Every Picture Tells a Story at Museum of Orange Heritage
Every Picture Tells a Story will screen at the Museum of Orange Heritage, Sloan’s House, Loughgall as part of the discussion of the art William Scott. The event is free to all and the accompanying discussion will be led by Cardwell Mcclure, William Scott’s nephew.
March 28th, 2019
7:30 PM
Museum of Orange Heritage, Sloan’s House, Loughgall
Hockney / Hamilton Expanded Graphics Continues at the Museum Ludwig
The exhibition Hockney / Hamilton Expanded Graphics opened successfully in January at the Museum Ludwig and has been gaining notice in the press . The exhibition contains two films by James Scott, Love’s Presentation and Richard Hamilton and additional audio recordings by Scott of David Hockney reading selected poems by C.P. Cavafy which are shown in conjunction with Hockney’s portfolio of prints Illustrations for Fourteen Poems by CP Cavafy. The exhibition will run through April 14, 2019.
Hockney/Hamilton Expanded Graphics
January 19 – April 14, 2019
New Acquisitions and Works from the Collection, with Two Films by James Scott
Museum Ludwig
Heinrich-Böll-Platz
50667 Köln
https://www.museum-ludwig.de
Nightcleaners and ’36 to '77 Box Set available!
Nightcleaners and ‘36 to ‘77 Box Set
The box set of Nightcleaners and ’36 to ’77 is now available online through several distributors.
For Europe and the UK, preferred vendors are:
Walther König (DVD Version)
Direct link not available, please search for Nightcleaners on König main search.
and
LUX (Blu-ray Version)
For US and other locations, orders may be placed through Amazon (DVD Version) but fulfillment is slow. You may also order from Walther König and LUX with increased shipping for quicker arrival.
To mark the first digital release of Nightcleaners (1975) and its companion film ’36 to ’77 (1978) a special box set has been produced containing the two films on disc, facsimiles of historical material, including newsheets of the women’s movement, four commissioned texts (by Sheila Rowbotham, Dan Kidner, Kodwo Eshun and Suhdev Sandhu), rare images, and contributions from the filmmakers. This publication is a collaborative effort of Raven Row, LUX, and Walther König.
Love's Presentation and Richard Hamilton at Museum Ludwig - January 19 - April 14, 2019
Article in the current edition of Monopol Magazine.
The Museum Ludwig will feature Scott’s films Love’s Presentation (1966) and Richard Hamilton (1969) in their upcoming exhibition, Hockney / Hamilton Expanded Graphics which runs from January 19 - April 14, 2019. The two films will be presented as installations within the exhibition. Additional audio of David Hockney reading selected poems by C.P. Cavafy, which were recorded by Scott during the process of filming Love’s Presentation, will be paired with David Hockney’s portfolio of prints Illustrations for Fourteen Poems by CP Cavafy for the first time.
The Museum Ludwig will also be presenting both Love’s Presentation and Richard Hamilton theatrically on February 5th. The following evening they will also present Nightcleaners (1974) by the Berwick Street Collective (Marc Karlin , Mary Kelly, James Scott and Humphry Trevelyan ). James Scott will be in attendance for both screenings.
Nightcleaners and ’36 to '77 book and DVD launch
I am pleased to announce the book and DVD launch of Nightcleaners and ’36 to ’77 at Raven Row on Saturday, November 17th. I, James Scott, will be in attendance along with other members of the Berwick Street Film Collective and current activists.
To mark the first digital release of Nightcleaners (1975) and its companion film ’36 to ’77 (1978) a special box set has been produced containing the two films on disc, facsimiles of historical material, including newsheets of the women’s movement, four commissioned texts (by Sheila Rowbotham, Dan Kidner, Kodwo Eshun and Suhdev Sandhu), rare images, and contributions from the filmmakers. This publication is a collaborative effort of Raven Row, LUX, and Walther König.
Currently, this will be available for order through Amazon and Walther König.
Little Britain exhibition opening at the Vita Art Center
We are happy to announce the upcoming exhibition Little Britain which opens on July 6th, 6 - 9 p.m. The group exhibition features 15 artists from Britain now residing in the larger Los Angeles area, and includes two paintings by James Scott.
As the exhibition continues, there will be a screening of Scott's films on Sunday July 22nd, from 4-6 pm. James Scott will be present for the screening and discussion.
