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part of
double bill #22
Downside Up
Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg
1984
Melbourne Film Festival
1984
With a single camera movement, this film explores humankind’s relationship to the ground. The viewpoint continuously changes. Places, objects, people, and events come in and out of focus. These observations gradually speed up and reveal a double-sided ground, flipping like a tossed coin, which then slows again to oscillate around the Earth’s edge.
Bio Tony Hill
Born in London in 1946, Tony Hill is sometimes called the godfather of British structuralist film. Hill studied Architecture and Sculpture and has been working as an independent filmmaker since 1973, usually taking on all aspects of production and developing and even building his own equipment. He also works with installations, photography, and sound. Hill’s prolific and playful opus constantly challenges, expands, and redefines the viewer’s perspective.
Here we go. We tumble, stumble, descending, ascending. We grow dizzy, whizzy. Whisper Ooooh or Aaaah as we watch. Feel a tingle in the belly. A kind of rollercoaster, though this is far more gentle: more slip and slide, rather than the plummet. We are downside up. The sun is shining. Birds whistling. Bumble. Bees buzz. A hot air balloon floats on the ground. We ascend, transcend. As if we were defying gravity with a string at the ankle, still a little connected. We start out with solid ground beneath our feet, spring up and out, reaching like an eager spring sprout towards the sun. Recharged, we glide on, nimble. We play about, toy with perspective. Convenient at a time when some hold such rigid views of the world and how we should move through it. It helps to see things from other angles. To come loose. To let go. To look freely. Being playful, frolicking human beings. Looking at ourselves, liberated.
Credits
Camera
Sound
Abbas Kiarostami
Producer
Albano Lutcher
Production
Aline Quertain
Distributor
Aaron Minnebo