Patrick Keiller - c/d?

It's not "ironic", but it's definitely in character. London is the weakest of the three. I'm not sure how 'accurate' or useful it is about London/the UK. In my experience actual British people have lots of issues with Keiller. Perhaps with good reason.

oh god. flaneurs. the experience of shopping. good christ. something dumb about the civil war -- you'll find it was the revolutionaries who really went hard there.

Regarding cliche, I think the time it took to produce the first two of these dated the narration by the time it was released. Keiller has said that Robinson In Space was describing an England that no longer existed by the time it was released in (I think) '97.

And London was made in 1994, before psychogeography (in the sense of Will Self wandering around Hampstead Heath smoking a pipe, to quote Iain Sinclair) was much of a thing, for what that's worth (perhaps not much tbh).

Based on the little I know about your taste from your posts, I can't imagine these films making you anything other than livid.

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Need to watch London again, but I don't remember it being cliched or annoying, and Robinson in Space is also great IMO.

Yeah, I love 'em but if you don't like the first 20 mins of London I don't think anything in the rest of the films are going to change your opinion. Save yourself the stress.

to be fair, this wouldn't have been quite as cliched in 1994, but the narration is white noise to me

though, as i keep watching, there's a sort of symptomatic interest there

wonder if walter benjamin will come up

the images are nostalgia-evoking, though not that much has changed. colour tones *do* change though.

The shots look very well composed and thought through, I think. There's a hypnotic quality to it, which is probably independent of the commentary, which I happen to like.

wonder if walter benjamin will come up

lol, how could i have doubted it

yeah i think he has an eye, and a sense of rhythm

think he just called napoleon liberty's hero haha...

"In character" is probably putting things too lightly -- it's one character relating the thoughts of another, who is a little unhinged. The degree to which Robinson reads history in the landscape is paranoic. It's a caricature of psychogeography, but it's not insincere. I think Keiller wants to have his cake and eat it to, which gives the film an interesting tension, but might be annoying if you're more concerned with the rightness of the politics.

Why are you even watching this, history mayne? You should post on ILX about something you like instead!

xp Robinson is a projection isn't he. Allows the narrator to expouse contradictory positions without actually being seen to do so.

Get the feeling HM is coming round to it a bit.

yeah i don't dislike the conceit, and he does distance himself from robinson. when he calls him an autodidact, that's right. and when he says london is *not* 'the 'most unsociable city in europe'

there's something very cosy and backwards-looking in its politics; conservative hegemony allowed a generous amount of sentimentality and self-righteousness, and in this case anti-english rhetoric.

his predictions about the decline of the city are lol

Why are you even watching this, history mayne? You should post on ILX about something you like instead!

― bloody Health and Safety (admrl), Tuesday, October 5, 2010 10:13 PM (18 minutes ago)

idk. dude has a new film out. one day i will write a whole thing about how bad jarman, keiller, greenaway, et al are

i did just post about liking 'spooks' fwiw

Bad like Michael Jackson

Does Keiller really fit with Greenaway and Jarman, other than socially? I haven't watched much by either because of what I have seen, and I don't really fuck with much post-war British cinema, but Keiller seems part of a different tradition.

it's reminding me a lot of 'the last of england', the narration

but no, the main links are institutional (via the dear old bfi)

Some early Peter Greenaway films (which fwiw I think history mayne might know are films I hugely admire, not a fan of Jarman though I do think he is significant in his way) bear some formal similarities to Keiller's stuff.

i f/w early greenaway

working through the jeff keen box atm -- that's my jam, british a/g-wise

I know there's a big difference between early and later Greenaway, but the awfulness of the later stuff dampened my curiosity. Where should I start, Adam?

Keen has gotten kind of trendy in New York recently -- Light Industry show, solo program at Views from the Avant-Garde. Sad I haven't been able to catch anything.

Does Lux distribute any Greenaway or Jarman (as they do Keen and Keiller)? That's obviously a different sort of institutional support than BFI, but it's maybe telling of how this stuff is being pieced together today?

I don't know if they do, but they have their catalogue on their site.

