1995, 16mm, col, sound, 6min
In Backcomb the demonic is unleashed on domestic space. It takes the form of two of femininity’s mildest tokens, hair and embroidery, that serve here in the creation of a sexualised surrealist experience. Within the claustrophobic space of a table-lay, a forceful and erectile mass of hair comes alive and slithers across its surface. The hair probes into vessels and punches through the cloth till finally order overturns and all smashes to the ground.
- Directed:
- Sarah Pucill
- Produced:
- Maggie Ellis
- Funded:
- Carlton TV and London Production Fund
- Art Direction:
- Alix Harwood
- Camera:
- Belinda Parsons, Sarah Pucill
- Camera Assistance:
- Sarah Gardiner
- Performers:
- Karen Ashton
- Dubbing Mixer:
- Andy Sears
- Edit & Sound:
- Sarah Pucill
- 1995-97
- Carlton Television, UK; London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival; Mix: New York Film Festival; Toronto Short Film Festival; The Raw and the Cooked, Ruby Rich and Chris Darke, The Fourth ICA Biennial of Independent Film and Video Art, London; Feminale Cologne; Montreal Image and Nation International Queer Film and Video Festival; Ankara Film Festival, Turkey; Femme Totale, Dortmund, Germany; Womens Film Festival Norwich (nominated for best experimental film).
- 1998
- Tate Britain, curated by Gary Thomas (retrospective)
- Lux, London (retrospective)
- 1999
- ‘Sweetie. Female Identity in British Video’ curated by Cristiana Perrella and Maria Rosa Sossai, British School at Rome (1999)
- 2000
- Lux, London DNET Festival of Electronic and Digital Art
- 2002
- 291 Gallery (retrospective)
- 2003
- The UK/Canadian Video Exchange, curated by Cate Elwes, South London Gallery, TRANZ<>TECH 2003, Toronto
- Hair The Show curated by Marcia Farquhar and Peggy Atherton, Tablet Gallery London
- 2004
- Feminale, Cologne, Germany
- 2006
- Greenwich Picture House (retrospective)
- ‘Light Reading’ series, NO.W.HERE Lab, London (retrospective)
- 2008
- New York Filmmakers Co-Op Screening, curated by Caroline Koebel
- Millennium, New York (retrospective)
- The Star and Shadow Cinema, Newcastle Uon Tyne (retrospective)
- 2009
- Anthology Film Archives, New York
- Mass Art Film Society, Boston, US
- Arsenale, Berlin
- 2010
- Tate Modern, London, (part of Vivienne Dick Retrospective)
- Light Industry, New York, (part of Vivienne Dick retrospective)
- 2011
- BFI Southbank (retrospective) as part of the LUX DVD launch of Sarah Pucill Film Shorts 1990-2010
- 2012
- Madrid Experimental Film Festival (retrospective)
- Parasol Unit, Curated Gil Leng LUX
- 2017
- Programme curated by Vivienne Dick, Irish Film Institute, Dublin 10 October
- 2023
- “Milk” Exhibition at The Wellcome Institute, 30 March = 10 September
- 2011
- 2010
- ‘Female Presence and the act of seeing: The haptic gaze in the films of Sarah Pucill’ by Gloria Morano, La Furia Umana No 5.
- 1996
- Backcomb – by Chris Darke, Textual Analysis London Production Fund 1996.