(Friday 1st March / 6pm)

HYDRA DECAPITA (The Otolith Group, 2010, 33 minutes)
VERA CRUZ (Rosangela Renno, 2001, 44 minutes)
THE MIDDLE PASSAGE (Mathieu Abonnenc, 2006, 9 minutes)

Curated by Alastair Cameron and Bridget Crone

This programme addresses histories and myths of the Atlantic sea (of which the port of Bristol was a key hub) as an emergent space of power and resistance. In each film, the lines between history and fiction (and even science fiction) are shown to be indistinct so that questions are opened up around the capacity of the image (or film) to represent, depict or report events. Rather than entering into a process of contesting one narrative account within another, the films in THE PEOPLE ARE MISSING go to the heart of the question by addressing the image itself and thinking about the cinematic image's material form, structure, history and circulation. Here sound and image are no longer subordinated to narrative, and they may be absent, re-inscribed or remade in these films to ask what do images do and what can they do?
Such strategies question documentary film's power to "show" or to represent, as well as the assumed duties of documentary images as a force for good. Our preoccupation in screening these films is to propose a more complicated and critical understanding of the circulation, role and status of images in contemporary culture. Ultimately, we would like to consider the idea that there is no radical film without radical form.

This session would not have been possible without the generous support of The Otolith Group, LUX, Mathieu Abonnenc and Marcelle Alix Gallery.