Southampton Film Week: Experimental Cinema: Dark into Light

Lucy Harris’s Moons (2025) is a reflection on an archetypal poetic-cinematic image. In Laura Hindmarsh’s Atlas (2018) the artist-filmmaker plays the moon, enacting her own eclipse. Nick Collins’s Dark Garden (2011) is an investigation of plants and their environs as defined by illumination and shadows. Vicky Smith’s Not (a) part (2020) is a film of nature in miniature, made by laying dead insects and bees directly on the filmstrip. Psalter (2019), by Samantha Rebello, also involves extreme close-ups, with imagery that is alchemical. Nicky Hamlyn’s Pro Agri (2008) is a timelapse film in which we see a tobacco processing plant as day turns to night. The fading image in Candle (2017), by Neil Henderson, is a unique meditation on filmic illumination and the illusion of movement. This programme will be introduced by the artists and curators Simon Payne and Andrew Vallance.

Full list of films below:

Moons (2025, 3mins) Lucy Harris

Atlas (2018, 3mins) Laura Hindmarsh

Dark Garden (2011, 9mins) Nick Collins

Not (a) part (2019, 6 mins) Vicky Smith

Psalter (2019, 14mins) Samantha Rebello

Pro Agri (2008, 3mins) Nicky Hamlyn

Candle (3mins) Neil Henderson

Biographies
Simon Payne and Andrew Vallance have been programming artists’ film and video since 2013, when they co-curated ‘Assembly: A Survey of Recent Artists’ Films in Britain’ for Tate Britain. Since then, under the banner of Contact, they have presented programmes in numerous cinemas, galleries and other venues, internationally. The book they published in 2021, entitled Film Talks, involved representing new conversations on experimental cinema from a diverse range of film and video artists. For more information visit: https://www.contactscreenings.co.uk/

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