Beware...
'GANGRENE'
CINEMA CYANIDE
Cinema Cyanide is a sound project by experimental filmmakers Rouzbeh Rashidi, Dean Kavanagh and Maximilian Le Cain.
The creation of often darkly intense soundscapes has always been an important element of their films. Cinema Cyanide now brings full focus to their sonic explorations.
Listen to the album GANGRENE
EFS Technical Series:
Focus on HISTORY OF WATER
"EFS Technical Series" focuses purely on the technical sides of experimental filmmaking and explains the different approaches that the filmmakers have taken in order to achieve a specific result in their film/video."
The third article is on 'History of Water' (2012) by Dean Kavanagh
EFS Screening
Tuesday March 26th '13
ORMSTON HOUSE 9-10 Patrick Street, Limerick, Ireland
ADMISSION FREE
List of the films:
1. Away by Michael Higgins 5mins 2011 Ireland.
2. The Gardener by Michael Higgins 4mins 2010 Ireland.
3. Hotel by Michael Higgins 1min 2010 Ireland.
4. Painting by Michael Higgins 5mins 2011 Ireland.
5. Horses by Esperanza Collado 2mins 2011 Spain.
6. Light From An Old Town by Dean Kavanagh 17mins 2011 Ireland.
7. Homo Sapiens Project (29) by Rouzbeh Rashidi 12mins 2011 Ireland.
8. Based On Decay by Jason Marsh 14mins 2012 U.K.
9. Background by Maximilian Le Cain 20mins 2011 Spain and Ireland.
10. Dirt by Vicky Langan & Maximilian Le Cain 12mins 2012 Ireland.
Total: 92mins
Rouzbeh Rashidi and Maximilian Le Cain will be attending and be available for discussion with the audience afterwards.
For more information on Experimental Film Society: HERE
For an interview with Rashidi discussing EFS in depth: HERE
More info on Ormston House
'A Harbour Town'
TBC 2013
Fundit Campaign Successful
A sincere thank you to all of the funders who donated and
supported my project ‘A Harbour Town’,
which has now been successfully funded
at €2095.
Thanks to:
Everyone who supported & shared the campaign page on
their FB/Twitter/website
And to the funders:
Mike Nedved, Maximilian Le Cain, Andrew Ennis, Rouzbeh
Rashidi, Alan Lambert, Jason Marsh, Donal Foreman, Maciek Klich, Maximilian
Ramsbottom, Michael Higgins, Martin Gallagher, Eleen Murphy , My Sjögren Blücher
, Farzad Fahim, Seamus Hegarty, Orla McNelis, Darragh Sinnott, Christopher O’Neill
, Ricardo Deakin, Leo Kennedy, Vicky
Langan, Rita Skersyte, Atoosa Pour Hosseini, Suri Grennel, Alice Kavanagh, Patrick
Donnelly, Jit Phokaew, John Corcoran, Mick O’Shea, Katell Paillard, Matthew
Moynihan, Kevin Fisher, John Curran, Shane Vernon, Johnny Allen
And the 3 funders who are anonymous.
A special thanks to Colin & the Harbour Bar Bray, Patrick James Grabolle & the audience @ KinoTeka
The film will be made
in association with Experimental Film Society.
A HARBOUR TOWN - Cast Update -
Filmmaker & Cinephile Rouzbeh Rashidi (website) will also feature in 'A Harbour Town'.
Dean Kavanagh has featured in several of Rashidi's short films and feature films (Only Human, 2009 | Bipedality, 2010).
While Rashidi has also appeared in the short films 'F' (2008) and '3Over4' (2008) by Kavanagh.
(above image from '3Over4', 2008)
FUND-IT HERE!
SUPPORT 'A HARBOUR TOWN'
- the new feature film by Dean Kavanagh
Easter Film Group
You can also find updates for new works on the Easter Film Group blog.
Please support 'A HARBOUR TOWN' the new feature film by Dean Kavanagh
HISTORY OF WATER - Review by Cinephile & Critic Jit Phokaew
"HISTORY OF WATER is a kind of films I feel reluctant to write about, because it is extremely poetic and obviously beyond my ability to describe it. To describe this film makes me feel as if I dare to describe the painting SNOWSTORM (1842) by J.M.W. Turner. How can one describe things like that or the exact feelings caused by things like that? The more I write about this kind of poetic films, the more I feel what I write stray too far from the films. So readers should beware that what I write cannot fully represent the feelings I have for this film. What I wrote may not be exactly about the film, but about my re-imagination of the film. This kind of films always makes me feel something strong, powerful, and indescribable.
