Above: The filmmaker Sandra Lahire from 1999; film still from ‘Double Exposure’ (2023)

b/w+Col (DCP) sound 28min

PREMIERE:    Experimental Film Festival Frankfurt

Best Experimental Film, Toronto Women Film Festival, March 2024.

9. September 2023

Double Exposure re-stages photographs of Pucill and her once partner Sandra Lahire, shortly before Sandra’s death from anorexia in 2001.   These black and white photographic images are projected onto an interior wall, where the filmmaker steps inside.  Alone with the camera, the filmmaker blindly positions herself into a place that she cannot see, to re-play the image, to meet herself then and Sandra, who both keep getting younger.  ‘Double Exposure’ is a space created between two time-frames, between two women and between material and light as odd objects from the projections are placed in position with their ‘light projection’ double eg a dress, shoe, mirror, table, chair etc.  Inside this imagined intimacy that is also empty, the silence in the room is interrupted with street sounds from the world outside.  The monochrome static camera and slow-paced performance of unbroken time that constitutes the body of the film, is bookended with colour 16mm film of a sunny beach, where colour emulsion bleeds between the sea, sky and sun and Sandra dances spontaneously whilst chatting and joking with the filmmaker who is present at that time, soon after, and 21 years after the death.  Sandra’s piano playing ‘Prelude in E minor’ by Chopin accompanies her spinning dance and puppet performance on the beach.  Lines from a text Sandra was writing at the time the photographs were made, are read over the images by the filmmaker that include quotations from the painter Georgio de Chirico and poet Sylvia Plath, reflecting on enigma, love, camera memory and a body that cannot be heard.

[tab name=”Credits”]

Director, camera, sound:

Sarah Pucill

Appearing:

Sandra Lahire (on beach) (1950-2001), Sarah Pucill in her studio

Voice-over:

Sarah Pucill

Text:

Quotes taken from Sandra Lahire’s incomplete PhD draft

Photographs:

Sarah Pucill (copyright) in collaboration with Sandra Lahire

Piano:

Sandra Lahire on London Filmmakers Co-Op piano (Chopin Prelude in E minor, Op 28 No 4)

Colour grading and image correction:

Fraser Watson

Sound Mix:

Robbie McKane

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[tab name=”texts”]

[/tab]

[tab name=”Screenings”]

Frankfurt Experimental Film Festival Premiere 9 Sept 2023

Danielle Arnaud Gallery, Discussion with Helena Reckitt + Filmmaker. May 31st 2024

Toronto International Women Film Festival Best Experimental Film 2024

Experimental Brasil 2024: Official Selection

Experimental Forum Los Angeles 2024: Special Mention

Buenos Aries Independent Film Festival 2024: Official Selection

FilmHaus, Berlin  2024::Semi Finalist

Screener Short Films 2023:  Honourable Mention

Montreal Women Film Festival: 2023 Nominee

Experimental Brazil Selected

Montreal Independent Film Festival Selected

Chicago Women Film Festival Selected

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16mm col, 20min, 2021:  14 October 2021 

The film’s protagonist is a masked woman in a nude bodysuit, who wears a cardboard box that doubles as a theatre stage. The woman takes us on a surrealist journey in which she performs to an invisible applauding audience. Having passed through red curtains writhing on her back, she arrives on stage bearing a cake on her front. Hand-held cardboard puppets, that she makes from magazine cut-outs of faceless men, go on to take part in an ominous party scene around the cake, candle-lit and spinning. The audience see the woman in disguise, her eyes peeping through cut out eye holes of a man’s cardboard face, as if taking his place. She changes her mask and its gender throughout, sometimes wearing two. Flipping the card puppet-figures, she reveals on the backside, half formed sentences. These morse code- like hand-arm movements struggle to communicate something of the underside of the puppets’ pleasure.

Moving from the abstract to the overt, the film sets up a dialogue between an interior experience of a sensory landscape with the outside world, where the privacy of the body is made uncomfortably public.   Eye Cut is an experiment of what can and cannot be enunciated before we are taken to the final ‘stage’ scene, where cut out text from the MeToo movement projects as a backcloth in a domestic space as she tries to eat.