As for early Greenaway, I like The Falls (definitely an acquired taste though, but I don't care), A Walk Through H, Dear Phone, and of course Vertical Features Remake. These are funny, messy and frequently beautiful films. I think Greenaway's biggest crime became taking himself too seriously, in a lot of people's eyes, when really it should be the quite problematic misogyny. I still like his "good" films enough to call myself a fan.

It seems like it's pretty hard to be an avant-gardist (or whatever) in Britain, which is why you have this equally difficult term "artists film and video" which isn't so much in use in the US. It seems like it's a matter of marketing yourself for what little funding/exhibition opportunities there are available. I actually like some of the younger Lux-affiliated filmmakers, but it doesn't seem like they are much appreciated at home. Pretty sad.

This is also sad:

http://www.bfi.org.uk/lff/films/experimenta

Aside from a couple of token UK filmmakers (and Ben Rivers at least has been/would be shown anywhere), this could be any experimental program in any festival anywhere. It's not that the work isn't good, but there is something stale about it all. And there's really nothing "experimental" about Winter Vacation!

That distinction existed at one point or another in the U.S. I think particularly with California art world guys in the 70s who ventured into film -- Ruscha, Nauman, Baldessari. Video complicated things, but (maybe?) put some of the differences into relief. There are already so many competing designations, and the construction of the "avant-garde" triadtion as a whole is such a weird ahistorical mishmash anyway that I guess the term was never that useful.

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Yes, or Warhol? All of these terms are really difficult in my opinion, and I always cringe a little upon hearing/using them (as of course I use them myself). M4rt1n 4rn0ld came to teach a regular class we have about "radicalized" cinema and spent the first half hour talking about what a weird word it was to him and how he chiefly associated it with "radical islam", etc.

Well, Warhol was more keyed into what was happening in the experimental film world. Richard Serra too. I think it was just a lot easier in New York. The West Coast guys were looking to Hollywood. I don't know Nauman and Baldessari's films very well, but Ed Ruscha's two efforts are just awful.

That BFI program is really depressing.

Just watched Robinson in Space total classic, particularly for the stuff on Defoe and Robert Burton. Looks as beautiful, if not more, than London too.

Excellent article in today's Guardian Review on Robinson in Ruins:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/nov/20/robinson-ruins-patrick-keiller-dillon

Just got Robinson in Ruins on blu-ray. Looks beautiful and I am very much enjoying Redgrave's narration.

OTM, it's great.

I think this is what blu-ray was invented for.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2011/jul/29/tate-danny-boyle-patrick-keiller#start-of-comments

Keiller is curating an installation at Tate Britain:
http://uk.phaidon.com/agenda/art/events/2012/march/27/the-long-awaited-return-of-patrick-keiller/

Has anyone read this?

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/nov/07/view-from-train-patrick-keiller-review

Does anybody who even likes Patrick Keiller post on ILX anymore? Hello?

hi

hi caek!

bless you

the book (and the beckett review) done passed me by. thanks for the link.

i finally watched robinson in ruins the other day. oxford feelings.

(also i saw LAPI at IFC center btw. looked great! congrats!)

Haha, thanks!

hello! was thinking about Keiller this weekend when I visited Oxford.

also cos of the Meades documentary that was on last night, which I recorded, but that can be saved for the relevant thread I guess

I got the book for Xmas. I liked the essay about the North London Line and the trip to Rochester with Cedric Price but overall it's a bit repetitive - not much you wouldn't get from the films.

watching london right now (BFI films on prime), enjoying how much it enraged NRQ upthread lol

did pinefox ever tell his story?

london is honestly p funny, and i like the facts piling up, even if there's an element of bouvard et pécuchet to the robinson and the narrator (i.e. they're twerps)

the robinson

i guess that's part of why it's funny

ROBINSON IN SPACE (1997) begins with a train being announced: end of the line is where i now live but the S/T fades before we get to that

so far both the narrator and robinson strike me as no less silly than before

ambushed by unexpected adam ant klaxon

sadly he doesn't appear on-screen

donald trump klaxon also (he too does not appear on-screen)

ruins is the best of the three

TIOJR: Keiller was briefly in The Raincoats.