed by SME, produced by Asta Films with vintage styling expertise by Maria Lloyd.

Encounters Short Film Festival

bren — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 19:55:45 +0000

I’ll be speaking later this month at Encounters International Short Film Festival at Watershed, Bristol. Contentertainment offers a focus upon emerging methods for the distribution of digital media across different platforms. This year the loose curatorial theme of the panel is ‘real time’. Chaired by Vicky Brophy of Wonky Films, I’m told fellow panelists include Tom Melamed of Calvium, a company specializing in GPS-based experiences for mobile devices, and members of 1927 – an award-swiping mixed media theatre ensemble who after checking out their website I'd quite like to run away with.

Contentertainment
Thursday 19 November / 13:30 / Bristol Watershed

Inspire Mark

bren — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 16:05:20 +0000

After sitting on this like a constipated hen for the past few weeks, I can now go public that Unsilent Night is one of the projects granted the London 2012 Inspire Mark which recognises exceptional and innovative projects inspired by the 2012 Games.

In this case, the association is through our work in throwing open the cupboard upon a wealth of archive film, pulling off kid gloves in fusing old with new and encouraging investigation of early cinema by stepping outside (literally) of the multiplex experience.

A Small Cinema

bren — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 20:41:39 +0000

If anyone is planning to drop by Liverpool City Centre this coming Saturday the 26th September to sample any of the heap of activities, from AND at the Big Screen (see below) to the Bold Street Festival, can I urge you to attend A Small Cinema. Sam Meech loves amateur movies, loves them in that special way, buys them giant padded birthday cards and scented blue wooden roses from Poundstretcher.

To this end he only went a bought a job lot of plush seats, put his design skills to good use and created a travelling, hyper-local moviemart that showcases local filmmakers. He even includes fake movie trailers and genuine adverts from local traders (Matta's speciality foods is a hoot, the whole family pile out front to wave to camera). Just like it used to be when we were kids, before newborns tumbled out with iPod charger cables where their umbilical cords used to be.

For one day only in the old Rapid store next to Christians Fruit & Veg, there are three shows for the princely sum of 25p - yes, that's right, twenty five pennies - per person admission. There will be popcorn, ice-cream and ushers, with each show lasting an hour. Call by the Big Screen on the way, fill the day with cinematic wonder and interactive wizardry - then go home and make a judgement call on that past-due bag of washed salad.