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c e n t u r y ' s e n d |
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(2004, 5'46", 16mm) |
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| Century's End is a film-poem about London in the last hours of the 20th century. | |
| It was shot between midday and midnight on 31st December 1999 and includes the exact moment of the beginning of the year 2000. | |
| I shot it in black and white at 16 fps and telecine-ed it at 25 fps in order to give it the jerky look of an old Edwardian film. This creates a deliberate tension between the antique look of the film and the recognisably modern setting. | |
| The film starts with Trafalgar Square and The Mall - views which have scarcely changed in decades - before moving on to the ultra-modern Docklands redevelopment around Canary Wharf, which resembles the set from Fritz Lang's Metropolis. From there we move to the South Bank with its Sixties and Seventies 'Brutalist' architecture to find it swamped by people, whose sheer numbers suggest the anticipated visitation of a prophet. We see the London Eye, the quintessential icon of the New Millennium in London, bathed in lasers and almost eclipsing Big Ben, an icon of old London. The film ends on the moment of the beginning of the new century and the image is blotted out by fireworks. | |
| Promoted by: The British Council, Film and Literature Department, 10 Spring Gardens, London SW1A 2BN Tel. +44 20 7930 8466 | |
| CREDITS | |
| Directing, editing and camera by Martin Pickles | |
| Music ('Fire Engine On Fire') by Flotation Toy Warning | |
| Additional camera and supervision by Ian Samels | |
| Telecine by Lux | |
| Thanks to Ian Samels, Brian Marshall of Rapid Pictures and Vicky West of Flotation Toy Warning | |
| SCREENINGS | |
| 1st to 10 December 2006: Onedotzero Articulated London event at the Oxo Tower, London | |
| June 2005: Halloween Society event in Barcelona, Spain | |
| 5th May 2005 onwards: at the Fluxus 2005 online film festival, São Paulo, Brazil. | |
| 21st February-7th March 2005: Fantasporto - Oporto International Film Festival | |
| 15th January 2005: at the Halloween Short Film Festival at the ICA, The Mall, London on January 15th 2005 in the prgrammes 'LONDON LIVES' and 'LEFTFIELD AND LUSCIOUS' on Saturday 15th January. | |
| 4th-6th November 2004: screened in the lobby at No Words Film Festival, Cineforum Bolzano, Auditorium Eurac, Bolzano, Italy | |
| 5th October 2004: at the Institute of Contemporary Art, The Mall, London before a gig by Flotation Toy Warning | |
| 16th-21st September 2004: at the International Film Festival Of Fine Arts, Szolnok, Hungary | |
| 21st June-2nd July 2004: included in the Video-pool at Video as Urban Condition project at the Austrian Cultural Forum, London | |
| 12th April 2004: in the programme Up In Smoke: Architecture In Transformation at Rice Univesity Campus Anderson Hall Inner Courtyard, Houston, Texas, USA. | |
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