Guy Edmonds' film "JUL 1971" has been selected for screening at the Cornwall Film Festival as part of the Cinestar artists' film programme on Friday, 13/11 12:00-18:00 and Saturday, 14/11 11:00-17:00 at Back Lane West, 9 Back Lane West, Redruth. Guy's film shows some of the last flights of Concorde over London in 2004. It was shot on 16mm Kodachrome II stock which had officially expired in July 1971 at around the time at which Concorde was making its first flights. By the time the film was exposed it could no longer be developed as a colour reversal film but only as a black and white negative.
Guy about his work: "The film is an exercise in the limits of film's subtlety. Through engaging with the challenge of the film's material I suggest there are parallels to be found in the frailty of human endeavour as embodied in the lifespan of the complex technologies of both its subject and material. At a time when using film of any type is becoming an increasing race against time JUL 1971 aims to signal a post film-apocalypse mode of archaeological filmmaking.
Although I made this film before beginning my research into the affective nature of flicker in the cinema experience, there is a trace of the future to be found in the way in which I am here concerned with the animation of an almost still image by the technology of film itself, in this case not shutter–based flicker induced by the operation of the projector, but chemical flicker caused by the uneven decay of the film material.
Everyone living in Cornwall was familiar with the sonic boom of Concorde as it flew over the county on its way to New York so I am looking forward to sharing this film with a Cornish audience as it is about the memory of Concorde as an iconic shape in our lives as well as what the materiality of film can contribute to processes of remembering and forgetting."