Calendar Poems

The aims and objectives of ‘Calendar Poems’ (2005) were to produce a film that would condense forty years of the film-makers lives, and would include archival evidence, photographs, films and text. This material would then be explored in the present through commentary questioning the role of the photographer/cinematographer and the desire to capture, retain and revisit images.

Through experimentation with the arrangement of images in the timeline, the concept that photographs and moving images are perceived and experienced very differently was tested. Arguably, single still images with duration suggested the illusion of spatial depth, a visual depth that appeared to exist behind the surface of the photograph, in turn encouraging the viewer to analyse the content presented. By contrast, in viewing a moving image, the anticipation of change leads to a focus not on spatial depth but on movement, continuity and surface design. The objectives of the film’s investigation were to engage with this contrast, reconciling these temporal discontinuities by exploring and developing new structures that would enable moving images to contain the appearance of recession and photographs to be experienced as sequential images containing movement. Through research, a structure, template and movement was developed whereby both sets of images co-existed, their particular attributes shared and exchanged.