Dead the Ends
Bookended by the 2011 London riots, Benedict Seymour’s dramatically, politically urgent new film retells the story of Chris Marker’s 'La Jetée'. A man has been sent back into the past as a way of rescuing the future, his tale told by way of the Narrator who riffs on familiar film dialogue and contemporary references – unpicking the political implications of his journey and our retro obsessions.
A collage, narrative, essay film hybrid, 'Dead the Ends', plunders some fifty years of cinema – including dystopian sci-fi – and uses emojis and gifs as ways of exploring the undercurrents of historical and current visual language, as well as present entrenched, systemic inequality. Cross-currents of thought and broad swathes of material are incisively manoeuvred, whilst, in its intellectually and dramatically gripping shape and scope, the piece feels part-situationist, part-Borgesian. It asks, in richly creative fashion, how did we get here? (Will Fowler, LFF brochure)
Official Selection BFI London Film Festival 2017 - Experimenta Strand - World premiere. 106 mins.
| Item Type | Film/Video |
|---|---|
| Additional Information |
World Premiere BFI London Film Festival (Experimenta strand) October 2017. Screened at ICA cinema and Rich Mix, London 10th and 15th October. OTHER SCREENINGS: Anagram Books, Berlin, Germany January 30th, 2018 QAGOMA Australian Cinémathèque Brisbane Australia, 9 Feb 2018. Whitechapel Gallery London, (Artists' Film programme), 10 May 2018. University of Kent, Department of Law, 16 May 2018 Johns Hopkins University English Dept, Baltimore Maryland, USA, 1 October, 2018. Ohio University film department, 2nd October 2018. Spectacle Theatre NY, USA, 4th October, University of Lincoln, Department of Media, 17 October 2018 Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh 19 October 2018 |
| Keywords | accumulation; social (non)reproduction; time machines; fictitious capital; social media; digitalisation; capitalism; crisis; loot and loops; race, gender, class; primitive accumulation; media theory; Chris Marker; UK riots 2011; dead the ends; |
| Departments, Centres and Research Units | Art |
| Date Deposited | 18 Sep 2018 08:29 |
| Last Modified | 03 Jul 2020 13:15 |