Vita Art Center
28 West Main Street,Ventura, 93001Opening Reception: Friday, July 6, 6 - 9PM
Screening on July 22nd, 4 - 6 pm
'36 to '77 - Newly Remastered Version
'36 to '77
Screening of Newly Remastered Version
Thursday, July 5th, 2018 20:30
BFI Southbank Theatre
Belvedere Rd, South Bank, London SE1 8XT, UK
We are pleased to announce an exciting upcoming event at the BFI Southbank Theatre in London. This unique screening celebrates the newly remastered version of the film '36 to '77, a portrait of Myrtle Wardally, a cleaner involved in the Nightcleaners’ strike in the summer of 1973, as she reflects on her life before the strike and the impact that it made on her after. The screening is in anticipation of the fall DVD and Blu-ray launch by Raven Row and the publication of a new book of essays and source documents covering the two films.
Produced by the Berwick Street Film Collective (a collaboration of Marc Karlin, John Sanders, James Scott, Humphry Trevelyan), the title ‘36 to '77 reflects the year of birth of Myrtle Wardally, and the year in which the portrait was made.
James Scott together with Humphry Trevelyan and Jon Sanders will be present at the screening on July 5th with moderator Laura Mulvey.
Bird and Pear (2012) at Annmarie Sculpture Garden & Arts Center
Scott's 2012 painting Bird and Pear can be viewed this summer at the Annmarie Sculpture Garden & Arts Center in Dowell, Maryland. This work is part of the exhibition Of a Feather: Birds in Art that focuses on "the vibrant spirit of aviary life, portraying beauty, diversity and detail of the birds that fill our skies."
The exhibit runs from May 25 – August 26, 2018.
Dépayser March 18 - April 18 at the Alliance Française de Pasadena
James Scott's painting Day and Night included in Dépayser at the Alliance Française de Pasadena.
About the exhibition:
"As part of the International Month of the Francophonie, the Alliance Française de Pasadena is pleased to present Dépayser, a group exhibition featureing 17 artists who interpreted the French word "Dépayser" through drawing, painting, sculpture, photography and mixed media."
To read the compete exhibition statement, click here.
JULEE CRUISE featured on Velvet Blue EP out now!
JULEE CRUISE: Kinda like Doris Day from Hell (Oil on canvas, 1991)
featured as cover art for Velvet Blue's new EP!
Buy the CD here !
GREAT SCOTT: Review in Sight & Sound!
Transcription of full review in Sight & Sound
In a body of work made about and in collaboration with artists, James Scott hinted at the British New Wave that never was
EVERY PICTURE TELLS A STORY:
THE ART FILMS OF JAMES SCOTT
James Scott; UK 1966-84; BFI Region 0 DVD; Certificate 15; 263 minutes; 137:1. Features: audio interviews with the director; booklet with production documents and essays by William Fowler, John Wyver, James Scott and Richard White.
Reviewed by Henry K. Miller in Sight & Sound, BFI October issue
In his 1992 essay ‘L’éternel retour’, Peter Wollen wrote that there was no British equivalent of the nouvelle vague in the late 1950s and 1960s; the British Pop artists and critics who were fascinated by American mass culture never put their fascination on screen, so that “Godard’s films were the best possible substitutes for their missing English counterparts”. Fragments of that missing New Wave remain, however, and James Scott’s films about the leading Pop artists David Hockey, R.B. Kitaj, and Richard Hamilton are shining examples. Far from being straightforward documentaries, they were made in collaboration with the artists and amount to artworks in their own right; Scott had been a student at the Slade during Pop art’s heyday.
Love’s Presentation (1966) follows Hockney as he prepares illustrations for a book of love poems by C.P. Cavafy, a major influence. Still in his twenties, Hockney was a Swinging London celebrity, recently included in David Bailey’s Box of Pin-Ups alongside Jean Shrimpton and Michael Caine. To get away from these associations, Scott’s film, which Hockney narrates, focuses on the craft of etching and aquatinting, which he performs in his Notting Hill flat, washing off the acid in the shower and poisoning himself with the fumes. At the end of the film, Hockney reads one of the poems over the finished images, which culminate in two men sharing a bed, contentedly looking out at the reader – a passage which the film’s distributor, the British Council, censored.
