The sound of lights passing through a dark landscape seen from a moving train. Night Train is a time-lapse film that reduces the journey between Birmingham and London to two minutes. It uses a similar technique to Soundtrack for converting the lights into sounds. Night Train may be seen as continuing the Vertovian tradition of employing film to reveal phenomena not normally visible to the naked eye. It was shot from a moving train at night, using time exposures of half a second per frame. The camera records passing lights as traces, so the nearer the objects to the train, the longer the trace. This results in the familiar travel experience, whereby we appear to pass nearer objects faster than distant ones. Here, this translates into a black screen with abstract horizontal white lines, distant light sources making short feint lines, nearer ones long and bright lines.’ (Nicky Hamlyn)
Also in this combined programme
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Views from Home
Changing sunlight filmed in the maker’s apartment, with saxophone sounds from the neighbours as a soundtrack.
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Time Spirals
Film material is rolled up like a spiral and dipped sideways in developer so only half is developed.
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Man with Mirror
Spectacular in its simplicity, this Super-8 performance screened at the 30th anniversary edition of the festival.
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Soundtrack
Shot taken from the window of a moving train, used as a basis for a fascinating optical soundtrack.
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Cycles #3
A performance with two 16mm projectors in which spots stuck on the film function as basic material for hypnotic images and sound.
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Vowels & Consonants
A 16mm performance with six projectors, in which letters that are printed straight onto the film are present in both sound and image.
Film details
- Country of production
- UK
- Year
- 1979
- Festival edition
- IFFR 2006
- Length
- 2"
- Medium/Format
- 16mm
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