[tab name=”Credits”]

Performer:

Laura Matilde Mannino

Camera+edit:

Sarah Pucill

Sound Consultant:

Mairead McClean

Rushes Grade:

Fraser Watson

Sound Mix+On-line Edit:

Konrad Welz

Directed+Produced:

Sarah Pucill

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[tab name=”texts”]

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[tab name=”Screenings”]

London Film Festival Premiere: 14 October 2021-Official Selection

Jeu de Paume, Paris, November 2021  In  Vivienne Dick Retrospective

‘Danielle Arnaud Gallery.    Screening and discussion with Helen de Witt, 123 Kennington Road, London.   Decemaber 2022.

Feel The Reel’ Film Festival, Glasgow, November 2021-Nominee

Toronto International Women Film Festival, February 2022 – Best Experimental Film 2022

Dunbo Film Festival, US – Semi Finalist , February 2022

Paris Short Film Festival 2022 – Official Selection – 13-28 March 2022

Berlin International Art Film Festival 2022 -Official Selection – March-April 2022

Film Only Film Festival, Toronto, Official Selection March 2022

Montreal International Independent Film Festival- Official Selection April 2022

London New Wave Film Festival – Best Experimental Film, May 2022

Berlin Shorts Award, Semi Finalist, May 2022

New Filmmakers New Orleans, Semi Finalist, May 2022

‘Currents New Media’ Festival, Santa Fe, Exhibition Festival, June 24-26

New Jersey Shorts Awards, Semi Finalist, June 2022

Rotterdam Independent Film Festival, Semi Finalist, July 2022

Paris Women Festival, Semi Finalist August 2022

Milan Arthouse Film Awards, Semi Finalist August 2022

Munich Short Film Awards, Sei Finalist August 2022

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Confessions To The Mirror, 16mm, colour, 68min,
Premiere London Film Festival 9 October 2016
Funded by the Arts Council of England, Financial Assistance University of Westminster, LUX Distribution.

Amidst a visual extravaganza of costumes and hand-made sets, Sarah Pucill’s new film Confessions To The Mirror takes its title, from the French Surrealist artist, Claude Cahun’s (1894-1954) incomplete memoir (Confidences au miroir, 1945-1954).  Following Cahun’s text, the film includes Cahun’s early and later life and work including her political propaganda activity and imprisonment in Jersey with her partner Suzanne Malherbe during the Nazi occupation of the island. The tracing of a life is made conscious through the projection of images of the couples home in Jersey into a domestic London setting.

Texts on Magic Mirror (2013)

[tab name=”Credits”]

Direction, Camera and Edit:

Sarah Pucill

Editing Consultant and Sound Design:

Mairead McClean

Lighting & Second Camera:

Fiona Teo Rui Wen, Joel Honeywell, Rina Yang

Key Performers:

Karen Leroy-Harris, Kate Hart

Sound Mix & Online Edit:

Konrad Welz

Image Correction:

Fraser Watson

Costume:

Jessica Cheetham

Make-Up:

Jessica Cheetham, Katie Campbell

Voice:

Caroline Saint-Pe, Louise Larchbourne, Lucy Briggs-Owen

[/tab]
[tab name=”Text”]
Francesca Rusalen + Francesco Cazzin, No Fest Experimental Film Festival Text 2017

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

BFI FIlm Festival Salon Interview Sarah Pucill on Confessions To The Mirror with Ruth Maclennan on Hero City October 2016.

Roundtable Discussion: The Women of the London Filmmaker’s Co-op, Moving Image Review and Art Journal, Volume 4, No 1 + 2, 2015: 3P1-Roundtable-MIRAJ | P2-Roundtable-MIRAJ | P3-Roundtable-MIRAJ | P4-RoundtableMIRAJ | P5-RoundtableMIRAJ | P6-RoundtableMIraj | P7-RoundtableMIRAJ

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[tab name=”Publicity”]

September 2021.   ‘Into the Mothlight’  Podcast

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.