By contrast, R.B. Kitaj (1967) forgoes craft for ideas, expounding in an interview, with confusing results, through one of Kitaj’s images, a modified page for a 1930s issue of Life magazine featuring potted biographies of the modernist masters – Matisse, Picasso, Mondrian – stands out as both a prime instant of early postmodernism and a neatly self-reflexive moment.
Richard Hamilton (1969) is a masterpiece, simultaneously distilling, embodying and analyzing the Pop aesthetic of which Hamilton was a major progenitor. Reyner Banham defined Pop art as “unique works of hand-made fine art deriving their iconography and composition from mass-produced pop products such as cornflakes packs and US cars”; Scott’s film juxtaposes the two, intercutting Hamilton’s hand-made images with the adverts, pin-ups, and skylines that inspired it. In one sequence Scott breaks down a scene from Douglas Sirk;s noir Shockproof (1949) – a source for Hamilton’s Interor I and Interior II (1964) – to illustrate how for the European Pop artists much of the meaning of Hollywood films lay in the décor, not the plot. It was filmed in 1967, not coincidentally the year Godard abandoned commercial cinema, just as Pop was at the point of exhaustion.
‘Richard Hamilton is a masterpiece, simultaneously distilling, embodying and analyzing the Pop aesthetic’
The main feature, Every Picture Tells a Story (1984), made for Channel 4, is a collaboration with an artist of an altogether more intimate kind: his father, the painter William Scott. Largely a conventional biopic, with occasional flash-cuts to his future works and brief clips from interviews functioning as a voiceover, the film is an unusually sensitive portrait of the elder Scott’s childhood and adolescence in Scotland and Northern Ireland, particularly affecting in its depiction of William’s relationship with his own father, a sign-painter whose encouragement of his son stems in part from his frustration with his circumstances – a frustration more than shared by the boy’s mother.
The business of sign-painting provides a surprising echo (or foreshadowing) of the Pop films, but in general Every Picture Tells a Story evokes a less image-saturated time and place. Whereas Kitaj could discover modernists in a mass-circulation magazine, William Scott owed his exposure to what were revolutionary pictures and ideas to the happenstance that a young RCA graduate, Kathleen Bridle (played by Natasha Richardson, making her debut), was living in Enniskillen and gave him lessons. At the films end, as his younger self arrives in the London of 1931, “the most important spot in the whole world”, the septuagenarian Scott recalls that even the Royal Academy of Arts was “untouched” by modernism “and all the other isms”. It is a great loss to British cinema that this first entry in a planned trilogy did not have the sequels it deserved.
The titles comes from a conversation with Kathleen – “They are painted to be looked at, not talked about,” a proposition that Scott’s art films have all tested. Chance, History, Art... (1980) and The Great Ice Cream Robbery (1971), a double-screen film (one screen on each DVD) made with and about Claes Oldenberg, rather confirm it; but the extras relating to the latter open on to another side of Scott’s very varied career, revealing that during post-production he was already working with the Berwick Street Collective on The Nightcleaners (1975), described by Claire Johnston as “the most important political film ever to have been made in this country”. It would make a fine follow-up to this exemplary package.
See the original PDF here !
Buy the DVD here !
Review on The Arts Desk of the new DVD, Every Picture Tells a Story !
Review at theartsdesk.com
Read the full review by clicking here !
The new DVD/Blu-ray collection of James Scott's films, Every Picture Tells a Story (1984), Love's Presentation (1966), R.B. Kitaj (1967), Richard Hamilton (1969), The Great Ice Cream Robbery (1970), and Chance, History, Art... (1980).
"The four films concentrating on particular artists have a great deal to offer."
"Scott describes his films about living artists as collaborations."
-Marina Vaizey
Buy the DVD at a limited-time discount by clicking here !
Every Picture Tells A Story #1 at BFI Shop !
James Scott's new DVD/Blu-ray release, Every Picture Tells a Story, in the BFI Shop Top 10!
Buy the DVD at limited-time discount by clicking HERE !
Check out the full list by clicking HERE !
This new release features Scott's 1984 feature film, Every Picture Tells a Story (featuring Natasha Richardson as William's teacher), as well as his films on artists: Love's Presentation 1966 (David Hockney), R.B. Kitaj 1967, Richard Hamilton 1969, The Great Ice Cream Robbery 1970 (Claes Oldenburg and Hannah Wilke), and Chance, History, Art... 1980 (a look back at surrealism through contemporary artists).