Support This Project HERE
New Work screened at 'Plugd Records'
'Areas of Sympathy' by LeCain (above)
This programme of contemporary experimental film features new work by Irish-based members of
25 January at 21:30
Plugd Records Triskel Art Centre in Cork
Experimental Film Society supports and promotes works by a dozen filmmakers scattered across the globe, whose films are distinguished by an uncompromising devotion to personal, experimental cinema.
It was founded and is run by Dublin-based Iranian filmmaker Rouzbeh Rashidi.
This programme is curated by Maximilian Le Cain:
WÖLFLINGE 12/4/’12 (Vicky Langan & Maximilian Le Cain, 7 mins, 2012)
Since 2010, Cork-based sound/performance artist Vicky Langan (Wölflinge) and experimental filmmaker Maximilian Le Cain have been working together in a creative audio-visual partnership built on the strikingly fitting match between Langan’s magnetic, often troublingly intense presence as a performer and Le Cain’s distinctively jarring, disruptive visual rhythms. Wölflinge 12/4/’12 is the record of a typically visceral performance Langan gave at Triskel Christchurch last year.
SOUND FROM THE VALLEY FLOOR (Dean Kavanagh, 25 mins, 2012)
Dean Kavanagh is an independent avant-garde filmmaker based in Wicklow. He favours 'visual stories' which radically reduce conventional narrative elements. These haunting, visually hypnotic works focus on private rituals and mysterious journeys to or from ‘home', to or from memory. Shot mainly in Cork, Sound From the Valley Floor introduces a strain of bizarre humour into Kavanagh’s poetic evocation of displacement.
AREAS OF SYMPATHY (Maximilian Le Cain, 40 mins, 2013)
Areas of Sympathy, Le Cain’s latest solo work, is a visually raw collage of home movies, performance documentation and found footage that knits together into a frustrating but highly exhilarating series of abandoned science fiction / thriller narratives without beginning or end. The memory of an old movie partially watched late at night while more than half asleep…
HOMO SAPIENS PROJECT (139) (Rouzbeh Rashidi, 16 mins, 2013)
The prolific and influential Rouzbeh Rashidi has been working on the ongoing Homo Sapiens Project since 2011. This series of short films is a laboratory for experimenting with cinematic forms. A ‘notebook’, sometimes an oblique ‘diary’, the films produced range from cryptic, often darkly surreal film diaries to impressionistic portraits of places and people, from found footage séances to semi-documentary monologues. Formally, they encompass everything from highly composed and distantly framed meditations to frenetically flickering plunges into the textural substance of moving images. HSP 139 was made as a response to Le Cain’s Areas of Sympathy.
Call for Funding
Link below to Film Ireland article
HERE
New Project Update
Leon Kavanagh has performed in many of Dean Kavanagh's films since 2008,
he will have a prominent role in 'A Harbour Town'.
Fund This Project HERE
Leon Kavanagh on location in Co. Wicklow
Fund this project HEREA New Feature Film Project
'Senses of Cinema' World Poll 2012
"History of Water" and short film "Light From An Old Town"
have been listed in 'Senses of Cinema' 2012 WORLD POLL
- in a list of favourite films from the Irish experimental scene composed by filmmaker and critic Maximilian Le Cain.
Great works by other Experimental Film Society colleagues
Rouzbeh Rashidi, Michael Higgins and Esperanza Collado have also been listed.
Link to Lists
Stills from location (History of Water, 2012)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dean Kavanagh starred in two of Rouzbeh Rashidi's early feature films
"Only Human" (2009) and "Bipedality" (2010).
11 of Rashidi's zero-budget feature films are available for viewing.
(Unlisted: Anyone with the link can view + HD viewing is recommended)
Experimental Film Society
Experimental Film Society is an independent, not-for-profit entity specialising in experimental, independent and no/low budget filmmaking. It was founded in 2000 in Tehran, Iran. Its aim is to produce and promote films by its members. Experimental Film Society unites works by a dozen filmmakers scattered across the globe, whose films are distinguished by an uncompromising, no-budget devotion to personal, experimental cinema. Experimental Film Society is responsible for rescuing and preserving many of its members' films, which otherwise might have been lost forever. All the materials and films in this society are original and had made by EFS filmmakers. The current office of EFS is in Dublin / Ireland.
