1970's
Lucky Pigs - still
Reign of the Vampire - still
Berlin Horse - short extract
Lucky Pigs
1970, 4 minutes, B & W, three screen
Yes – just looping images of pigs on three screens with a tape sound track of a Chinese pop song.
Reign of the Vampire
1970, 16 minutes, B & W, one and two screen versions
With a sub-title ‘How to Screw the CIA or How to Screw the CIA?’ it nears the end of the political paranoid works using found military documentary images. It explores a complex form of loop permutation in both the image and sound track.
Single and double screen versions are available and in film or digital video.
Berlin Horse
1970, 9 minutes, one and two screen versions
Two sequences – one a horse being exercised in the village of Berlin near Hamburg in Germany - the other an early Edison newsreel of horses being led from a burning stable. Both were visually transformed and coloured on the printer at the London Film Makers Cooperative.
The sound is an original track by Brian Eno.
Love Story 1
1971, 8 minutes (approx), film shadow performance
A one-off performance, never repeated but led to Horror Film 1.
Love Story 2
1971, 10 minutes, two screen
A colour field film without any represented image. Moving in sequence through the spectrum it accelerates from two fields to four.
Sound a rising sine-wave made on the Zinovief Putney synthesizer.
Horror Film 1 - extracts
Horror Film 1
1971, 14 minutes (approx), film shadow performance
First presented in 1971 using three 16mm projectors each with a short loop of changing colour. Projected onto the same screen – the centre image large and the two side images smaller and superimposed into the centre of the larger screen. The performing body casts complex colour shadow.
The action begins touching the screen and - passing through the space of the audience – it ends at the projectors. The actions are timed to an audio tape of breathing.
Though improvised in detail to fit the particular time and place, the action follows a consistent pattern that has changed little since the first performance.
Horror Film is now also being performed as part of a performance archiving project by Lucas Ihlein and Louise Curham. Here is a link to an article about this:
http://performancematters-thejournal.com/index.php/pm/article/view/14/27
Your Lips 3
1971, 3 minutes, computer generated
A re-worked version of Your Lips 1 with multiple colour superimposition. Originally shown with a sound track from computer artist Alan Sutcliffe but replaced by a re-mixed track of one of the prepared piano pieces made by Le Grice in 1964/5.
Now available in a digital video version
Your Lips 3- still
1919
1971, 12 minutes, three screen
Found footage of a funeral in post revolutionary Russia.
Newport
1972, 15 minutes, B & W, silent
A family picnic on the Welsh cliffs exploring repeating camera movements.
Whitchurch Down
1972, 10 minutes, one and three screen versions
A Devon landscape heavily re-treated in printing.
Available in one, two and three screen versions – film or digital video.
Whitchurch Down - still
Threshold- short extract
Threshold
1972, 17 minutes, one and four screen versions
Begining with abstract colour fields filling it develops through images created by accidental exposure of film stock - edge fogging. The main image of the film is of border guards at a frontier post and explores colour film printing using mattes and multiple superimpositions. The title implies various interpretations physical and psychological boundary points.
The multi-screen version is an improvisation with moving projectors
Love Story 3
1972, 10 minutes, film-performance
Though the film materials still exist there was only one performance made by Paul Sharits and an umbrella.
Horror Film 2
1972, 25 minutes (approx) 3D shadow performance
(red and green spectacles)
Based on a system of 3D shadow play first seen in a variety theatre in the early 1950’s the work follows the tradition of grand guignol using a full sized skeleton.
Horror Film 2 - still
Blue Field Duration
1972, 8 minutes, two screen
Simply slowly changing blue to blue/green colour fields.
After Leonardo - extract
After Leonardo
1973, 22 minutes, six screen and performance
Based on a cracked and deteriorating black and white detail reproduction of the Mona Lisa, it began as a six projector 16mm film performance, Over the years it has been developed into a variety of multi-video installations and performances. Many of these have involved sound improvisations by Keith Rowe and live recording an projection by Le Grice. The work continues to develop.
Don't Say
1973, 10 minutes, two screen, B & W, silent
Four screen film and re-film viewing a shop window. ‘Don’t say Brown say Hovis’. The projectors are moved to imitate the camera movements.
Pre-Production
1973, 15 minutes (approx.), slide-performance, N/A
Illuminated by two blank screens projected from empty slides, four performers read texts drawn from the history of cinema – a dictionary of cinema, the chemical production of film materials and a fragment of a Hollywood narrative film script. The readings are treated as a musical quartet with a gradual superimposition of the four readings on each other.
Pre-production - still
Matrix
1973, 18 minutes, six projector-performance
Matrix- still
Four Wall Duration
1973, 22 minutes, film-loop installation, continuous
Four simple changing colour loops are projected continuously into the corners of a gallery space - a form of site specific film sculpture.
Gross Fog
1973, film-loop installation, continuous
Using six to eight projectors edge fogged loops form a coloured film waterfall accompanied by the sound of falling water.
Gross Fog - extract
Joseph's Coat
1973, film-loop installation or performance
Full colour loops are superimposed on each other to explore colour light mixing and frame overlaps.
Initially improvised in an exhibition at Gallery House and Filmaktion at the Walker Art Gallery – this became the first basis of a series of works under the title of Joseph’s Coat.
Now available in two digital video versions
Principles of Cinematography
1973, 15 minutes, film-performance
A reading about the production of acetate cine-film from Leslie J Wheeler’s book, Principles of Cinematography, in front of a screen projecting clear film. A context for film’s materiality.
Principles of Cinematography - still
Screen Entrance Exit
1974, 10 minutes (approx.) film-performance
A single performance made at the National Film Theatre against a blank screen – the performer twice leaves the stage on one side, exits the building and re-enters the stage on the other side – the duration was determined by the time it took to walk out of sight around the theatre.
After Lumiere - l'arroseur arrosé
1974, 12 minutes
Based on Lumiere’s simple practical joke played by a little boy on the gardener. The sequence is repeated four times exploring all four types of film material, black and white positive, black and white negative and colour positive and negative. It also explores sound and different viewpoints and camera movements placing the spectator into the role of cinema detective – about evidence and knowledge.
After Lumiere - still
After Manet - le dejeuner sur l'herb
1975, 60 minutes, four screen
A picnic staged and shot in one day with four performers who also shoot the film with four cameras. The film is then projected from four projectors creating a developing comparison between the actions of the protagonists.
The work is now available as a digital video
After Manet - still
Academic Still Life
1976, 6 minutes
A film exploring the parallax uncertainties of Cezanne.
Time and Motion Study
1976, 12 minutes
Clearing the table after breakfast and washing the dishes but with a second camera observing the act of filming in negative.
Blackbird Descending - tense alignment
1977, 120minutes
The first of in a series of feature length films seen as a ‘domestic trilogy’. It particularly explores an overlapping ‘narrative’ viewed from four viewpoints in a large suburban house.
This series of three works relate directly to Le Grice’s theoretical text "Problematizing the Spectator Placement in Film" first presented at 'Cinema and Language' conference Milwukee March 1979 – published in Undercut no 1, March 1981.
Blackbird Descending - still
Emily - third party speculation
1979, 60 minutes
The second of the ‘domestic trilogy’ exploring the relationship between restricted camera view-point and the construction of the documental narrative.
Emily - still