NEXT WEEK AT THE BFI: Every Picture Tells a Story & Richard Hamilton
Wednesday, August 16th, 2017 20:40
Every Picture Tells a Story (1984)
Richard Hamilton (1969)
followed by a Q&A with James Scott
BFI Southbank Theatre
Belvedere Rd, Lambeth, London SE1 8XX, UK
+44 20 3879 9555
James Scott presents Every Picture Tells a Story (1984) and Richard Hamilton (1969) in conjunction with the BFI release of a new Blu-Ray/DVD collection of Scott's work. The multi-disc survey contains new HD digital scans of Scott's feature-length film, Every Picture Tells a Story, as well as his films on artists (1966-1980).
For more information and to purchase tickets: click here !
To pre-order the DVD collection at a reduced price: click here !
Every Picture Tells a Story DVDs NOW AVAILABLE for PRE-ORDER !
We are pleased to announce the new Blu-Ray/DVD release of Every Picture Tells a Story (1984), along with the complete set of James' films on artists: Love's Presentation 1966 (David Hockney), R.B. Kitaj 1967, Richard Hamilton 1969, The Great Ice Cream Robbery 1970 (Claes Oldenburg and Hannah Wilke), and Chance, History, Art... 1980 (a look back at surrealism through contemporary artists).
Copies of the DVD will be available for purchase at the celebratory BFI screening (August 16th), and the official public release date of the set will be August 28, 2017.
Purchase online here !
Buy Tickets for Every Picture Tells a Story at the BFI
Wednesday, August 16th, 2017 20:40
Every Picture Tells a Story (1983)
Richard Hamilton (1969)
BFI Southbank Theater
Belvedere Rd, Lambeth, London SE1 8XX, UK
+44 20 3879 9555
We are pleased to announce an exciting upcoming screening at the BFI Southbank Theater in London. On August 16th, the BFI will present Every Picture Tells a Story (1984) and Richard Hamilton (1969), followed by a Q&A with James Scott. The screening celebrates the new Blu-Ray/DVD release of Every Picture Tells a Story, along with the complete set of James' films on artists. This set will include a two-disc version of The Great Ice Cream Robbery (on Claes Oldenburg’s visit to London in 1970). The Great Ice Cream Robbery can now be played side-by-side as a dual-projection with separate soundtracks. This conforms to how it was originally presented. Copies of the DVD will be available for purchase at the screening, and the official public release date of the set will be August 28, 2017.
Purchase tickets here !
Save the date: James Scott at the BFI Southbank Theater
Still from Every Picture Tells a Story, 1983
We are pleased to announce an exciting upcoming screening at the BFI Southbank Theater in London. On August 16th, the BFI will host a screening of Every Picture Tells a Story and Richard Hamilton, followed by a Q&A with James Scott. The screening celebrates a new release of Every Picture Tells a Story on Blu-Ray/DVD. The Blu-Ray/DVD will also included a newly remastered series of James' films on artists.
Wednesday, August 16th, 2017
Every Picture Tells a Story (1983)
Richard Hamilton (1969)
BFI Southbank Theater
Belvedere Rd, Lambeth, London SE1 8XX, UK
+44 20 3879 9555
January and February 2017 - Q&As
In January and February 2017, James traveled to attend and give talks at three screenings. The first took place at the Lancaster Museum of Art in Lancaster, California. James introduced his film, Love's Presentation, and participated in a Q&A after the film.
In February, James travelled to Kunstmuseum Woldsburf in Wolfsburg, Germany to present his film Richard Hamilton. You can watch his introduction and Q&A with curator Daniel Kothenshulte in the video below.
James' last stop was at Eton College, where he presented his film Every Picture Tells A Story, which was screened in conjunction with an exhibition of William Scott's work.
"R.B. Kitaj" screening at the Museo Picasso - Málaga, Spain
Still from R.B. Kitaj, 1967
On April 25th, "Bacon, Freud and the School of London" opens at the Museo Picasso in Málaga, Spain.
The show explores the work of Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud between the postwar period and the late twentieth century in London. The exhibition includes works by Michael Andrews, Frank Auerbach, David Bomberg, William Coldstream, R. B Kitaj, Leon Kossoff, Paula Rego and Euan Uglow.
James Scott's 1967 film, R.B. Kitaj, will be screening as part of the exhibition. The film, made in close collaboration with Kitaj, showcases his literary and political sensibilities and provides insight into a complex creative mind.
NEWS
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