All posts by Hannah

Phantom Rhapsody – Series 2010

Phantom Rhapsody

Phantom Rhapsody I
2010
100 x 116 cm
Photographic Print from Negative

Phantom Rhapsody

Phantom Rhapsody II
2010
100 x 116 cm
Photographic Print from Negative

Phantom Rhapsody

Phantom Rhapsody III
2010
100 x 113 cm
Photographic Print from Negative

Phantom Rhapsody

Phantom Rhapsody
2010
Film Stills

Photographs 2009-10

Photographs 2009

Untitled III
2010
100 X 116 cm
Photographic print from negative

 

 

Photographs 2009

Untitled IV
2009
100 x 116 cm
Photographic print from negative

Photographs 2009

Untitled VI
2009
80 x 116 cm
Photographic print from negative

Photographs 2009

Untitled XI
2008
100 X 116 cm
Photographic print from negative

Stages Of Mourning – Series 2004

 

Stages of Mourning I
2000
Photographic print from negative

Stages of Mourning II
2000
Photographic print from negative

Stages Of Mourning

Stages of Mourning III & IV
2000
Photographic print from negative
 

Stages Of Mourning

Stages of Mourning V
2000
Photographic print from negative

Photographs 2001

Stages of Mourning VI
2000
Photographic print from negative

Stages Of Mourning

Stages of Mourning VII
2000
Photographic print from negative

 

Stages of Mourning VIII
2000
Photographic print from negative

 

 

 

Stages Of Mourning

Stages of Mourning  IX
2000
Photographic print from negative

Stages of Mourning  X
2000 Photographic print from negative

 

Stages of Mourning XI
2000
Photographic print from negative

Photographs 2001-2

 

Untitled I
2002
Photographic print from negative

Untitled II
2002
100 X 116 cm
Photographic print from negative

 

 

 

Untitled III
2001
Photographic print from negative

 

 

 

Untitled IV

Photographic print from negative

 

 

 

Untitled V
2001
Photographic print from negative

 

You Be Mother – Series 1990

You Be Mother

You Be Mother I
1990
100 x 113 cm
Photographic print from negative

You Be Mother

You Be Mother II
1990
100 x 113 cm
Photographic print from negative

You Be Mother

You Be Mother III
1990
100 x 113 cm
Photographic print from negative

You Be Mother

You Be Mother IV
1990
100 x 113 cm
Photographic print from negative

Magic Mirror, 2013

2013, 16mm b/w, sound, 75min

Magic Mirror combines a re-staging of the French Surrealist artist Claude Cahun’s black and white photographs with selected extracts from her book Aveux non avenus (1930, Confessions Denied). In Surrealist kaleidoscopic fashion the film creates a weave between image and word, exploring the links between Cahun’s photographs and writing as well as between those of the films of Sarah Pucill, as both artists share similar iconography and concerns.

Cahun’s multi-subjectivity as expressed in both her book and photographs, set the scene for the film, where she dresses and makes her face up in so many different ways, swapping identities between gender, age and the inanimate. Three women masquerade as Cahun’s characters: often it is hard to tell them apart. The splitting of identity appears as a double which persists throughout; as a literal double (through super-imposition), as shadow, imprints in sand, reflections in water, mirror or distorting glass. Likewise the voice is split between differently dressed voices, which sometimes speak at the same time and sometimes in dialogue. Part essay, part film poem, Magic Mirror translates the startling force of Cahun’s poetic language into a choreographed series of Vivantes Tableaux, intermixed with stagings from her writing.

Selected text from Aveux Non Avenus (Confessions Denied), Claude Cahun, 1928. Translated by Rachel Gomme


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Direction, Camera and Edit:
Sarah Pucill
Funding Support:
Arts Council of England
Lighting, Second Camera:
Rina Yang
Main Performers:
Andro Andrex, Rowina Lennon, Kate Hart
Sound Mix and Dub:
Konrad Welz
Sound and Edit Assistance:
Fernando Callega Lopez
Music:
Jon Opstad
Hair and Make-up:
Amanda Rudkin
Costume and Props:
Lucy Vann, Jessica Cheetham,
Main Voice-over:
Helen McGregor, Rowena Lennon, Clarissa Regan, Marcia Farquhar
Edit, Direction Assistance:
Mairead MacClean

