Time - Retrograde

David Ellis

David Ellis/FamilyCat Productions

United States

Girona Film Festival, Girona, Spain - Official Selection Experimental Art Films
Girona
Spain
September 28, 2017
Premiere in Spain
PIFF Prague Independent Film Festival - Best Experimental Film
Prague
Czech Republic
August 3, 2017
Czech Republic Premiere
Best Experimental Film
VIFF Vienna Independent Film Festival - Official Selection
Vienna
Austria
July 3, 2017
World and European Premiere

en

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David Ellis
Director
Long Departure, NO SIGNAL, UHF, XdubX,www.filmfreeway/projects
David Ellis/FamilyCat Productions
Producer
Long Departure, NO SIGNAL,UHF,XdubX,www.filmfreeway.com/projects

Time - Retrograde - Runtime: 00:04:09 Director: David Ellis (USA).
FamilyCat Productions - 2017

Another fascinating, almost hypnotic, exploration of sound and moving image by award winning filmmaker David Ellis, presenting cinema as pure poetic art. Created in the experimental spirit of early 20th c. avant-garde filmmaking, Time - Retrograde voyages into a layered surreal abstract digital realm where forward and reverse time motion intersect as sound and moving images slip past and through one another.

Filmed in Lyon, France with ambient field recording audio mix by David Ellis.
Contact: [email protected]

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DAVID ELLIS - FamilyCat Productions
CONTACT: [email protected]

SELECTED SCREENINGS:
2017 - Girona Independent Film Festival, Girona, Spain - Official Selection - Time-Retrograde
2017 - VIFF Vienna Independent Film Festival, Vienna, Austria - Official Selections -Time-Retrograde( World Premiere) & Long Departure
2017 - SENE Film, Music & Art Festival - Providence, RI, USA - Official Selection - Long Departure
2017 - US Super8 Film & Digital Video Festival, Rutgers University - Long Departure - Winner Best Film
2016 - PIFF Prague Independent Film Festival, Prague, CZ - NO SIGNAL - Winner Best Experimental Short
2016 - Boston Short Film Festival, Boston, MA - Long Departure - Winner Best Experimental Short
2016 - Dallas VideoFest, Dallas, TX - Long Departure - Official Selection
2016 - VIDEOMEDEJA, Novi Sad, Serbia - Long Departure - Official Selection
2016 - Cannes Short Film Festival, Nice, France - NO SIGNAL - Official Selection
2016 - Blow-Up Arthouse Film Festival, Chicago - UHF - Official Selection
2016 - Experimental Superstars Film Festival, Novi Sad,Serbia - XdubX - Official Selection
2016 - SENE Film Music & Art Festival, Providence,RI,USA - Audience Award - NO SIGNAL
2016 - US Super 8 Film & Video Festival, Rutgers University - Honorable Mention - NO SIGNAL
2016 - Kinofilm - Manchester International Film Festival, Manchester, UK - Official Selection - XdubX
2015 - 401 Film Festival, Providence, RI - USA - Official Selection - UHF
2015 - New Jersey International Film Festival, Rutgers University, USA - Honorable Mention - U H F
2015 - Festival Parachute Light Zero Act II, Les Nautes, Paris, France - Official Selection - U H F
2015 - HANGAR Centre de Producció, Barcelona,Spain - Solo screening
2014 - LIVEMEDIA- Pulsos en la Iconosfera, Webcast & interview - Palabras Perdidas - Barcelona, SP
2014 - HANGAR Centre de Producció, Barcelona, Spain - Awarded 3 month filmmaker residency.
2014 - VIDEOFORMES 29th Digital Arts International Festival,Clermont-Ferrand,FR - Selection - U H F
2013 - RhodyWood Indie Film Makers, Brooklyn Coffee House, Providence, RI - Selected shorts.
2012 - Gallery Eva, Provincetown, MA. USA. Screening - Experimental Shorts
2012 - Indie Fest, La Jolla, CA.USA. Award of Merit - Official Selection - FLASH-FILMS
2012 - Atlanta Shorts Fest, Atlanta GA. USA. Official Selection - FLASH-FILMS
2012 - Oak Cliff Film Festival, Dallas TX. Official Selection - FLASH-FILMS
2011 - Provincetown International Film Festival,Provincetown,MA.USA Official Selection - NEON
2010 - BAC-11 Festival, Barcelona, Spain. Official selection - NEON
2010 - DNA Gallery, Provincetown, MA. USA. Screening - FLASH-FILMS

DAVID ELLIS
Exploring a new digital avant-garde.

Over the last 15 years, award winning director David Ellis has emerged notably at the forefront of a new wave of experimental film making. With a fiercely original, distinctive and visionary style of movie making, his works are a personal cinema where traditional storytelling is redefined through the absence of dialogue or defined narrative. In this non-traditional storytelling portrayal, the interplay of image, sound and atmosphere leaves the viewer to create their own narrative in a cinema created as pure visual poetry without the burden of narrative or the limitation of language, intended to be responded to as pure art of moving image and sound. In his exploratory approach to film making, moving pictures no longer need to “make sense” as viewers form their own stories.

As an experimental filmmaker, his is deeply influenced by Zen Buddhism and by the style & spirit of early 20th century experimental avant-garde films by artists such as Fernand Leger, Man Ray,Viking Eggleling, Hans Richter, Walter Ruttman and others. His recent works explore influences from cubism, and Russian Constructivist and Suprematist works by such artists as Alexander Rodchenko, Malevich and Lyubov Popova, by employing the design elements as a pure graphic art form without the soviet-era propaganda.. While avant-garde in the same spirit as those early film pioneers, the work is non-narrative in the traditional sense, exploring the moving image, and the inter-dependency of the movement, timing, structure and evolution of the image on the screen with similar qualities in the sound that accompanies it.These works utilize this relationship of sound and image where sound is not simply a “cue” to “ready” the audience’s responses to the film. The audio is no longer background, nor there simply to fill an otherwise empty space around the visuals, but is on an equal trajectory with the image as an essential component, at times exchanging places with the image, where the image becomes an accompaniment to the sound.
Director Statement

In the spirit of the avant-garde, David Ellis creates films that are on the margin of new independent filmmaking as intensely personal, minimally narrative short experimental works that fearlessly challenge accepted cinematic structure and established “culture industry” norms.
It is an exploratory approach to filmmaking intended to be viewed as pure art of the moving image, where the work is viewed as a segment pulled from the time continuum, freeing the viewer as it is watched without the burden of narrative. Viewers can leave themselves behind and experience the moment to moment connection with the images moving before them. The film is created with the intention of being responded to rather than imposing a strict narrative.
Works examine the idea of one “landscape” imposed upon another, whether audio or visual, and how the addition of one re-defines or re-enforces the other. They explore viewing as contemplation, in a zen sense ,with no answers provided and no neat and tidy start-development-finish as cinema usually provides. Segments of the ordinary “every day” are pulled from the continuum of life’s unified flow of images. The film narrative is minimized to a bare bones “structure” where the viewer is able to construct a narrative based on their own imagination, personal experiences or associations made with the image. The only true narrative is life as a continuum. However, few of us think of our lives as we live them as a narrative.The filmmaker’s experience creating the film and the viewer’s experience viewing it are brief instants of that continuum, and as such, are the narrative.I feel that I am drawn to filmmakers who see, feel, understand and capture “essence” rather than a “masterful depiction” and whose films are distinguished by an uncompromising devotion to personal experimental cinema and low or no budget avant-garde independent filmmaking.