[/tab]
[tab name=”Screenings/Exhibition”]
London Film Festival, Official Selection October 2016
Close Up Cinema, Q+A Laura Guy, London, February 2017
Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival, Official Selection, March 2017
Creteil International Women’s Film Festival, Paris, Official Selection, March 2017
National Portrait Gallery, London, Q+A Sadie Lee, March 2017
Cinematek Oslo, ‘The Dream That Kicks’, Q+A Greg Pope, 11 June 2017
White Cube,  Bermondsey as part of the exhibition ‘Dreamer’s Awake’, 6 August 2017

Photofilm: Sampling the Archive, organised by Katja Pratschke and Thomas Tode[
GUGA (Center of Architecture, a venue that is in opposition to the hungarian government), in co-operation with the Metropolitcan University, Budapest, Hungary.  Part of:  Verzio, Human Rights Documentary Film Festival, Budapest, Hungary.

BEEF Bristol Experimental and Expanded Film, Brunswick Club, Q+A VIcky Smith, Bristol ,20 Feb 2018.

Bagdam Lesbian Cultural Festival, Toulouse, France.

UCL Art Museum, Bloomsbury Studio,  Presented with Maria Walsh, London,  22 May 2018.

International Women’s Film Festival Dortmund, Official Selection, 12 April 2019.

Ottawa Municipal Art Gallery, “Facing Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore”, Installation with props and costumes from the film and 10 minute clip, curated by Michelle Gewurtz, 7 September 2019 – 10 February 2020

Clips from Magic Mirror and Confessions to the Mirror will be shown in the play The Invisible Adventure (2020), (Cahun’s  text (1930) , written and directed by Marcus Lindeen.

The play is based on three living people whose life or work; a neuro-scientist, an artist and a patient, draws upon contemporary debates around identity.   “The Artist” in the play is based on interviews with Sarah Pucill ,  “The Scientist”, with the brain scientist Jill Bolte Taylor,  and “The Patient”, with Jérōme Hamon.

After Paris (10-14 October) the production will play at:

Comedie de Caen, Normandie : 3-6 November 2020.

75 Years Commemoration of the Liberation of Jersey, Jersey Heritage Trust, Screening and Presentation planned 16 May 2020.   Event was cancelled due to Covid19.

Ottawa Art Gallery Screening Presented by Curator Michelle Gewurtz Q+A with filmmaker present, 28 November 2019.

Cobra Museum of Modern Art, Amstelveen, Holland.  Staged as an exhibition in “Under The Skin” curated by Julia Steenhuiseen. 15 October 2020 – 17 January 2021.

LUX LAUNCH OF BLU RAY DVD.  Screening + Talk with Sarah Pucill, Laura Guy and Maxa Zoller.  19 April 2021.

Mal Seh’n Kino, Frankfurt , Screening organised by Korola Gramann in relation to the Women Surrealist exhibition at Schirn Kunsthalle planned 19 April 2020, is postponed until May 2021.

Kunsthal, Rotterdam, the exhibition ‘Under the Skin’, curated by Julia Steenhuisen 2020 (largely closed due to COVID) tours to Kunsthal, Rotterdam, 21 May – 28 August.  Magic Mirror is staged in a separate seated dark space.

Toronto Women Film Festival,  February 2022.

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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

[tab name=”Credits”]

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

[/tab]

[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.

[/tab]
[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
[/tab]
[tab name=”Publicity”]

September 2021     Into the Mothlight podcast

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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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”]

