New Touring Programme – This is Now: Film and Video After Punk

November 3, 2015
John Maybury, The Union Jacking Up, 1985. Courtesy the artist. Design: Kellenberger-White.

LUX is pleased to present This is Now: Film and Video After Punk, a major new touring project curated by William Fowler (Curator of Artists’ Moving Image, BFI National Archive) that looks at artists’ film and video from the post-punk era (1978–85). The project comprises seven screening programmes and is developed in partnership with the BFI National Archive.
The early 1980s saw an explosion in alternative and independent moving image production. Clubbers, art students, new romantics and members of the post-punk scene used cheap domestic technologies to subvert the mainstream media and to find new modes of expression. Independent VHS tapes were released, stridently bypassing censorship, and Super 8 film was embraced as a cheap yet lyrical new medium. The DIY approach of punk was powerfully reborn.
Artists defied conventional ideas about how film should be made and who should make them. Female, gay and black filmmakers pushed forward; squatting flats, clubbing and developing new styles and techniques together. Derek Jarman collaborators, John Maybury and Cerith Wyn Evans experimented with Super 8, casting friends Leigh Bowery and Siouxsie Sioux in fragmented, dreamlike scenarios. Isaac Julien and Grayson Perry explored the politics of cultural and personal representation, and major pop video director Sophie Muller (Beyoncé, Rihanna, The Strokes) printed and layered images on 16mm.
This is Now celebrates the diversity of independent moving image production from the UK in the 1980s, a unique moment when cheap new technologies enabled new voices to be heard. A new aesthetic developed that would shape the look of film, television, fashion and music for many years to come. The BFI National Archive has restored twenty Super 8 and 16mm films from this period and the majority of titles are presented for the first time in over three decades. Developed over several years, these programmes revisit a key period in the cultural life of the UK and reflect on the currency that this work has with internet video and artist filmmaking today.
Works by George Barber, Steve Barron, Jennifer Binnie, Duvet Brothers, Vanda Carter, Steven Chivers, Cerith Wyn Evans, Kim Flitcroft & Sandra Goldbacher, Judith Goddard, Gorilla Tapes, Akiko Hada, Richard Heslop, Jeffrey Hinton, Isaac Julien, Michael Kostiff, Mike Mansfield & Adam Ant, John Maybury, Sophie Muller, The Neo-Naturists, Grayson Perry, Tim Pope, John Scarlett-Davis, John Smith, George Snow, Cordelia Swann, Anna Thew, Holly Warburton and Jill Westwood.
Upcoming Screenings:
DIY Space for London
3 November, 8pm
Chapter, Cardiff
7 November, 12:00pm
CCA Derry-Londonderry
14 November (all day event), with evening screenings on 22 October and 26 November
Bedford Creative Arts (at Leighton Buzzard Library)
21 November, 2:00-11:00pm
Fringe! Queer Film and Arts Festival, Rio Cinema 
29 November, 1:00pm
Further tour dates will be announced soon.


The UK tour has been developed with the support of the BFI, awarding funds from The National Lottery.
For bookings and enquiries, please contact Nicole Yip, Special Projects Curator, at [email protected] or +44 (0)207 503 3979
We are also pleased to announce the launch of the official This Is Now website. Alongside details about the screening programmes and tour schedule, the site also features a new ‘Resources’ section that brings together contextual visual material and original writing and research.
 

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