TATE MODERN - England - Richard Hamilton and The Great Ice Cream Robbery

On October 2nd, 2007, two films Directed by James Scott will be presented as a part of a programme of screenings presenting a showcase of the newly established online Arts on Film Archive (www.artsonfilm.org.uk). 

Supported by the AHRC and based at CREAM (Westminster University), the archive contains more than 465 documentary films produced by Arts Council  England between 1953- 1999. The archive is a unique record of British and international post-war art and of documentary film- making in the UK. Many titles in the archive contain rare material about individual artists; others titles offer definitive coverage of their subject. All the films will be available for viewing (full screen and high resolution) by researchers in the UK with access to an university library. The work was carried out with the collaboration of the Arts Council (and Rodney Wilson) and the NFTVA, where all the hard copies of the films, now restored, will be kept. 

To launce the archive and a book written by John Wyver's (on the arts, film, and TV in the UK since the 1950's), three events will be running at the TATE MODERN. The first night, 2nd October 2007, will be the launch night with Nicholas Serota (head of Tate) and Christopher Frayling (head of ACE).).

Richard Hamilton. Dir: James Scott

Made in collaboration with the artist Richard Hamilton, this documentary remains vivid and surprising nearly forty years on. Fragments of Hamilton’s works are integrated with newsreel images, movie trailers and much else. The artist offers an audio-only commentary, but this too is layered and disrupted. From this disorienting and often funny patchwork emerges a perceptual analysis that avoids conventional explanation yet reveals (some of) the ideas that shaped Hamilton's art.*

The Great Ice Cream Robbery, (Tate gallery).  Dir: James Scott

This rarely seen  film, projected on two screens. The film was made in collaboration with Claes Oldenburg who personally shot some of the footage on 8mm. The film portrays Oldenburg’s visit to London and follows him at work in setting up his major exhibition at the Tate as well as enjoying his stay in the capital and surveying some of it’s ‘monuments’.

*The screenings are followed by on-stage conversations with Richard Hamilton and James Scott, led by John Wyver