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[tab name=”Screenings”]
2013   22 April, Premier Screening, Tate Modern, 6.30pm

2013   21 July, Glasgow Film Theatre, 8.20pm

2013   11 August, Norsk Film Institute ‘The Dream That Kicks’ August

2013   7 November, Screening with Q+A Institute of Contemporary Art, London, 6.45pm

2013  13 November, Screening  Cork Film Festival, 11.30am

2013   19 November, Union Theatre, Milwaukee, USA

2013  21 November, Aberystwyth Arts Centre, 6pm

2013   7+8 December, Institute of Contemporary Art, London

2014  15 January, Paula Mendersohn Becher Musuem, Bremen, Germany, curated by Christine Ruffert

2014 16 January, London Art Fair Panel screening and discussion on The Muse with Anthony Penrose (Lee Miller’s son) and Sue Steward

2014  3 February, Dance Pavillion, Bournemouth, curated by Selina Robertson

2014   28 February, Edinburgh Filmhouse,

2014 8 April, Freedman Gallery, Albright College, Reading, PA, USA, curated by Erin Riley-Lopez ‘International Film Series’

2014   9 April, Cinemarges Film Festival, Bordeaux

2014   26 April, La Cinemateque de Toulouse

2014   31 August, Seoul International New Media Film Festival, International Competition

2014  9 November, Pink Screen Film Festival, Brussels

2014  3 December, LUX DVD Launch of Magic Mirror,
JW3, 341-351 Finchley Road, London NW3 6ET

2014  10 December, Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris

2015   April, Alchemy Film Festival, Hawick, Scotland.

2015  17 April- 14 June  ‘Magic Mirror: Claude Cahun and Sarah Pucill, The Nunnery Gallery, London

2015   July,  St Brelades Church, Jersey, organised by Jersey Heritage and LGBQT LIBERATE community in Jersey

2015   6 October, Screening,  Ecoles des beaux arts de Nantes curated by Marion Chaine

2015   16 October, Birkbeck University, Screening organised by Birkbeck Institute For The Moving Image Seminar Series convened by Muriel Temple

2015   8 October-5 December, staged exhibition of Magic Mirror in ‘Radical Gestures: Uncanny Feminism”, curated by Bae Myung Ji, Coreana Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea

2016   30 September, Screening of Magic Mirror and presentation,
Cambridge University, Corpus Christi College, Public Seminar:
Film and the Other Arts, Intermediality, Medium Specificity, Creativity, International Research Network.

2017  28 February, Close Up Cinema, London, Cahun Diptych Screening, 6.30pm Magic Mirror, Q+A with Laura Guy.

2017  6 August White Cube, Auditorium, Bermondsey as part of the exhibition ‘Dreamer’s Awake’.

2017  18 November Photofilm: Sampling the Archive,
GUGA (Center of Architecture, a venue that is in opposition to the hungarian government), in co-operation with the Metropolitcan University, Budapest, Hungary.

IQMF Festival Screening and Discussion with Sudeep Dasgupta + Aynouk Tan, 13 December 2020.

2021 The Museum of Photography, Berlin.  Part of Sampling the Archive Photofilm Event.

2022 Braquage, Paris, curator Sebastien Ronceray

2022 Actoral Festival, Marseille

2022  The Dream That Kicks, curated by Greg Pope, Oslo KunstnernesHus.

2022  The Lexi Cinema, Kensal Rise (London), Part of a trans-led film strand. Programmed by Rebecca Del Tufo, Film selected by Juliet Jacques. Q+A with Juliet Jacques and the filmmaker.  July 2022 date tbc.

2022   National Gallery of Art, Washington, US.  A screening series in conjunction with the exhibition The Double, 12 July – 31 October.

2022 Cinema Cafe des Images, Herouville St-Claire, France

2022 Braquage, Paris, curated by Sebastien Ronceray.

2022  L’Actoral Festival, Toulouse, curated by Sebastien Ronceray.

2023. Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge, 13 June.

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[tab name=”Texts”]
2021 Mirror Tricks: Magic Objects” by Maxa Zoller, Leaflet with LUX Blu Ray Publication, 2021.

