mixtape no. 1
title: night city
24 minutes
mixer: buck in fudgy
2006
mixtape no. 2
title: terror!
24 minutes
mixer: ben rivers
2006
ARGUS BASEMENT, North Laine, Brighton
Friday 1st December 2006, 8pm. FREE
The pilot screening of a new project where cineastes re-edit found footage and favourite feature films to find hidden meanings and create new work. Whilst we channel hop with reduced attention spans and spare time, mountains of increasingly accessible archival material make our experience of the moving image evermore fragmented.
In reflection of this, Cine City brings you the first edition of Mixtapes: where existing film is used as a resource rather than a conclusion. Brighton based filmmakers create themed 24-minute film montages - one minute for each of film’s 24 frames per second
In mixtape 1, Brighton’s Buck in Fudgy present NIGHT CITY: a nocturnal wander through filmic cities, following night people as they journey, work, law-break and party.
In mixtape 2, ransacking the films of his youth BEN ‘Bloody’ RIVERS presents TERROR! - growing unease and impending doom culled from 1980s horror movies.
‘Bela Tarr meets John Carpenter whilst DJ Red Alert gets the cocktails in’.
Both mixtapes will be introduced by their mixers
The screening will contain shocking imagery.
Thanks to Tim Brown and Gary Barber from Cine City;
Ben Rivers for giving up some good night's sleep and inducing some gory nightmares in preparing his Terror! mix.
Ultimately thanks to all the filmmakers, actors, cinematographers, lighting and sound crews whose images and sounds we have ransacked, looted, mashed up and, ultimately, bootlegged for you this evening.
REVIEW
With the likes of Dangermouse and Brighton's own mash-up guru, Eric Kleptone, the art of splicing together other people's music to create something new and original is very much in vogue at the moment. Applying this technique to film, however, is something still relatively new, perhaps finding its precedent in the 'found-footage' work of cineastes like Craig Baldwin.
Organised by Buck in Fudgy as part of the CINECITY festival, Friday's show was sadly only half-full, which is something of a travesty considering that this was one of the most enjoyable cinematic experience I've had for some time.
The programme consisted of two 'mixes', Fudgy's own piece Night City, and Ben Rivers' Terror!, both combining sound and footage from a range of recognisable and not-so recognisable sources. What could have been an exercise in movie-geekery, actually became a thrilling, thoughtful and often fun experience, raising the ever important question: what constitutes 'originality' anyway? Contrast these pieces with the recent Hollywood trend for remakes and it is perhaps possible to discern a future in which other's work is appropriated in interesting, novel and genuinely artistic ways.
For neither were these films simply pieces of detached, post-modern analysis; they managed to evoke the feelings and sensations you get when watching a really good movie. True, each involved a certain amount of parody, but NightCity conjured up a tangible sense of urban alienation and solitude, whilst Terror! playfully demonstrated the clichéd conventions of the horror genre whilst remaining funny and shocking, making it far superior to something like the rather cynical, and certainly overrated, Scream. The last, splatter-laden five minutes saw the entire audience cowering in delight, laughing uncontrollably with each eye-popping explosion of gore.
My guess is that Fudgy and Rivers will only be amongst the first in a long line of film-makers applying these methods, but already they've set an exhilarating benchmark for those who follow them.