"Good Evening" will be screened in the "Fictive Landscapes" programme
as part of Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival (2012)
Friday 26th October, 5pm | Tower Mill, Heart of Hawick, Scottish Boarders, UK
Full Information HERE
Official Poster for 'HoW'
Artwork (Pen&Ink) by Paul Dowling
Feature film
HISTORY OF WATER
has been completed '12.
Trailer HERE
Natalie Kavanagh and Dean Kavanagh.
dir. Dean Kavanagh
61mins | Colour | Stereo | 16x9 (2.35:1) | Digital S35, Dslr | 2012
Black Sun Screening
A u g u s t 1 2 t h
A Day of Experimental
Film at Triskel Christchurch
"On a Sunday afternoon this August 12th, adventurous souls seeking haven from the harsh summer light will find sanctuary in Triskel's Christchurch Cinema as three programmes of hauntingly dreamlike avant-garde visions fall through the church’s muffled darkness to take possession of all present.
(The Nest, 2003)
American underground legend James Fotopoulos’ feature The Nest (2003) will be screened, along with 5 short films from
Holland’s preeminent experimental filmmaker Frans Zwartjes.
And three of Ireland’s most uncompromising contemporary experimental filmmakers,
Rouzbeh Rashidi, Dean Kavanagh and Black Sun film programmer Maximilian Le Cain,
will be on hand to present a series of their more disturbing short films. Strange atmospheres, tense self-portraits, troubled meditations on the ghostly power of cinema itself… Filmmaking at its most eerie and obliquely personal."
And three of Ireland’s most uncompromising contemporary experimental filmmakers,
Rouzbeh Rashidi, Dean Kavanagh and Black Sun film programmer Maximilian Le Cain,
will be on hand to present a series of their more disturbing short films. Strange atmospheres, tense self-portraits, troubled meditations on the ghostly power of cinema itself… Filmmaking at its most eerie and obliquely personal."
Programme 1
Schema (Maximilian Le Cain, 2012)
The Man in Autumn (Dean Kavanagh, 2010)
Good Evening (Dean Kavanagh, 2012)
Homo Sapiens Project 92 (Rouzbeh Rashidi, 2012)
The Hamilton Cell (Maximilian Le Cain, 2009)
Homo Sapiens Project 71 (Rouzbeh Rashidi, 2012)
Programme 2: Franz Zwartjes
Birds (1968)
Visual Training (1969)
Spare Bedroom (1969)
Spectator (1970)
Living (1971)
Programme 3:
The Nest (James Fotopoulos, 2003)
New Work Completed, '12
"Sound From The Valley Floor"
Featuring Rouzbeh Rashidi & Maximilian Le Cain
"A man seeks to ruin everyone around him"
Dslr, HD | Colour | 16:9 | 25min
Cork, Ireland
A project by filmmaker
Rouzbeh Rashidi
HOMO SAPIENS PROJECT
Homo Sapiens Project is an ongoing series of personal video works by Rouzbeh Rashidi initiated in August 2011 for both online and screen context. They are highly experimental, part cryptic film diaries and part impressionistic portraits of places and people, and often suffused with an eerie sense of mystery reminiscent of horror cinema.
From highly composed and distantly framed meditations to frenetically flickering plunges into the textural substance of moving images, the restless creativity of this vision of life as a cinematic laboratory is never short of surprising. Encompassing everything from documentary monologues to found footage, Rashidi constantly strives to expand his filmmaking palette while putting his unmistakeable stamp on whatever footage passes through his hands.
Filmmaker, Cinéphile and Critic
has written an article about my work in the latest issue of the esteemed
online journal.
Link HERE
The Last of Deductive Frames
A collaborative feature film by the members of Experimental Film Society
The Last of Deductive Frames” the collaborative omnibus feature film by the members of
will be screened on Friday, 15 June 2012, 19:00 at Seomra Spraoi, Dublin as part of Auntie Underground.
Participating Filmmakers: Michael Higgins, Dean Kavanagh, Maximilian Le Cain, Bahar Samadi, Kamyar Kordestani, Hamid Shams Javi and Rouzbeh Rashidi
Black Sun Screening, April 24 '12
The Girl With The Straw Hat | B&W, 2008, Hi8
On Foot | B&W, 2008, Hi8
Poor Edward | B&W, 2009, HDV
The Distance | Colour, 2010, HD
"Black Sun is proud to present four films by one of Ireland’s most gifted, distinctive and experimental young filmmakers, Wicklow-based Dean Kavangh. His moody, heavily atmopsheric and hauntingly mysterious works favour quiet but piercingly intense moments of solitary emotion and contemplation over plot. Distinguished by an exceptionally poetic visual style, Kavanagh’s films obliquely engage with home, memory, mysterious journeys and moments of rupture. Since he began making films in 2006, he has completed over 26 shorts and is now working on his first feature. Black Sun will be screening two brief, highly formalistic early works, The Girl With The Straw Hat and On Foot (both 2008), along with two of his longer and most accomplished films, Poor Edward (2009) and The Distance (2010)."