2021 Doubling Images: Troubling Objects” by Laura Guy, Leaflet with LUX Blu Ray Publication, 2021.

 

2018 “Coming To Life” and Intermediality in the films Confessions to the Mirror (2016) and Magic Mirror(2013) by Sarah Pucill In Experimental Film and Expanded Animation: New Perspectives and Practices.  Ed V Smith,  N Hamlyn, 2018.  Winner 2018-19 Norman McLaren/Evelyn Lambart Award for Best Scholarly Book in Animation.

 

2016 “Feminisms, Mirrors: Claude Cahun and Sarah Pucill – a dialogue” by Dr M Sprio, MIRAJ Magazine, Issue 4, 2+1, Spring 2016

2015.  Reviewsx2 Magic MIRROR Nunnery galley: Emma Brady,  Francis Morgan on ‘Magic Mirror’ Exhibition 2015, at Nunnery Gallery, London.

2015 June, Art Monthly Magazine, Review of Magic Mirror at The Nunnery Gallery, London, by Mark Harris – Art Monthly June 2015 Page 1 | Art Monthly June 2015 Page 2

2015 April, Magic Mirror Exhibition booklet (Published by the Nunnery Gallery) texts by Liena Vayzman, Sarah Pucill, Louise Downie.

2015 May, Sight and Sound Magazine, Review of ‘Magic Mirror- Claude Cahun and Sarah Pucill’ at The Nunnery Gallery, London, by Frances Morgan

2015 May, Time Out Magazine, Review of ‘Magic Mirror- Claude Cahun and Sarah Pucill’ at the Nunnery Gallery, London

2014 “Between Mirrors”, Helena Reckitt, Lux DVD

2014 “Stepping Aside to Enter”, Sarah Ibrahim, Lux DVD

2014 September 30, Photomonitor Magazine, Interview with Anna McNay

2014 July DIVA Magazine, feature by Anna McNay

2013 Mnemoscape Interview with A Ferrini and E Adami on Magic Mirror Part 2

2013 Mnemoscape Interview with A Ferrini and E Adami on Magic Mirror Part 1

2012Vertigo Magazine Issue 31 Winter In Conversation – At Least I Will Know My Face
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[tab name=”Publicity”]

September 2021     Into the Mothlight podcast

“Into the Mothlight” Podcast interview with and produced by Jason Moyes on my 16mm films over 3 decades, in light of the the recent publication of the LUX Blu Ray of Confessions to the Mirror.          Published  September 2021

 

February 2020   Televised documentary in France (ARTE) and Germany (ZDF) “Masquerade and Games – The Female Artists of Surrealism”, Dir Maria Tappeiner.    Televised date: France and Germany 16 February 2020.  By the German public broadcaster ZDF in cooperation with the French/German public broadcaster ARTE.  Directed by Maria Tappeiner.

Extracts from Magic Mirror and Confessions to the Mirror  appear alongside an interview with me in my studio.    The focus is on my work with Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore in Magic Mirror  and Confessions to the Mirror.   Documentary includes  Lee Miller, Leonor Fini, Leonora Carrington,  and Meret Oppenheim.

April 2013 Resonance FM Half Hour Radio Interview with Diana Mavrolean, ‘I’m ready for my Close-up’, on Magic Mirror

July 29,  2013  The Skinny, Review by Helen Wright

August 2013  TenMag, Spannish Fashion and Culture Magazine, Ana Himes
October 2016  BFI Southbank London Film Festival Salon, Interview with Helen de Witt and Ruth Maclennan, speaking about the films Magic Mirror and Confessions To The Mirror

 

 

 

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Phantom Rhapsody, 2010

2010, 16mm, b/w, 19min

Distinctive in its stark use of black and white and reminiscent of early silent cinema, this film is composed of a series of theatrical side-show ‘magic’ acts. Three women stage tricks of appearance and disappearance, punctuated by trumpet, cello and drums.Interchanging between the roles of magician, nude and filmmaker, they perform the preparation of an image and the prepared or completed image, drawing on iconic paintings. 16mm camera techniques as well as performance techniques with props – such as cloaks, drapery, curtains, wigs, mirrors, frames, wands and lighting – determine what is visible or absent in the film frame.With its surrealist sensibilities of artifice and reality and insistence on doubling and substitution, Phantom Rhapsody probes the notion of identity as surface that can be worn or shed and which can extend beyond the boundary of the skin, into the light in the room, the set and the props.

