Pingey

Dir. Josiane M. H. Pozi

Video

UK, 2019

Language: English

18

Pozi’s […] affecting short film Pingey (2019), [was] shot when she was only twenty.

Pingey alternates between scenes at home and at college, modest spaces with white walls and close quarters. The comfortless new friendships of school contrast with what at first appears to be the peaceful domesticity of family life. When Pozi admits the sad fate of a potted plant to her father: “Pingey died—I just didn’t care for Pingey the way that I should have [. . .] really shouldn’t have used him as an ashtray,” he chuckles softly, but their exchange precedes further misunderstanding and the painful climax of the film, quoted above. “You don’t care,” is the artist’s tearful refrain once the screen fades to black. What Pozi accomplishes is not a novel form or style of representation, but rather the stark presentation of absence. The failure to connect—to care—in Pingey is a spectacular separation that mere physical closeness cannot overcome.

Excerpts from “Few Illusions: Josiane M.H. Pozi”

by Kari Rittenbach

Mousse Magazine, 25 January 2021

Available to read in full online

Biography

Josiane M.H. Pozi (b. 1998, London) is an artist and filmmaker. Over the past year, her work has appeared at institutions including Somerset House, London; Kunsthaus Glarus; Stadtgalerie Bern; The Shed, New York; amongst others. She has also been featured in solo exhibitions at Carlos/Ishikawa, London, and Buchholz Galerie, Berlin. Pozi has made music videos and concert visuals, or contributed footage to projects by musicians Klein, Moses Boyd, Jawnino, and Four Tet. Pozi lives and works in London.

Negative Two

Dir. Micaela Durand, Daniel Chew

Feature film

JAV, 2019

28

Language: English

N-18

A twentysomething gay man develops a relationship through texting with a stranger he meets on a dating app. Their exchange becomes intimate as the protagonist navigates life as an architect in New York City. We catch glimpses of his reflection on the glass facades that dominate the architecture surrounding him, a visual stand-in for the world of screens that populate our lives. He longs for connection, watching other people online while offering himself up to be seen. He attempts to create the perfect selfie in the hopes of meeting his stranger face to face. Will they ever meet? And will that satisfy their desires?

About the authors:

Micaela Durand and Daniel Chew are a filmmaker duo in New York. Their work has been shown in the United States and abroad including the International Film Festival Rotterdam, MoMA PS1, White Columns, 47 Canal, MOCA LA, The Shed, Sheffield Doc/Fest, Le Cinema Club, and NYFF. They were MacDowell fellows in 2020 and are recipients of the Jerome Artist Fellowship for 2021-2022. They are currently developing their first feature film.

Two

Dir. Margaret Salmon

Documentary

UK, 2018

27

N-18

Two uses a female erotic gaze to look for places where love might be found in contemporary life and to explore what might constitute supportive, loving relationships today. It documents three different couples in joyful acts of lovemaking, celebrating the ways in which bodies and people connect physically and emotionally to one another.

Salmon has said the following about Two: “This is an attempt to trace a physical manifestation of love between committed partners, through the mediation of my camera. It’s a simple, intuitive account of the collaboration between myself and the people in the work, and is a celebration of connection and intimacy between caring bodies, as seen through a woman’s camera lens. Two acts in many ways as an antidote to dominant patriarchal visual culture and capitalistic representation of sex that are often entirely divorced from the reality of our bodies and the sexual relationships we cultivate with others.”

Biography

Margaret Salmon (b. 1975, New York) lives and works in Glasgow. Concerned with a shifting constellation of relations, such as those between camera and subject, human and animal, or autobiography and ethnography, Salmon’s films often examine the gendered, emotive dynamics of social interactions and representational forms. Solo exhibitions of her work have been held at institutions including DCA (2018/19), Tramway (2018), Staatsgalerie Stuttgart (2015); Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, USA (2011); Witte de With Centre for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam (2007); Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (2007) and Collective Gallery, Edinburgh (2006). Her work has been featured in film festivals and major international survey exhibitions, including the British Art Show 9 (2021), Glasgow International (2021), Berlin Biennale (2010) and Venice Biennale (2007) London Film Festival (2018, 2016, 2014). Salmon won the inaugural MaxMara Art Prize for Women in 2006, was shortlisted for the Jarman Award 2018 and the 2019 Margaret Tait Award.

Home

Dir. Margaret Salmon

Feature film

UK, 2019

4

A short film depicting a woman putting her children to sleep, cleaning dishes, then dancing with a ghost. Shot on Super 16mm film, Home uses the physical material of film, and expressive bodies, to interpret emotional and imaginative relationships between daily tasks, gendered histories and restorative fantasy. The film shows a progression from the mundane to the extraordinary through the use of realist aesthetics paired with analogue double exposure. A woman cares, moves, isolated, repetitive, before being embraced, encountered by a ghost. They touch, caress and gradually dance together, moving in unison, finding each other in sombre mournful reverie. The ghost and woman finally rest together, and the woman then returns to her children, after this brief moment of resistance and restoration.

Biography

Margaret Salmon (b. 1975, New York) lives and works in Glasgow. Concerned with a shifting constellation of relations, such as those between camera and subject, human and animal, or autobiography and ethnography, Salmon’s films often examine the gendered, emotive dynamics of social interactions and representational forms. Solo exhibitions of her work have been held at institutions including DCA (2018/19), Tramway (2018), Staatsgalerie Stuttgart (2015); Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, USA (2011); Witte de With Centre for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam (2007); Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (2007) and Collective Gallery, Edinburgh (2006). Her work has been featured in film festivals and major international survey exhibitions, including the British Art Show 9 (2021), Glasgow International (2021), Berlin Biennale (2010) and Venice Biennale (2007) London Film Festival (2018, 2016, 2014). Salmon won the inaugural MaxMara Art Prize for Women in 2006, was shortlisted for the Jarman Award 2018 and the 2019 Margaret Tait Award.

Chiyo

Dir. Chiemi Shimada

Documentary

Japan, 2019

Languages: Japanese, English

13

With the warm textures of 16mm colour, the filmmaker paints a sensuous portrait of her grandmother, Chiyo. From her home in the Japanese suburbs, Chiyo shares her dreams and reality.

Biography

Chiemi is an artist-filmmaker based between London and Chiba. Working with both analogue (8, 16mm film) and digital materials, she explores themes of intimacy, domesticity, and modernity while utilising documentary, fiction and experimental approaches. She studied for an MA in Experimental Film and a BA in Filmmaking at Kingston School of Art, London. Her films have been screened at festivals including San Sebastián International Film Festival, Sheffield Doc/Fest, London Short Film Festival, Open City Documentary Festival, European Media Art Festival and Image Forum Festival, among others.