Screening at Black Sun, Cork
April 24th
The Guesthouse
A solo programme of my shorts (curated by filmmaker and critic Maximilian Le Cain)
will be screened as part of a night of intimate performances by
OKKYUNG LEE, Mick O’ Shea and Emil Nerstrand.
More info HERE
Recently completed,
"NOCTURNUM"
19mins | Monotone, B&W | 16:9 | Hi8
cast: Natalie Kavanagh, Leon Kavanagh, Vanessa Kavanagh
dir, camera, concept, score: Dean Kavanagh
2008/2012
Tokyo, Dublin, Wicklow
(An)Other Irish Cinema &
Friends of (An)Other Irish Cinema
Monday, March 26th | 4.30 & 6.30pm
The University of Philippines Film Institute in Quezon City
will screen (An)Other Irish Cinema short film programme.
Featuring works by Rouzbeh Rashidi, Donal Foreman and Maximilian LeCain.
Two of my short films will also be screened as part of a second programme:
'Friends of (An)Other Irish Cinema', with works by Michael Higgins, Esperanza Collado, Alan Lambert and Chris O'Neill.
Programme 1: (An)Other Irish Cinema
1_Indwell Extinction of Hawks in Remoteness (Rouzbeh Rashidi, 2012) 61 mins
2_Monologue (Maximilian Le Cain, 2010) 3 mins
3_Next (Maximilian Le Cain, 2010) 7 mins
4_Lullaby (Vicky Langan/Maximilian Le Cain, 2011) 20 mins
5_Refuge (Donal Foreman, 2010) 10 mins
6_You’re Only What I See Sometimes (Donal Foreman, 2008) 9 mins
7_Repeat (Donal Foreman, 2009) 12 mins
Programme 2: Friends of ‘(An)Other Irish Cinema’
1_Concrete Walls (Michael Higgins, 2011) 60 mins
2_Horses (Esperanza Collado, 2011) 2 mins
3_Light From An Old Town (Dean Kavanagh, 2011) 18 mins
4_Poor Edward (Dean Kavanagh, 2009) 12 mins
4_ЧОП (Jann Clavadetscher, 2011) 10 mins
5_St. Francis Didn’t Run Numbers (Chris O’Neill, 2009) 2 mins
6_Sister Mary or Mary the Junkie (Chris O’Neill, 2009) 3 mins
7_Film From The Sea (Alan Lambert, 1999-2011) 5 mins
Fifth Screening of Experimental Film Society
at The Sample Studios
On 20th of March 2012, 8 PM, a programme of the short films of Experimental Film Society will be screening at the Sample-Studios 3rd Floor Former Government Buildings Sullivan's Quay Cork.
1_The Decision (2011) - By Bahar Samadi / 9 Min / France
2_Partizan (2012) - By Kamyar Kordestani / 6:30 Min / Iran
3_Ashes to Ashes (2012) - By Hamid Shams Javi / 6:30 Min / Iran
4_Snowed Under (2010) - Michael Higgins / 3 Min / Ireland
5_Chapter 2 First Date (2011) - Michael Higgins / 7 Min / Ireland
6_Merry Christmas Farmer Brown (2011) - Michael Higgins / 4:30 Min / Ireland
7_Horses (2011) - Esperanza Collado / 2 Min / Spain
8_F (2008) - Dean Kavanagh / 6:30 Min / Ireland
9_M (2010) - Dean Kavanagh / 6:30 Min / Ireland
10_Early Hours of the Morning (2009) - Dean Kavanagh / 7:30 Min / Ireland
11_Homo Sapiens Project (5) (2011) – Rouzbeh Rashidi / 7 Min / Ireland
12_Homo Sapiens Project (9) (2011) – Rouzbeh Rashidi / 11 Min / Ireland
13_Hotel La Mirage (2010) - Maximilian Le Cain / 5:30 Min / Ireland
14_The End of the Universe as Red (2012) (Super-8 only, sound on tape) - Maximilian Le Cain / 10 Min / Ireland
Total Duration: 92 Min
More info HERE
Short film titled "Abandon" completed in Jan, '12
The film deals with various themes of decay and growth in the lives of the people in a small town.
