Flick Flack (Extract)
MARVOMOVIE (1967) taken from GAZWRX: The Films of Jeff Keen (Out Feb 23)
An extract from an early Jeff Keen animation (1962) with a soundtrack recorded (by keen) in 2007 using an old Wasp synth and shortwave radio.
An extract from Jeff Keen's breakneck Artwar series last performed as a multi-projection event at Brighton's Phoenix gallery 2006.
'Jeff Keen has been collecting props from dumpsters and toy shops, spray painting them, setting fire to them and animating the results for forty years. His underground films pre-date Warhol, his fans include some of the most notorious and legendary figures in the world of cinema. Forget the so called greats of the silver screen, the true cinematic visionaries are elsewhere, hidden away, woefully neglected by the bulk of historians, working like alchemists with their old super 8 cameras, chocking refrigerators full of nearly out of date stock and bizarre props made from scrap or purchased in bulk from the pound shop. Jeff keen is one such figure, a true great of the avant-garde, experimental and underground film...' Jack Sargeant
Jeff Keen
Born in 1923 and having served as a soldier in World War Two, Jeff Keen began making films at the age of 37, prompted by a dearth of screenings at the local art-school film society. So began over 40 years of unique, imaginative, irrepressible film-making that has outlived the various scenes in which it thrived: the 60s counter-culture, punk and beyond. Featuring animated cut-outs and paintings, and populated by friends and family in a variety of guises, including The Cat Woman, Silverhead, Babyjelly and many more, these frenetic films reveal Keen's deep love of comics, B-movies and pulp novels while also making darker references to wartime experience.
Using various film stocks, though always preferring 8mm - as more oppositional, more disposable, less of a sell-out - this self-taught artist and pioneer of independent film impresses a very personal and highly individual stamp upon all his work. Often dubbed ‘pop art', these explosive films conjure all manner of associations: graffiti art, surrealism and home movies from the future...
Drawn from the various phases of his output - from his turn-of-the-60s beatnik movies through to the apocalyptic beauty of his multi-layered videos of the 90s - these four programmes offer a new and long overdue opportunity to explore the alternative cinematic world of Brighton's very own Dr Gaz.
"Whether by design or chance Jeff Keen's filmmaking activities have been dominated by random factors from the start. His initial involvement grew from an association with a Brighton art college film society, which acquired 8mm equipment: 'I was almost like a film factory...I was just turning out movies to justify the existence of the film society.' His earliest extant film, the second version of 'Wail' survives only in an out of focus 8mm dupe and an even more visually bizarre 16mm blow-up taken from it. By 1965 he had made a twin screen 8mm movie 'The Pink Auto' that by its very nature can never be shown identically twice. In 1967 overcoming a reluctance to unite one particular image track with one particular soundtrack in perpetuity, he added sound to his first 16mm film Marvo Movie..." Read Full Article (6 pages)
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