[tab name=”Credits”]

Direction:
Sarah Pucill
Funded:
Arts Council of England
Camera Assistance:
Lucy Pratt, Vicky Smith
Camera, Text and Edit:
Sarah Pucill
Performance:
Cecile Chich, Kayla Ente, Lucy Pratt, Sarah Pucill
Sound Design:
Tudor Petre Music
Music Composition:
Lennert Busch
Trumpet:
Howard Jacques Peryer
Cello:
Alice Biddulph

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[tab name=”Screenings”]

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[tab name=”Texts”]

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Fall In Frame, 2009

2009, 16mm, col, 18min

Fall in Frame opens with the image of a young woman looking at herself and her camera in the mirror, each revealed as she unwraps a sheet to uncover the lens. She sets up the filming space by staging both set and camera and manipulates the light by handling the blind, each action weighted with its sound.  Filming herself falling asleep and awakening, in and out of consciousness, the woman switches the camera on and off. Deliberation and indifference at once determine her actions as she sits at the table pouring tea, impassively combs strands of long hair or lounges on a bed. Meticulously constructing her own confinement, she repeatedly checks herself in mirror and camera, all the while moving in and out of frame. With an even paced performance the woman proceeds to stitch her apron to the tablecloth with her hair. As she stands, the crockery comes crashing down. Gathered together into her dress, the debris is then thrown out of the window. Outside, in the garden, objects and camera are piled onto the cloth that becomes a trail as it is attached to her dress. From suburban street to sea-shore, camera and trail follow her.  In Fall in Frame the materiality of the filmmaking process is explored within a constrained performance that blurs the split  between the physical and consciousness.  The film ends where it starts with the sheet around the camera, shutting out the image.

Fall in Frame is a single screen which can be looped for gallery staging to be shown on 16mm or DVD

[tab name=”Texts”]

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[tab name=”Credits”]
Directed and Produced: Sarah Pucill
Funded: Arts Council of England
Camera, Text and Edit: Sarah Pucill
Performance: Lucy Pratt
Sound, Mix and Dub: Konrad Welz
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[tab name=”Screenings”]

2009
Montreal Festival du Nouveau Cinema, Montreal (festival)
University of Bedfordshire, Luton (Symposium)
Echo Park Film Centre, Los Angeles (retrospective)
MassArt Film Society, Boston (retrospective)
Anthology Film Archives, New York (retrospective)
Air Gallery, New York (retrospective)
Pleasure Dome, Toronto (retrospective)
2010
The Freud Museum, London (retrospective)
2010
The Book Club, curated by Laura Kloss, programme text by Adriana Cerne, Shoreditch, London (retrospective)
2010
No.w.here, Bethnal Green London (retrospective)
2012
Imagem-Contato, San Paulo, Brazil
2010
The Freud Museum, London (retrospective)
2014
A Nos Amours, JW3, London, as part of a ‘Chantale Akerman study day’, Screening of Fall In Frame with a presentation discussing the connection with Akerman’s filmmaking.
2017
City46, KomunalKino, Bremen, Germany

2023 Braquage, Paris.

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Blind Light, 2007

2007, 16mm, col, 22min

Blind Light is filmed in the artist’s London loft. The presence of camera, studio and artist/performer are registered through image and sound, the loss of the former filling out the presence of the latter. In this way the physicality of object, space and subject as well as their inferiority is fleshed out, mapping out a space that is at once material and psychical. Controlling the light she allows into the frame, the artist lifts the blinds or pulls them shut, applies or removes lens filters, opens wide the aperture or closes it. Each performance or action threatens the image as it shifts in and out of ‘proper’ exposure until it disappears completely. Focusing either on the window or the sky, the artist narrates her camera operation whilst also describing what she sees; intermixing receptive and projective vision. ‘I can’t look’, she says, ‘the clouds are coming in’, ‘there’s been no rain for weeks’, ‘the eye burns, swells, looses focus and disappears in a stream’. Between aperture, eyeball, sun and moon, source and projection swap place. The film journeys from the grounded reality of the here and now – audibly represented through footsteps, birds and traffic, to a psychical space expressed through voice and abstraction. Blind Light explores the fold between the materiality of film, the psyche and the body.

