• NATHAN PHILIPS SQUARE, A WINTERS NIGHT SKATING (2009) — UK Premiere

      Fri Nov 20th – Sat 12th Dec

      Mon- Fri 11am to 8.00pm

      Sat 11am to 5,00pm

      Closed Sunday

      The University of Brighton Gallery

      A-Wnters-Night-New-Still-5

      Shown for the first time in the UK following its premiere at this year’s Venice Biennale. An ultra-modern and seemingly romantic scene of a couple skating together, set at night in a skating rink in Toronto. It takes a second to realise it is not real, that the background is a rear projection and the lighting on the two figures doesn’t match what’s behind them. Mark Lewis has always been interested in the celluloid-based special-effects technology known as rear projection. He’s just made a documentary, currently being screened at Toronto Film Festival, about the founders of the technique: BACKSTORY: HANSARD REAR PROJECTION (2009)

    • NORTH CIRCULAR (2000)

      Fri 20 Nov – Sat 12 Dec

      Mon- Fri 11am to 8.00pm

      Sat 11am to 5,00pm

      Closed Sunday

      The University of Brighton Gallery

      Shot in real time, NORTH CIRCULAR employs a single 4-minute shot lasting precisely the length of one 400ft roll of 35mm film.

      North Circular opens with a distant shot of an abandoned, partially ruined modernist office block backlit against a violet-tinged sky. The camera glides lazily up on its crane, gravitating towards a scene on of the floors of the building, until it climaxes with the close-up of a boy’s spinning top.

    • Hendon FC — World premiere

      Fri 20 Nov – Sat 12 Dec
      Mon- Fri 11am to 8.00pm
      Sat 11am to 5.00pm
      Closed Sunday
      The University of Brighton Gallery

      Hendon F.C. medium

      Lewis’ most recent film Hendon FC (2009) was made on a state-of-the-art RED camera on a football field in suburban northwest London. It is shot at the familiar pace found throughout Lewis’ work. The camera sets a scene, panning the circumference of the sun-lit urban landscape, slowly moving through 360-degrees of its maximum and minimum elevation. Sweeping across an abandoned football pitch and the daily lives of Romany families, who’ve now settled and live in the overgrown enclosure, where terraces have become vacant and overrun with weeds.

      To see a catalogue of Lewis’ Films visit www.marklewisstudio.com

    • Mark Lewis — In conversation

      Free

      Fri 27 Nov 5.15pm
      Sallis Benney Theatre

      A unique opportunity to hear Mark Lewis discuss his work and his ideas – an “in conversation” with the distinguished film theorist, Professor Laura Mulvey.

    • Mark Lewis — Special screenings

      Backstory & Two Impossible FIlms

      Thursday 3 December, 8pm
      Sallis Benney Theatre

      Backstory Cinema Motel

      Backstory
      Director: Mark Lewis, USA 2009. 39 mins.

      In this documentary Lewis tells the story of the founders of rear projection, a technique in which a second unit crew films a scene’s actual location. Lewis has said, “… in the 1920s someone had the great idea to actually put film inside of film – in order to give the effect that someone was somewhere where they were not . . . Now it seems to me that at this point film became fully and definitively ‘modern.’”

      Two Impossible Films
      Director: Mark Lewis. Can 1995. 28 mins.

      Based on a pair of projects that were never made: Eisenstein’s movie of Marx’s Kapital and Sam Goldwyn’s absurd fantasy of filming the complete works of Freud. Lewis shoots only the opening and closing credits. The rest, apparently, is summarised in laconic storyboards – ‘Plot Development, ‘Temporary Resolution’ and so forth. Only in dream or theory could such texts ever be realised as drama.