LOCATION: Whakamax Movies, 99 The Strand, Whakatāne 
PRICING: $5 per person from Whakamax

Join us for a selection of highlights from the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery and Len Lye Centre’s Projection Series #11: An Oceanic Feeling, at this special screening and book launch, presented by the Gallery’s Senior Curator Paul Brobbel.

An Oceanic Feeling, curated by film scholar and Govett-Brewster international film curator in residence (2017) Erika Balsom, explores the overlapping human histories of colonialism, slavery, exploration and labour, in the marine context, through a screening series of recent film from around the world. 

As commissioner of the Govett-Brewster's Projection Series programme, Paul will introduce a screening of two short films from the larger programme. .TV, is a dystopian fable for a warming planet, told by travelling through the undersea cables that make the internet possible. Sunstone is a portrait of Roque Pina, the lighthouse keeper at Cabo da Roca, Portugal, and an exploration of an ambivalent colonial history through the metaphor of the lens. 

These films are not to be missed! Come along for a thought-provoking look at our environment, history and contemporary film-making.

Copies of Erika Balsom's accompanying publication, An Oceanic Feeling: Cinema and the Sea, will be available for purchase at the screening ($10)

Join us for a selection of highlights from the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery and Len Lye Centre’s Projection Series #11: An Oceanic Feeling, at this special screening and book launch, presented by the Gallery’s Senior Curator Paul Brobbel.  
An Oceanic Feeling, curated by film scholar and Govett-Brewster international film curator in residence (2017) Erika Balsom, explores the overlapping human histories of colonialism, slavery, exploration and labour, in the marine context, through a screening series of recent film from around the world. 

As commissioner of the Govett-Brewster's Projection Series programme, Paul will introduce a screening of two short films from the larger programme. .TV, is a dystopian fable for a warming planet, told by travelling through the undersea cables that make the internet possible. Sunstone is a portrait of Roque Pina, the lighthouse keeper at Cabo da Roca, Portugal, and an exploration of an ambivalent colonial history through the metaphor of the lens. 

These films are not to be missed! Come along for a thought-provoking look at our environment, history and contemporary film-making.

Copies of Erika Balsom's accompanying publication, An Oceanic Feeling: Cinema and the Sea, will be available for purchase at the screening ($10).

.TV (2017)
G. Anthony Svatek
23 min., digital video, colour and sound, exempt
Courtesy of the artist

.TV sees climate change and the global circulation of data converge in Tuvalu, the small Pacific nation particularly vulnerable to rising sea levels. G. Anthony Svatek crosscuts between landscape images of the island sourced from YouTube and digital devices in unknown locations playing videos hosted on websites ending in .tv, a national domain name that constitutes big business for Tuvalu’s government, due to its evocation of television. A voiceover frames the film’s images as relics of the past, narrating from a future time when Tuvalu has vanished beneath the ocean. A dystopian fable for a warming planet, told by travelling through the undersea cables that make the internet possible.

Sunstone (2017)
Filipa César and Louis Henderson
35 min., digital video, colour and sound, exempt
Courtesy of SPECTRE

Sunstone is at once a portrait of Roque Pina, the lighthouse keeper at Cabo da Roca, Portugal, and something much broader: an exploration of the optical metaphors of Enlightenment rationality through two lens-based technologies — the lighthouse and the film camera — at a time when they are being displaced by the algorithmic forms of GPS and computer-generated images, respectively. The lighthouse becomes a symbol of an ambivalent history of colonial discovery and orientation, as César and Henderson layer computer renderings over 16mm film, reflecting on the role of each within larger shifts in knowledge. 

This event is brought to you by the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, Whakatāne Museum and Arts and its Volcanic Artist Residency, and Whakamax Movies. Films courtesy of G. Anthony Svatek and SPECTRE.

Visit govettbrewster.com for further reading on the Govett-Brewster’s Projection Series #11 programme.

IMAGE CREDITS (from top): Filipa César and Louis Henderson, Sunstone, 2017 (still); G. Anthony Svatek .TV, 2017 (still); Filipa César and Louis Henderson, Sunstone, 2017 (still)