• 2010 Sainsbury Art Centre, Norwich, curated by Ben Cook LUX
• 2010  BFI Southbank, Launch of LUX DVD , February, (part of a retrospective of my films),
• 2011  “BFI Southbank, Maya Deren Season” target=”_blank”>BFI Southbank, Maya Deren Season, (part of a retrospective of my films), October, curated by Elinor Cleghorn
• 2011  Light Cone, Paris L’action Christine Cinema, (part of a retrospective of my films).
• 2011  Millennium Film, June, (part of a retrospective of my films, ) New York
• 2011  Leeds Independent Film Festival, October, curated by Cherry Kino
• 2011  Edinburgh International Film Festival, June, curated by Kim Knowles
• 2012  Schwarz Gallery, staged as an installation in a group show’Powerless Structures’ curated by Ismail Erbil
• 2012  Parasol Unit, curated by Gil Laung, LUX
• 2013  Experimental Film programme curated by Kim Knowles, Freiburg, Germany
• 2013  Tate Britain, Assembly: A Survey of Recent Artists Film and Video in Britain 2008-2013, ‘I Extend My Arms’ curated by George Clark, Stuart Comer and Melissa Blanchflower
• 2013 Arsenale Institute for Film and Video Art, Berlin.
• 2018 BEEF, Bristol at Cube Microplex Cinema, Cuated by Vicky Smith.  20 Feb.
• 2019  Queensland Film Festival, Australia. Curated by John Edmund. 29 June.
• 2017 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London, staged exhibition.
• 2023 “I’ll Be Your Mirror” Online exhibition, Curated by Beth Greenacre at Vortic Curated 18 April –  9 July.

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[tab name=”Texts”]

• Sarah Pucill – A Historical Overview Of Her Films (1990-2010), LUX DVD Booklet, Arts Council Funded: Historical Overview P1 | Historical Overview P2
• Introduction for retrospective screening at The Book Club, London 2010, by Dr Adriana Cerne: Adriana P1 | Adriana P2 | Adriana P3
  
• 2011 ‘Sarah Pucill: A cinema of attraction’ by Sebastien Ronceray or see scan of original French article
• 2011 ‘Phantom Rhapsody: Smoke, Mirrors and the Spell of Cinema’ by Lucy Reynolds for the Lux DVD Booklet
• 2010 The Theatre of female point of view by Gloria Morano, La Furia Umana
• 2010 Sarah Pucill in Conversation with Dr Margherita Sprio Sequence Magazine Issue 1 Summer 2010
• 2011  Video Interview with clips of my films on the influence of my films with Maya Deren, February

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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”]

[/tab]

[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
[/tab]

[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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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

[/tab]

[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

 

[/tab]

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

[end_tabset]

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

[/tab]

[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

[/tab]
[end_tabset]

2004, 16mm, col, sound, 17min

Ritualised through performance to camera, Stages of Mourning is Pucill’s journey of bereavement. In as much as this is a meditation on coming to terms with loss, the film is an exploration of how our relationship with the dead is made different through film. The artist orders image fragments of her late lover and collaborator, Sandra Lahire. By trying to physically immerse herself into photographs and film footage or by restaging these, Pucill forms a continuous stream of a life of two lovers. Through this doubling and layering, illusions accumulate as if these were a product of a machine that didn’t stop.

Black Maria Film Festival – Director’s Citation – 2007

[tab name=”Credits”]

Directed and produced:

Sarah Pucill

Funded:

Arts and Humanities Research Council

Performers:

Sarah Pucill, Sandra Lahire

Camera, Edit & Sound:

Sarah Pucill

Camera Assistance:

Chloe Stewart, Tanya Syed

[/tab]

[tab name=”Screenings”]

2004

Rencentres Internationales Paris/Berlin (touring)

Feminale, Cologne

Kassel Documentary Film Festival

College Art Association (CAA) Art History Conference, Atlanta

Masquarade curated by Kate Newton, Photofusion Gallery, London

2005

Experiments in Moving image’ curated by Jackie Hatfield & Steve Littman, the Old Lumiere

Cinema, London

London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival

Wake London Gallery West (with Peggy Atherton)

Take 291, curated by Charlie Phillips, 291 Gallery

2006

PULSAR Caracas Contemporary Art Museum, France and touring

Light Reading’ Series, NO.W.HERE Lab, London  curated by K MIrza + B Butler (retrospective)

Greenwich Picture House, London (retrospective)

2007

The Millennium Film Workshop (retrospective)

2008

Fairbanks Gallery, Oregon

The Star and Shadow Cinema, Newcastle-upon-Tyne (retrospective)

Chisenhale Dance Space and Queen Mary University Symposium on Mourning

Interrogating Trauma Conference, Perth, Australia

2009

The Experimental Film Club, Dublin curated by Donal Foreman.

