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02/10/08
About this film
About the projectIn The Inspection House, I perform as the facilitator and artistic director of a co-operative group formed through public auditions over several months. The project explores the advantages and problems of living and working in a group. Our aim is to implement innovative alternative methods of film making which will challenge the medium's frameworks and hierarchies. The Inspection House is a creative co-operation between visual and performing artists. Our group will make a self-reflexive moving image work to be primarily displayed using the Internet. A fictional narrative will be devised through developmental workshops in London and then filmed on a residency in an isolated cottage in Poland. The website will show the final work and chart every stage of the creative process through documentary film footage from the film set/ residency and an e-book compiled from participants writings and photos. The aims of the project and how we will achieve them:AIMImplementing innovative methods of creating and displaying artists moving image work that exposes and subverts representations that conform to and reinforce oppressive social and cultural structures. HOW We will subvert fixed structures through working with spontaneity and improvisation, much like a group of free jazz musicians: accommodating, combining and clashing to build a rich work informed by our different areas of expertise. We will employ two potentially oppressive frameworks as our starting point: 1) THE PRODUCTION OF COMMERCIAL CINEMATIC FICTIONS WITH ITS INCREASINGLY FIXED VISUAL LANGUAGE AND PREDICTABLE NARRATIVE PLOTLINES. We will devise and subvert the narrative codes of a coercive tragedy describing the return of the prodigal son/hero to his family home. He persuades his sister and parents to form a theatre troupe and begins to run training workshops with them, however, the hero's tragic flaw: his desire to direct his family in how to behave, soon becomes apparent.2) THE PERFORMANCE OF A FAMILY GROUP WITH EXPECTATIONS UPON ITS MEMBERS TO ACT OUT PARTICULAR ROLES. We will create the characters (Mother, Father, Son, Daughter) through improvisation workshops. The family will wear masks that represent the restrictive, oppressive nature of social masks that adjust the individual to something that already exists. We will subvert this so that the masks will also act as a method for liberation: they will be used to separate actor and character so each participant may perform as every family member. We will be able to build complex multi faceted characters, as each individual will bring particular physical and emotional elements to a role.AIMCreating fertile conditions for the individual artistic development of participating artists.HOW:For the duration of the filmmaking process the group (including actors, cinematographers, sound recordists) will act as a self-governing co-operative contributing to every stage of production. Each participant will have the opportunity to think the film rather than being thought by it. The group will critically engage with how power operates through working together in practical ways on a narrative on the subject of authority.Situating the residency abroad in a remote location to create conditions for a concentrated approach to the experience of working and living together as a group. This will provide us with the time and space to develop a state and a society both within the narrative and in our working methods.AIMProviding opportunities for new forms of engagement with digital media to create multifaceted works open to creative interpretations.HOW: Experimenting with the visual language of subjective intimate camera work offered by new lightweight, portable digital SLRs capable of filming at high resolution in low light conditions. Especially looking at the potential for the camera to act with a focus on what can be achieved by attaching the camera to performers bodies.Exploring the advantages of an interactive and constantly transforming website and blog as a method for participants and public to engage with the artwork. The Internet provides the perfect vehicle to present and evaluate every stage of our process leading to the final moving image work. The site will act as an immersive virtual space mapping the project through the exploration of the rooms of an imaginary family home that exists between countries.AIMIn an era of increased migration we wish to celebrate unstable identities and the idea of identifying with others rather then asserting one identity. We intend to facilitate international co-operations on a project that creates networks and cultural exchanges. HOW:THE GROUPAn intentionally diverse interdisciplinary group has been brought together from an array of complex backgrounds to form a site rich in potential for thinking otherwise and creating a time and space outside of the dominant way of being. Within us are contained portions of Afghan, Belarusian, Brit, Chinese, Canadian, Georgian, Hungarian, Kazakh, Lithuanian, Malay, Mexican, Pole, Slovak, Spanish, and Russian. We are experienced in various art forms (performing, art, visual art and digital media), here are just some examples of the rich backgrounds that inform our work: Del Paso and Kotetishivli trained in cinematography at Lodz Film School, this has contributed to their inventive use of visual language. Gillott studied at the Lecoq School with Philippe Gaulier in Paris. He has performed with clown, buffoon, object theatre and dance theatre companies. Hujova studies community-based theatre practice. Since working as a teacher in Slovakia she has collaborated on various projects e.g London International Festival of Theatre on the large-scale art project: Eat London. I took my MA in Painting at the RCA; I went on to study cinematography in Lodz and screenwriting at Birkbeck. Chok studied anthropology at Oxford University before training as an actor at the Poor School. The project is partly based in Poland and partly in the UK so as to continue my exploration of unfixed identity, rootless-ness and the space between countries. We will use the Internet to build a virtual homepage for a project with no fixed location. Holding the residency/film in Poland allows development of creative links and dialogues I have forged (through living and studying in Warsaw and Lodz) with Polish artists and organizations working with digital media in innovative ways. Our home page www.samsonovfamily.com explores rootlessness and the space between countries.
Cast
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Robert Denis
Actor
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Susan pawlak
Actress
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