PureScreen 17: The Sun Always Shines On The Righteous

About

PureScreen 17 draws together a selection of new international work, from the open submission call, to examine the various ways that artists engage with ideas and techniques of documentary, alongside the relationships between sound and image, fact and fiction. This curated programme highlights the use of documentary film-making styles as a form of social commentary, and as a way to explore aspects of the everyday and use of narrative. Invented at the end of the nineteenth century, cinema was inevitably shaped by industrial modernity's epistemological demand for empiricism and rational, scientific evidence. Cinema has continued to be regarded in various ways as a powerful visual technology for documenting the world, for capturing the real. This programme investigates complexities of the documentary idea across contemporary artists experimental film and video practice. Aspects of popular culture and politics are explored in this programme, with subject matter including; a demolition derby, a made-to-measure clothing business, taxi drivers, Jeffrey Dahmer, a failed pop career and plastic surgery; whilst locations range from Barrow-in-Furness to Bosnia to China, Iceland, Sweden and the USA. A linear narrative is fundamental to most mainstream filmmaking, whether fiction or documentary. As witnessed here, artists are inclined to break this rule, frustrating expectations and denying resolution. Refreshments provided. Running time 89 min 41 sec