Patrick Keiller's 'London'

[luka]

this keeps coming up so why not let it have its own thread. its my favourite film. well funny.

 

[luka]

partly prompted by rooting through owen's archives and finding this

 

[luka]

maybe i should make more of an effort. like discussion points like, what does it mean when he talks about 'the true identity of london lies in its absence'

and things like that.

 

[joanofarctan]

I like this film a lot. it reminds me of chris marker in theme and style. i never got round to seeing the 'sequel', Robinson in Space. i found both online from moviemail on one dvd. i think i might get that, come to think of it.

patrick keiller is teaching at the royal college of art these days. isn't that place full of super rich kids? everyone i know there is super rich.

keiller has been involved with the bartlett school of architecture before. when i used to live next door to it, all the architects thought 'london' was the best film ever. which is nice, i guess, but scary - that level of consensus. they were all super rich too, the architects, come to think of it.

 

[jenks]

I like this film a lot. it reminds me of chris marker in theme and style. i never got round to seeing the 'sequel', Robinson in Space. i found both online from moviemail on one dvd. i think i might get that, come to think of it.

QUOTE]

i think i might have to as well

the only reason i haven't said much about this yet is that i haven't seen either film for ages but both left a distinct impression on me - really unsettling strong.

a filmic collorary to sinclair in many ways

 

[owen]

partly prompted by rooting through owen's archives and finding this

ta... is a bit of a mess mind you, that piece. was written also when i could still be bothered to listen to the pirates heheh

one of the things i like abt London and Robinson in Space (which is brilliant, possibly the better film) is the format of the film-essay, which there are nowhere near enough of....starts roughly with Vertov, then you have Marker, Orson Welles' fantastic and criminally underrated F For Fake. fast cutting contrasting with a tendency to drift rather than narrative...

'the true identity of london lies in its absence'

well, cos as Borges said of Citizen Kane, London is a labyrinth without a centre

 

[kennel_district]

love london, and robinson isn't half bad either. any recommendations of similar film-essay thingys?

 

[ambrose]

much preferred robinson to london.

felt london was too rooted in time/real life events, robinson felt more timeless (though paradoxically definitely of a time)

mind you i saw robinson first, maybe that was the wrong order.

 

[labrat]

love london, and robinson isn't half bad either. any recommendations of similar film-essay thingys?

oliver payne & nick relphs films House and Garage & Jungle are fairly derivative of Patrick Keillor but the're still great!
His earlier film The End is very good indeed I have a copy of the script if anyone wants a copy.

 

[nomos]

oliver payne & nick relphs films House and Garage & Jungle are fairly derivative of Patrick Keillor but the're still great!

Do you know where I could learn more about these? Garage & Jungle (this a film about music?) via an unabashed Patrick Keiller influence sounds just too good to miss.

the only reason i haven't said much about this yet is that i haven't seen either film for ages but both left a distinct impression on me - really unsettling strong.

this is me as well. i saw it last summer and my memory of the day has an odd shade but i need to see the film again. waiting for a rainy day in the spring to revisit. robinson picking up and buggering off from the bus stop sticks in my mind.

 

[benjybars]

i rented this a couple of months ago... loved it so much i forgot to take it back and ended up with a £15 fine..

 

[labrat]

http://www.serpentinegallery.org/images/Payne_Relph_teachers_notes.pdf

 

[STN]

Is Chris Petit involved in these films somehow?

 

[nomos]

http://www.serpentinegallery.org/images/Payne_Relph_teachers_notes.pdf

oh nice. thanks a lot labrat. now it's a matter of finding them.

found these descriptions of house & garage, and jungle:

There are three films, from about 25 to 35 minutes long and originally shot in video, Super 8, and 16mm. The first is about the city (Driftwood, referring to the world of the skateboarder), the second about the suburbs (House and Garage), and the third about the country (Jungle). I began in the middle of the first film and saw the first half of it last. I was therefore in the middle of the city, with traffic coming toward me on Regent Street, which had been designed by John Nash in the early 19th century as a "'cordon sanitaire' between the scruffs of Soho and the toffs of Mayfair." Soho, which came next, "was laid out in the 1670s, just in time to accommodate an influx of Greek Christians fleeing Ottoman persecution and a larger wave of French Protestants forced out by Louis XIV." It's the least obsessive part of the film, and yes it is interesting what is said about Nash and the Greek Christians.

...

That declaration is fulfilled to a certain degree in the second film, but the constraints remain. The approach changes in House and Garage from the structured narrative of Driftwood. "It is true to the suburbs themselves," according to Relph and Payne, "and takes the form of a collage--drifting between domestic space, local recs and the awkward space where young and old meet." They call it "a romantic comedy," and so it is in terms of its familiar surroundings and antic behavior. Young people are now heard and seen, along with their elders. They dance, play music, tell stories. It is safe but also confined, or because it is confined.

...

The third film, Jungle, describes the horrors of the countryside in several rather sustained episodes, including a ritual night procession led by a man with a skeletal horse's head, farm scenes, a rabid, crowded contest over a fiery barrel, men in medieval dress fighting, a man describing the appearance of a UFO, a demonstration and counter-demonstration about hunting, a turkey slaughterhouse, and a group of young people walking through an ominous, dark wood at night around the scene of a crime--all about violence and death.

Strange forces lurk everywhere, in people's minds, far from the city, linked with the city. Sound is completely ambient rather than made up, an inner sphere, unlike the first two films, which depended on narration and music. At the end, the UFO witness almost reappears as pixels accumulate and then is wiped out before he can appear--perhaps the strangest force of all.

 

[glenister]

The first one, Driftwood, is playing somewhere in the Tate Modern.
Thing is, if you really love London & Robinson in Space, you'd probably want to give these films a miss... They were made by people in their early 20's kind of 'playing' at being Keiller, with enthusiasm and naivete standing in for Keiller's originality, knowledge, wit, etc etc
I only say this cos i made em...

 

[nomos]

^^ That made me laugh Pleased to meet you, glenister. Well I do hope to see these sometime if I get the chance. Are they available to people who might like to screen them in North America?

The first one, Driftwood, is playing somewhere in the Tate Modern.

Was it playing in 2005 (possibly in a room just past the Russian modernist stuff)?

 

[shudder]

The first one, Driftwood, is playing somewhere in the Tate Modern.
Thing is, if you really love London & Robinson in Space, you'd probably want to give these films a miss... They were made by people in their early 20's kind of 'playing' at being Keiller, with enthusiasm and naivete standing in for Keiller's originality, knowledge, wit, etc etc
I only say this cos i made em...

ha! hilarious!

London's coming in the mail (via zip.ca) any moment now...

 

[glenister]

It could've been there in 2005...? Whenever it was they did the rehang..
Nomos - PM me and i'll send you some stuff if you like

 

[sufi]

brilliant, just caught these 2 on unsolicited dvd posted by my long-lost cousin,

pleasantly herzogish far as i can see, & it goes without saying hauntological and k-punkesque...university of barking, very humerous harhar
especially nostalgic and timely snaps of pre-blair uk, sometimes feels to me like very recent history sometimes like a long-forgotten era, a little ballardish and you're not surprised when he gets to tilbury and raises conrad

like camp geography classes recounted by that anti-establishment teacher who used to let you smoke & did'nt come back after the summer holidays in 95

http://www.kamera.co.uk/article.php/490

 

[sufi]

is there a new robinson out?