I taught for many years in the School of European Studies at the University of East Anglia. I've written a number of books about Surrealism of which the latest is 'The Age of Gold - Surrealist cinema' (Creation Books, 2004). In the late fifties and sixties, I frequented the surrealist group in Paris. Over two decades, I organised some seven or eight, elaborate, all-night, open air happenings on surrealist themes , often attended by several hundred participants. I've always made collages and now write verse.
Encouraged by Tony Rayns, I first showed some films publicly at the International Avant-Garde Film Festival at the BFI's National Film Theatre in 1970. Subsequently, as a member of the London Filmmakers' Co-op, I used to introduce programmes of my films at other Co-ops, film societies, university and college film clubs, arts labs, and so on, in the UK and on the Continent. Another early champion was Jean-Pierre Bouyxou in 'La Science- fiction au cinéma', and Paul Hammond in 'The Shadow and its Shadow'. More recently, my films are discussed in David Curtis 'A History of Artists' films and video in Britain' (BFI, 2007).
In the early sixties, I began making films by editing together brief sequences lifted from TV, home movies, stills from books and magazines, rostrum animation... re-assembled according to the logic of my desire. In thrall to the virtualities of montage, my cinema is a stream of night thoughts about movies that might have been.
5 MOVIES IN DISTRIBUTION
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THE PLEASURES OF THE CAPITAL
1976 / 8mm / color-b&w / sound / single screen / 14' 00 / 45 € distribution: Mini DV |
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THE VOLUPTUOUS MARTYRDOMS OF THE MAGNIFICENT MASTURBATORS
1971 / 8mm / color-b&w / sound / single screen / 16' 00 / 56 € distribution: Mini DV |
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BARBARÊVEUSE
1969-1971 / 8mm / color-b&w / sound / single screen / 27' 00 / 84 € distribution: Mini DV |
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GUNNERA
1969 / 8mm / color / sound / single screen / 9' 00 / 23 € distribution: Mini DV |
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BOIS-CHARBONS
1956-1968 / 8mm / color / sound / single screen / 11' 00 / 40 € distribution: Mini DV |