England,
1999, 40 min
Shown in 1999
CREDITS
- dir
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Chris Petit
- scr
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Chris Petit
- editor
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Chris Petit
- source
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Illuminations, 19-20 Rheidol Mews, Rheidol Terrace, London, N1 8NU England. FAX: 44-171-359-1151. EMAIL: griff@illumin.co.uk
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COMMENTS
Shown with Radio On (Remix) and Surveillance. Chris Petit in person.
OTHER
Reborn in the ’90s as an experimental documentarian and essayist for British TV, former film critic turned filmmaker Chris Petit applies his characteristic cool detachment, idiosyncratic engagement and subversive observation to image-making in the fin-de-siècle Society of the Spectacle. In Negative Space, he interviews legendary retired film critic turned painter Manny Farber, applying some of Farber’s key concepts and observations to images gleaned from film history and from Petit’s 1998 road trip across the Southwest to Farber’s home in San Diego. Petit uses his signature techniques of video rephotography and vignetting to reframe images and downgrade the textures of film and video, playing off the banality of a landscape of prefabricated, ephemeral reality with the enduring, mysterious spaces and qualities of cinematic memory.
—Gavin Smith
FACTOID #81
Anjelica Huston was the first recipient of the Piper-Heidsieck Award in 1991. When Huston received the prize from the champagne maker, she joked, “Can I drink it?”
