phd journal
A closed railway bridge over the river Plym. Filmed in 2006 during the World Cup, the area was deserted as people were glued to the TV or barbecuing during the beautiful weather. The bridge has since been reopened as a foot and cycle bridge.
The confluence of the Tory Brook – with its china clay runoff from Dartmoor – and the River Plym near marsh Mills.
Mark Cosgrove sliding down a rubble bank on the South Downs during a trip out from Brighton where we were spending the weekend.
Cattedown gasometers filmed from the bedroom window, with Staddon Heights in the background. My paternal grandfather spent WW2 at the gasworks as a restricted trade so wasn’t conscripted to fight in WW2. He did his bit as an ARP warden at night during the fearful Blitz. The dreadful process of making town gas from coal led him to an early grave while I was living in Singapore as a child. I have a clear memory of my grandfather throwing a small bag of marbles from the top of the stairs down to me. The marbles were in a green rubberised bag with a drawstring.
The tiny two-up-two-down terrace where my father and his five siblings were raised backed on to the gasworks. It appears in The Way We Live by Jill Craigie as an example of squalid living – cheers Jill! I remember the smell from the gasometers when the extended family gathered at Home Sweet Home Terrace for Boxing Day lunch. The gasometers lasted longer than the gasworks, but were decommissioned then demolished early this century.
Interesting view through ‘porthole’ cut through Millbay Docks’ wall as part of the gentrification of Plymouth.
Kayla filmed looking through a holed stone for Project. Her freckles attest to the great summer of 1997.
Stuart delivered a paper on Sunday 6 March at PARALLEL – ICO Art + Cinema Weekend 2016, hosted by Arnolfini, Bristol. The event was a festival of artists’ moving image, presented as part of the Independent Cinema Office’s Artists’ Moving Image Network project, in partnership with artists’ film distributor LUX.
The paper was part of the well-attended ’Bristol LUX Open Forum: First Person Plural’ session that considered responses to the questions ‘What is it about artists’ moving image which makes it particularly suited to first-person film-making? How can it articulate and help to influence a position beyond the self?’
Stuart’s presentation, ‘Archival Revival and First Person Filmmaking’, concerned authorship discernible to the audience from behind the camera. Can it be an essay film without voiceover or in a film which is not recognisably diaristic in form or intention.
Discussion around first person filmmaking – whether it’s necessarily a reflective, diaristic form, or whether it can be subjective essay filmmaking.
Impossible to do in-camera editing with file-based video devices as each clip is an island until dropped into a timeline. Discussion about film cameras being able to collect fragments of time onto a filmstrip.
Mentioned Charney “not just voyeurism, but voyeurism of loss, corpses on parade.” Photography has a medusa stare, instantly turning its subjects to stone. Film has the ability to create the undead. “Flat Death, is taken from Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida which considers the photograph as a fixed record of a moment in time.”
Discussion around performance, and filming. Mentioned Bruzzi’s assertion that documentary is a performative practice, and not just where that’s overt e.g. Nick Broomfield.
Filmed in the River Plym at Plymbridge Woods with the mighty Eumig Nautica underwater Super 8 camera. Yessling is a devon dialect word meaning restless or fidgety.
The first shot from the Sea City rushes which was used in Sea Front (2009).
Sea Front from Sundog Media on Vimeo.
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In January 2010 Sea Front was screened in the London Short Film Festival where it won the Trick of the Light Award for “the most gorgeous looking film.”
One of the judges Alison Poltock artistic director of the East End Film Festival said:
“We love this – it looks so retro. And even though we don’t know where it’s set it reminded us of dodgy school trips to Southend in the 80s…. very tenuous link to East End…. And even though it doesn’t have a narrative it’s completely engaging – you’re in that place, and it gives you the same feeling that you have in that environment – voyeurism, lazy sunshine and very simple pleasure…”
The LSFF described the Trick of the Light Programme:
Short films are shown with gorgeous and sumptuous imagery in this stunning collection of rich cinematography and beautiful animation. The programme takes in drama, documentary and experimental animation, to give a varied outlook of life from surreal dream-like landscapes to a more realistic viewpoint, but with equally stunning results.
Year of release: 2009
Original format: Super 8mm
Running time: 5 minutes 40 seconds
Screening format: QuickTime, Blu-ray or DVD
Directed, filmed and edited by Stuart Moore
Producer: Kayla Parker
Production: Sundog Media
Distribution and sales: Sundog Media sundogmedia@gmail.com
Description
The poetry of Plymouth Sound and city seaside culture captured in glorious Kodachrome Super 8: meet the young tombstoners who gather on the cliffs under Plymouth Hoe at high tide to launch themselves into the waves below.
Winner of the Media Innovation Award 2010: Independent Film. The Media Innovation Awards celebrate the innovative use of media and design: the judges described the film as “a very atmospheric and nostalgic production that was beautifully produced.”
Winner of the 2010 London Short Film Festival Trick of the Light Award “for the most gorgeous looking film.”
Production notes
Shot on the last few remaining rolls of Super 8mm Kodachrome 40 colour reversal film before the processing lab closed, with location sound recordings. The film Sea Front focuses on the area of Plymouth Hoe next to the sea known as the Foreshore, where the once-grand man-made structures built into the limestone cliffs in the nineteenth century are now cracked and crumbling. This space between land and sea is the site of rites of passage for modern-day Plymouth youth, who gather here at high tide throughout the summer months to leap into the water.
Sea Front, directed, filmed and edited by Stuart Moore, and produced by Kayla Parker, is the first film to be released from the Sea City project, ongoing collaborative research with Stuart Moore that explores the perimeter of Plymouth along its boundary with the sea.
Publication and comments
Sea Front features in the British Council’s Britfilm Catalogue 2011 in the Experimental Shorts section.
Philip Ilson (2010) The art of short films Film Features, The Quietus. 8 January 2010. thequietus.com/articles/03496-the-art-of-short-films
Exhibition
2015
Bodies of Water presented by Land/Water and the Visual Arts and Moving Image Arts (MIA) research clusters; screening followed by a discussion led by Dr Nicholas Higgs, Postdoctoral Research Fellow to the Director of the Marine Institute; Plymouth University (11 February 2015)
2014
Bodies of Water programme of artists’ moving image for The Power of the Sea exhibition, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol (3 May 2014)
2012
Marine Screen Marine City Festival, Royal William Yard, Plymouth; evening screening outdoors presented by Plymouth Arts Centre, Dartington Barn, and Peninsula Arts (15 September 2012). Showing as the 2011 Deluxe telecine version.
2011
Small Wonder programme, Cine-City, the Brighton Film Festival. A selection of Super 8 films from around the world, curated by Ian Helliwell (19 November 2011)
Plymouth Arts Centre’s Cinema City Mobile Cinema, at various locations around Plymouth; in the Sensing Place programme (4 – 8 July 2011)
2010
International Program 2 at 7:30 pm Thursday 27 May in Capitol Theatre, Windsor Ontario, at Media City international festival of experimental film and video art held in Windsor Ontario in Canada and Detroit USA (25 – 29 May 2010)
East End Film Festival Adventures in Experiments programme at Rich Mix, Shoreditch: “a selection of work from artists, filmmakers and animators, exploring the limits of new form and creative expression” (programme description) (26 April 2010)
Experiment 4 programme (Guild Cinema 14 April) at the Experiments in Cinema festival in Albuquerque New Mexico: (14 – 18 April 2010)
2010 London Short Film Festival, Rich Mix, Shoreditch (13 January 2010)
2009
Assemblage exhibition, Peninsula Arts Gallery, Plymouth University