Forest Sculptures

May 1995 - Fine Art students from Southampton Institute spent a week in Parkhurst Forest, IOW creating sculptures from found, organic material. The film treats the creative process as an integral part of the completed work. The soundtrack is part of "Last One Out Turns Off the Lights" an album from 1989 by A-Soma and Eve Libertine. 'ejr' was the umbrella title used by filmmaker Nick Emery (aka ND Emery, Vane Tempest & the ejr, etc...) for all his independent (and predominantly) self-financed films made between 1976 and the cessation of production in 2000. All bar one were non-fiction films, most were proto-music videos -- uncompromising and singular - although a number feature an eclectic variety of subjects ranging from railways to sculpture. Stylistically the films encompass the spectrum from the conventional and linear narrative to the iconoclastic and nihilistic. They often eschew such formalities as continuity and synchronisation, shaking up the moribund repetitiveness of the music video with kaleidoscopic layers of superimposition, jump-cuts and slow-motion stirred into the mix. This was not an approach guaranteed to garner mainstream or MTV-type exposure. The template for early productions was the instantaneous accessibility of the news item developed by TV companies as the basis for their broadcasts and utilising the premise that any story can be told in three minutes (or not at all). They are all defined by an unorthodox approach, limited production values and financial constraints. An entry in a 1994 Exploding Cinema programme describes ejr films as being "....organic, they appear to have been grown rather than made". Influences include Peter Whitehead, Derek Jarman and Don Letts. With the exception of three films all are less than ten minutes in length. Both "Dragtime - Gallon Drunk 1992", an early film of the indefatigable swamp-fevered rockers, and "Brewing up in Blighty" (1993/4) (aka "This New Model England") featuring the perennially underrated, experimental technoists and John Peel Faves, 70 Gwen Party, both run to thirty minutes. The only non-fiction film, "Burning Land" (1978-80) features a young woman dealing with identity and isolation and was inspired by Maya Deren's "Meshes of an Afternoon". Two other longer films -- "This Deadly Affair" (1981) and "Popness", dealing with the shamanistic and commercial rituals of popular music - along with a number of shorts from the 1990's remain unfinished and are unlikely to see the light of day. Many films from the 1976 -- 1984 period have disappeared and are presumed lost. All the productions were originally shot on 16mm film with some sequences on Super8 and analogue video. The dozen films on Youtube are a representative selection of ejr productions. email: [email protected]