Close-Up Film Centre Screening: MFJ 83 "Round and Round"

“In 2025 we endured the tragic loss of a pair of artists, who in life were united in love: Florence Jacobs, in June, and in October, Ken Jacobs. Together they were the prime movers behind our organization, putting sweat, ingenuity and vision behind a utopian idea that we all might be able to share the tools, knowledge, space, and resources required for filmmaking, and forge an alternative community of cinema opposed to the practices of capitalism and industry.” – Joe Wakeman

Curated by Grahame Weinbren, Vince Warne, and the MFJ editors, this programme celebrates the launch of MFJ 83.

Ken Jacobs NISSAN ARIANA WINDOW (1968, 12′)

“Nissan Ariana Window is 3/4’s of our daughter’s name. She was just a kid when these pictures were taken. Some were taken before she was born: pregnant Flo together with pregnant cat China sunning themselves under the skylight. Andrew Noren likes the movie.” – Ken Jacobs

Sarah Ballard FULL OUT (2025, 14′)

“Ballard calls to mind the notion of cinema as a type of hypnotism and reverie both exhilarating and disorienting: the sheer, gravity-defying, delirious movement of both the cheerleaders and the camera brings the film round (and round) to first experimental cinematic principles again, while also resonating with a long, cyclical history of the allure and uneasy ethics of imaging women’s states of being.” – Sarah Keller

@welcometo_blue SELECTED WORKS (2025, 5′)

“There’s a pervasive sense of voyeurism, a loneliness, a fascination with light, movement, a blurry shoegaze haze, tiny slices of infinity. Many of them – notably, the extraordinary 2.5-minute short film The Scent Sang a Song – seemed to be filmed in an abandoned elementary school, a liminal space of fluorescent light fixtures, chain-link fences, portable classrooms, windows overlooking palm trees silhouetted against a dark sky.” – Vince Warne

Christoph Janetzko WALD – THE FOREST (2023, 13′)

“Shot between 2019 and 2022, [Janetzko’s] film captures the dying forests of the Harz Mountains, documenting the devastating effects of climate change. […] The dying forest becomes an emblem not only of ecological destruction but also of an urgent artistic vision.” – Ulrich Stein, from MFJ 81.

Oscar Ruiz Navia TIGERS CAN BE SEEN IN THE RAIN (2025, 15′)

“Ruiz’s embalmment of time is guided by memory as much as reality, the hauntological dimensions of public space informed by the sister who called him Papeto. Tigers Can Be Seen in the Rain slowly reveals its raison d’être as an act of custodial care, enshrining the memory of one human being as a node within a grander network of cultural history.” – Nick Kouhi

Open Group REPEAT AFTER ME (2022, 17′, with audience participation)

Open Group is a well-known Ukrainian artist collective founded in Lviv in 2012. The current permanent members are Yuriy Biley, Pavlo Kovach and Anton Varga. The version of Repeat After Me produced in 2024 was included in the MFJ 82 Close-Up screening last December; this version was produced in 2022. It is in several ways a unique work, making unusual, specific demands of its viewers and offering a unique cinematic experience in return.

“Men, women, old, middle aged, young. One by one they stare into the camera, identify themselves, and shout, yowl, grunt, hiss, roar the sounds of war. UUUUhHHhhTDDURRShHTTZHHTTZHT.
Machine gun. Explosion. Siren. Drone. Helicopter. Bomber. Plane.
WZWFFFBUBUUHH!WZWFFFBUBUUHH!
After producing the extended sound of war weapons or warning sirens, the performer issues the command
‘Повторюй за мною’ – ‘Repeat after me.’“
– Grahame Weinbren

Total running time: ca. 81 min.

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Close-Up Film Centre Screening: MFJ 83 "Round and Round"