A film by Paul Melia
This 17-minute documentary-film initiates us with a planned film called No Arawak 1-24 to be made by a Geoffrey Fallthuis. The film opens with a narrator (Milo Edwards) telling us: "To commemorate the 25th anniversary of its foundation, The Institute of Reclamation and Restoration has commissioned 10 artists to produce original art work. The IRR does not require artists to produce work which features or makes reference of the Institute, although we have chosen subjects who we feel are sympathetic to our charter. We do, however, require the chosen artists to participate in a documentary on their work". Next we see a women typing on a computer in an office of the IRR and answering the phone with: "Not today, thank you". Echoing a directive of the VUE Commission of The Falls, the narrator tells us that, "when it seems necessary or desirable, the Institute offers its subjects ten possible pseudonymous identities". The subject of this documentary chose 'Geoffrey Fallthuis: male, 25-30, slim, athletic, and no longer working with painting or sculpture'. In response to the IRR commission, Geoffrey Fallthuis made a short film called 'No Arawak 1-24'. This film belongs to his ongoing 'No Arawak' series, one in which he is concerned to document his everyday existence. We are shown some of Fallthuis' works in his 'No Arawak' series, one is a work based on the contents of his wastebasket - 'No Arawak Rubbish; 'No Arawak Tangerine' records the way Fallthuis peeled his tangerines one Boxing day; 'No Arawak 1-31' is based on the times at which Geoffrey Fallthuis went to bed between 13 September and 13 October four years ago; and there's 'No Arawak Gateposts', which shows the gateposts to the first 24 houses of Fallthuis' street and their pattern of change over 100 years. Fallthuis eventually decides to structure his film based on a grid 24 rows deep by 24 columns wide, with each cell representing a single second of film. Amongst Fallthuis' reasons for using the number 24 are the number 24 is the number of the house in which he resides, and therefore establishes a sense of place. 24 is also the number of hours in a day, and also establishes a sense of time. Fallthuis believed this emphasis on place and time would serve as a metaphor for the ways in which his everyday actions are, to a large extent, determined by his place in both history and society. And there are 24 frames per second in dominant cinema.
Other characters are introduced - a prominent one being Georges Ease, who argued that everyday life should not be conflated with the unusual or unfamiliar moments or events; rather it is what remains once all these have been discarded: the banal, the obvious, the common, the ordinary - the habitual background noise of life. However, Ease also argued, "The difficulty in looking critically at what is utterly ordinary lies in the fact that its very ordinariness makes it invisible".
There are sprinkles of humour in the film, notable instances include a section discussing using the film as a timer and another showing an optician's receipt. One of the particular things I liked about the film was the inclusion of the identity cards (a la VUE Commission) which feature two characters from books, and photos and information of real people under a pseudonymous name, including Brother Juniper (a character in Thornton Wilder's book The Bridge of San Luis Rey), Mr De Selby (a character in some of Flann O' Brien's books), Georges Ease is author Georges Perec, Leasting Fallvo is filmmaker Peter Greenaway, Linda Roskrauss is author Rosalind Krauss, Chester Ive (anagram of) is musician Steve Reich, and film critic Ron Zlemmas (anagram of Zorns Lemma) is avant-garde filmmaker Hollis Frampton. I also liked the Eraserheadesque sound prior to text being shown. It helps to watch this introductory film first and then immediately watch its accompanying piece, No Arawak 1-24. Yes, the influence of Greenaway's The Falls and Vertical Features Remake, and Frampton's Zorns Lemma is obvious, but this and No Arawak 1-24 stand together quite capably. They are very entertaining and it was a pleasure to watch them. Highly recommended.
No Arawak 1-24 (2003)
A film by Geoffrey Fallthuis
This is the actual film made by Geoffrey Fallthuis as introduced in Fallthuis' Progress. It is a examination of structural organisation, displaying images of numbers in Manchester City Centre, interspersed with images of the activities of Geoffrey Fallthuis and appliances in his home - from him sleeping in bed during the night, to waking up and having a shower, opening the curtains, preparing breakfast, turning on the computer, having a smoke, as well as other chores. All this is structured in a 24 x 24 grid, with each shot on screen for exactly one second. That's 576 shots in the film. The number shots gradually reduce until we see all the shots in Fallthuis' home. One could describe it as sort of an amalgamation between Vertical Features Remake and Zorns Lemma. It is very well made and put together. I enjoyed looking at the various numbers in Manchester (my local city), which are comprised of numbers on such objects as doors, signs, posters, roads, and car registration-plates. You really do feel the sense of progression as you're watching it. Excellent.
"Far more important than an incidental examination of the structuring and organisation of everyday life... it demonstrates that the crisis of stability may not be solved by the rigid documentation of even a single life." - Ron Zlemmas
If you would like to order these films or other films distributed by the IRR,
E-mail noarawak@btopenworld.com