2010

The ‘Other’, Rencentre de Sophie, Nantes, France.

2011

Moving Image South, Curzon Cinema (retrospective) curated Laura Kloss

2012

Open City Docs, ICA, Aesthetic Queeries, curated by Treasa O’Brien

Conference ‘Family Ties’, University of London, Presentation ‘Re-enactment as cathartic Ritual in Stages Of Mourning with a screening of the film.

‘Autobiography and the Archive at Whitechapel Gallery, screening of Stages Of Mourning with Q+A with Miranda Pennell, organised and chaired by Elisa Adami and Alessandra Ferrini (Mnemoscape).

 

2014

Whitechapel Gallery,  The Archive and Autobiography, curated by Alessandra Ferrini

[/tab]

[tab name=”Texts”]

2011

‘Sarah Pucill: A cinema of attraction’ by Sebastien Ronceray (or see scan of original French article)

2011

‘Those Deep Approaches’ by Cherry Smyth for the Lux DVD Booklet

2010

The Theatre of female point of view, Gloria Morano, La Furia Umana

2005

‘Accumulation in Stages of Mourning’, Lux-on-line, by Naomi Salaman

2006

‘Stop Frame Motion in Stages of Mourning’ Lux-on line by Vicky Smith

2006

The ‘autoethnographic’ in Chantal Akerman’s News From Home, and an Analysis of Almost Out and Stages of Mourning

[/tab]

[end_tabset]

2000, 16mm, b/w, sound 17min

Cast creates a claustrophobic and haunting space where people and things invade worlds in which they do not normally belong. Lifeless dolls are heaped inside drawers, dolled-up life size figures lie motionless on a windy beach at the water’s edge; a chair rocks in an empty room, a mirror reflects and observes, and a chest of drawers is caressed by the sea. The film has a dramatic sensibility that sets up a false promise of narrative. Its structure, instead, is akin to that of dreams where different scenic spaces collapse and the inanimate and animate interchange. Wide-angled perspectives, shifting points of view and juxtapositions of sound and silence force inner and outer realities to collide, creating an unsettling psychic world.

[tab name=”Credits”]

Directed and produced:

Sarah Pucill

Funded:

Arts Council of England

Camera:

Sarah Pucill, Noski De Ville

Art Direction:

Louisa Bare

Make Up:

Tae-ho Lee, Sarah Pucill

Performers:

Two women:Sandra Lahire, Sarah Weatherall.
Child: Marion Knight

Woman on beach: Ella Pratt, Lucy Pratt, Diane Knight

Second Camera:

Sandra Lahire

Editing, Sound Advisor:

Sandra Lahire

[/tab]

[tab name=”Screenings”]

2000-01

Cinenova Festival, The LUX, London

London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival

Feminale, Cologne, Germany

Girlish– screenings part of Girl, New Walsall Art Gallery, UK

2002

291 Gallery (retrospective)

2005

Wake (With Peggy Atherton) London Gallery West

2006

Light ReadingSseries, NO.W.HERE, London, Curated K Mirza and B Butler

Greenwich Picture House (retrospective)

2007

The Subjective Camera Series Greenwich Picture House (retrospective)

2008

The Star and Shadow Cinema, Newcastle upon Tyne (retrospective)

2009

The Pleasure Dome, Toronto

2010

The Book Club, London, curated Laura Kloss (retrospective)

2011

BFI Southbank, Retrospective as part of LUX DVD launch of short films, February

BFI Southbank, Retrospective, curated Elinor Cleghorn as part of the Maya Deren Season, October.

2012

Madrid Experimental Film Festival, (retrospective)

Two Lives, curated by Club de Femmes, in ‘Scala Beyond’, Horse Hospital

2022

Spectacle Theatre, Brooklyn, New York, 22 June

[/tab]

[tab name=”Texts”]

2011

‘Sarah Pucill: A cinema of attraction’ by Sebastien Ronceray (or see scan of original French article)

2010

The Theatre of female point of view, Gloria Morano, La Furia Umana

1999

Little Deaths – by Sandra Lahire. Make magazine special issue on the Miniature

[/tab][end_tabset]