[tab name=”Credits”]

Directed and produced:
Sarah Pucill
Funded:
Arts and Humanities Research Council, Arts Council of England
Camera, text and Edit:
Sarah Pucill
Performance:
Sarah Pucill
Sound, mix and dub:
Konrad Welz
Editing assistance:
Sue Giovanni, Lucia King

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[tab name=”Screenings”]

2007
Millennium Film, New York (retrospective)
The Old Lumiere Cinema (University of Westminster), London
2008
The Star and Shadow, Newcastle (retrospective), UK
European Media Art Festival Osnabruck, Germany
Trauma and the Sublime conference Swansea University, Whales
Louise T Blouin Gallery, London
Aurora Media Art Festival, Norwich, UK
Sway Gallery Open Show, Sway, New Forest, UK
2009
LightCone, Paris,
Anthology Film Archives, New York
2010
Film Without Film, Tate Modern, London curated by no-w-here and Maxa Zoller
Ruffled Galaxies – Infernoesque, exhibition, Berlin
LoBe Art, Berlin, curated by Olivia Reynolds.
2011
Moving Image South, Curzon Cinema, retrospective
2012.     Milton Keynes Gallery, Screening
2017         ‘The Artist Studio’ Programme of films, Vancouvre, Curated by Michele Smith,   DIM Cinema, The Cinemateque, Vancouvre, Canada

 

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[tab name=”Texts”]
Francesca Rusalen + Francesco Cazzin, text in “No Fest Experimental Film Festival”
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Taking My Skin, 2006

2006, 16mm, b&w, sound, 35min

I’m not aware of you taking my skin’, says the artist’s mother to the camera as it zooms in on her eye as close as the lens will allow. Taking My Skin tracks a dialogue between the artist and her mother. Their exchange ranges from narrating the filming process ‘in the moment’ to relations in an earlier time – ‘how long do you think it takes for a child to become separate?’ Throughout the journey film spaces continuously dissolve and collapse only to separate again. Sometimes the artist is behind the camera, sometimes the mother, sometimes both simultaneously behind and in front, or neither. Both perform, film, and alternately instruct, position and direct the other. Formally and thematically, the film is an exploration of closeness, of synching, and the threat this poses to the self.

[tab name=”Credits”]

Directed and produced: Sarah Pucill
Funded        Arts & Humanities Research Council and Arts Council of England
Camera, performance:    Sarah Pucill, Jane Pucill
Camera, lighting supervision:  Megan Fraser
Sound technician:                     Megan Fraser
Editing & sound:                       Mairead MacClean

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[tab name=”Screenings”]

2006
Greenwich Picture House
Cork Film Festival
2007
The Millennium Film Workshop, New York (retrospective)
Greenwich Picture House (retrospective)
Images Festival of Film & Video, Toronto – Marion McMahon Award
European Media Art Festival Osnabruck, Germany
Intervention, Fieldgate Gallery, London (staged exhibition)
Light Cone 25th Anniversary, Paris
2008
Mother Cuts: Experiments in Film, Video and Photography, New Jersey City University Galleries (staged exhibition)
Ann Arbor Film Festival
Multichannel, Artsway, UK (installed exhibition)
The Star and Shadow Cinema, Newcastle-upon-Tyne (retrospective)
2010
The Freud Museum, London
2010
The ‘Other’, Rencentre de Sophie, Nantes, France
2011
Moving Image South, Curzon Cinema, Wimbledon, London
Retrospective Screening curated by Laura Kloss
2012
Madrid Experimental Film Festival, Retrospective[/tab]

[tab name=”Awards”]

2007 Marion McMahon Award, Images Festival, Toronto, Canada
2007  Directors Citation, Black Maria Film Festival, New Jersey, US

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[tab name=”Texts”]

2011
‘Those Deep Approaches’ by Cherry Smyth for the Lux DVD Booklet
2010
The Theatre of female point of view, Gloria Murano, La Furia Umana
2007
‘Mother Cuts’, exhibition catalogue, text and curation Siona Wilson, New Jersey University Gallery
2007
‘Film Frame to Skin Cell’ by Niamh McDonnell, Vertigo Magazine

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