George Clark presents ‘Flowing Water Parallelism + Sunless Haven’ as part of the theme ‘Nowhere, Somewhere’ at Bangkok Experimental Film Festival.

Drawing on the concept of ‘Flowing Water Parallelism’ in Chinese poetry, the screening draws together works connected to ideas of water and liquid bodies. The programme features Clark’s film Sunless Haven, which uses the river Thames in London to explore entangled lives and histories, a new selection of 35mm reels from the ongoing Eyemo Rolls project and invited works by Barbara McCullough and Nguyen Thi Thanh Mai. Inspired by travelling projectionists, the 35mm rolls have been shot in camera since 2011 to think about worlds within worlds and explore various borders and transient zones. This screening moves from London to the Philippines, Hokkaido, to Hong Kong and includes rolls shot in Bangkok following the last Bangkok Experimental Film Festival in 2012.

Water Ritual #1: An Urban Rite of Purification Barbara McCullough, 1979 Barbara McCullough’s landmark work blends black feminism, experimental cinema and ritual. Working in collaboration with the performer Yolanda Vidati, Water Ritual explores the struggle to mark and create space within the blighted urban landscapes of southern Los Angeles.

Black landscape #6 Nguyen Thi Thanh Mai, 2018-20 Black landscapes #6 marks the locations of families who once lived on Tonlé Sap but that have been made to abandon their homes. The landscapes absent of humans stand in for the thousands of stories, memories and lives that are slowly fading away and into the mighty Mekong River.