6 April 2001 8pm

PleasureDome and Mercer Union present:
British New Wave: Oliver Payne and Nick Relph
Friday, April 6, 2001, 8:00pm

Location: Cinecycle, 129 Spadina Ave. (down the alley)

Program curator, Matthew Higgs, will be present to introduce the work of these rising British filmmakers.

Working collaboratively, Oliver Payne and Nick Relph make films that approximate the language of documentary filmmaking. Payne and Relph set about creating densely layered filmic essays that chart the ebb and flow of London’s urban and suburban malaise. Driftwood (1999), set within the geographical limits of Central London, is a tightly scripted journey through the concrete jungle, witnessed through the sidewalk lens of its skateboarding narrator. Driftwood revels in the psychological potholes of a London struggling to embrace the future yet burdened by the legacy of its past. House and Garage (2000), set in London’s white collar suburbs adopts a more intuitive, often contradictory style, that mirrors the social unease of its disenfranchised subjects. Wistfully melancholic, often hilarious, House and Garage acts as a rite of passage for its youthful constituents, climaxing with reverse footage of a millennial firework display played out over a barely audible take on the Sex Pistols’ No Future. The screening with finish with Jungle (2001) the third and final part in Payne and Relph’s trilogy.