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Silent Partner
Domestic interiors are interrogated by a restless camera in this radical, anti-narrative film.
Overview
With Silent Partner, filmmaker Peter Gidal revisits the familiar territory of domestic interiors, inhabited spaces interrogated by a restless camera. The film refuses a clear ordering of space, the first rule of fictional and documentary cinema – questioning the legibility of the cinematographic image. Anti-narrative, against representation, militant and uncompromising, and yet despite itself strangely compelling.
Founded in 1966, the London Film-Makers’ Co-operative started life at Better Books, a counter-culture bookshop on Charing Cross Road, where a group led by poet Bob Cobbing and filmmakers Stephen Dwoskin and Jeff Keen met to screen films. Initially inspired by the activities of the New American Cinema Group in New York, the London Co-op grew into a pioneering organisation that incorporated a film workshop, cinema space and distribution office. During its four-decade history, the Co-op played a crucial role in establishing film as an art form in the UK and participated in a vibrant international film scene. This BFI Player collection brings together new scans of films distributed by and/or produced at the London Co-op.
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