Ten pm Wednesday, a small crowd collected at the Money Bin for You Are Here’s One Minute Film Festival: a celebration of Australia’s diverse video artists. The audience sat on old couches, beanbags and cardboard boxes, surrounded by leads and lighting scaffold, which gave the space the feel of an industrial lounge room.
The evening was curated by digital artist and musician Danny Wild, founding member of audio-visual collective Zonk Vision. Most films shown came from artists Wild knows personally and were not merely recorded skits. Few videos contained dialogue and only one seemed to have a script of some kind. The rest were ultimately video art, smashing film and animation together and finding beauty in the mundane.
Part one consisted of the results of an open call for one-minute films. The collection opened with Sarah Byrne’s Internet Psychosis, an array of jarring images and layered web pages in overwhelming colour. Luke McGrath’s Johnny Bastard told the story of a one-night stand through subtitles. With lines like ‘he described my pubic hair as angel fur’, McGrath had his audience in giggles.
The highlight of the screening was Raw Nature Films’ Subtitles, footage of a grocery-store clerk patting a watermelon, glaring the cameraman. The clip was increasingly hilarious each time it was repeated. Kat Martin entered an incredible animation of colour and light (not for epileptics). She hypnotised the audience with overwhelming angles and finished with a contrastingly fluid end.
Part two was shown across the room, where the audience huddled together on their cushions in what felt like a screening in Wild’s lounge room. The team struggled with some technical difficulties, but it was of little concern with the show’s relaxed vibe. Pieces shown here had been specially selected by Wild, and began with shaky footage of Toast, an old Canberra club familiar to the crowd, care of Timothy D (Zonk Vision).
Jason Galea (also of Zonk Vision) had two features, both one-minute excerpts of a thirty-minute film. The first section showed footage of an anchorman underneath animated oil paint that moved across his face like a weather map. Wild then played a segment from the beginning of the video, an instructional collage of how the piece should be viewed. Sara Wurker and Tim Guthrie worked together on one of the final videos. Through smoke and flame the camera captured a woman’s movements, mesmerising the audience with its intimacy and grace.
An eclectic collection of just over ten videos were screened, each with clear objectives but little meaning. Most were aesthetically pleasing, though a few still procured a ‘what the hell am I watching?’ The audience were obviously well acquainted and unabashed: heckling from the festival coordinators lent the evening a comfortable informality, though it was Wild’s use of Holden Hands’ beats that formed such a distinct community atmosphere.
Details: One Minute Film Festival was shown at The Money bin at 10pm on Wednesday March 19, 2014.
Bio: Grace Flanagan is an undergraduate student at ANU who traditionally pens short-fiction. She’s been grabbed by an octopus and found $50 in the ocean. Her life’s goal is to perform a handstand unassisted.
Image by Chase McCormack
