Thursday 4 June 2015

LIVING IN LONDON

"Filmed among the ruins of The Crystal Palace Terraces, Transmitters is a playful and poetic ode to desire". 
Directed, shot and edited by Gary Mcquiggin of Welywyn Garden City, known for his work previously with The PheromoansThe Bomber Jackets and Deerhoof, the film recalls James Broughton's surrealist miniature The Pleasure Garden (1957).
Using a number of the same locations, the band appear, disappear and re-appear amongst and against the modern day remains of the ruins. Mcquiggin ups the 'pleasurable strangeness' of Broughton's original with increasingly splenetic rhythmic cuts and visual non-sequiturs. 
Transmitters continues the tradition of 'the park' as a place of self-reflection and respite from urban hullabaloo, as well as a space for serious transformative experience - as seen and heard in works by artists diverse as The UV Race (Life Park), The Kinks (Village Green Preservation Society), Gary Numan (Down In The Park) and Prince (Paisley Park).  
"Stylish, funny, charming - Transmitters may be a slight film but it is by no means an inconsiderable one" (reworked excerpt from the Pleasure Garden BFI DVD booklet, Jim Cook, 2009)


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