The film was started in late 2010 but the footage was discarded.
However, it has been completed in 2012 using various different devices.
Cast: Vanessa Kavanagh, Natalie Kavanagh, Leon Kavanagh, Greg & Robert
Camera, lenses & post-production facilities: Three Rock Media
Holga, dslr, hd vid, webcam | Colour | 16:9 | 18min44
The Last of Deductive Frames on MUBI/GARAGE
Page dedicated to the on-going experimental feature film "The Last of Deductive Frames", on mubi.com
A selection of shorts on mubi.com
(as part of Experimental Film Society)
Experimental Film Society an independent, not-for-profit film production company specializing in avant-garde, independent and no/low budget filmmaking. It was founded in 2000 in Tehran, Iran. Its aim is to produce and promote films by its members. Experimental Film Society unites works by a dozen filmmakers scattered across the globe, whose films are distinguished by an uncompromising, no-budget devotion to personal, experimental cinema. Experimental Film Society is responsible for rescuing and preserving many of its members’ films, which otherwise might have been lost forever. All the materials and films in this society are original and had made by EFS filmmakers. The current office of EFS is in Dublin, Ireland.
Short film "Good Evening" completed, January, 2012.
Direction, Edit & Produced by: Dean Kavanagh
Camera: Leon Kavanagh, Dean Kavanagh
Camera & post-production facilities: Three Rock Media
Holga, dslr | Colour | 16:9 | 12min
Short film "Memory Room"
officially selected & screened @ SOUND + VISION festival,
'New talent Irish filmmaker showcase'
Nov 23rd. The Model, Sligo.
Cast: Neil O' Callaghan, Matthew Moynihan
dir. cam. edit. prod. Dean Kavanagh
Prod. EFS, '08.
Leaving Remodernist Film
In 2010 Dean was invited to join the Remodernist Film collective. As a movement 'remodernism' began as a part of the Stukist Art Movement and its guidelines/manifesto at the turn of the century. Jesse Richards and Harris Smith were two key people from this Art movement.
On August 27, 2008, Jesse Richards published a 15 point Remodernist Film Manifesto, calling for a "new spirituality in cinema", use of intuition in filmmaking, as well as describing the remodernist film as being a "stripped down, minimal, lyrical, punk kind of filmmaking". It has been translated into many languages across the globe, including spanish and persian.
Richard's declared that the 2009 short film "Poor Edward" by Kavanagh to be a remodernist film.
Watch 'Poor Edward'
In late 2010 Richards called for a collaborative feature film to be made in response to the Remodernist Manifesto. Beside 6 other filmmakers from around the world, Dean contributed his segment 'Detritus' to the feature.
The feature was titled "In Passing" and had it's premiere at The Quad Cinema in New York on November 13th 2011. It was officially selected for International Film Festival Manhattan.
Now that his work on the film "In Passing" is complete, Dean has officially withdrawn from Remodernist Film.
"Detritus" segment (In Passing) 2011
Official trailers, reviews of 'Remodernism' in Australia's "FilmInk" magazine and a review of "In Passing" from "Senses of Cinema" can be found here:
Short film "Light From An Old Town" completed in August 2011
Cast: John Curran, Shane Vernon
Direction, Camera, Edit & Produced by: Dean Kavanagh
Camera, Lenses & post-production facilities: Three Rock Media
DSLR | Colour | 17min | 2011
On location stills from "Last Sunday" Shoot, June 2011
Above from left: Leon Kavanagh, Dean Kavanagh
above from left: Dean Kavanagh, Natalie Kavanagh
above: Natalie Kavanagh
above from left (cast & crew): Leon Kavanagh, Dean Kavanagh, Natalie Kavanagh.
Short film "Last Sunday" completed in June 2011
Cast: Leon Kavanagh, Natalie Kavanagh
Direction, Camera, Edit & Produced by: Dean Kavanagh
Camera, lenses & post-production facilities: Three Rock Media
HD | Colour | 10min | 2011
Film school project "November" - Officially selected for Galway Film Fleadh 2011.
above from left: John Curran (producer), Johnny Allen, Leon Kavanagh, Dean Kavanagh (director)
'November'
Cast: Simon Fogarty, Elizabeth McGrath, Cate MacGabhann,
James Martinez, Tom Arkins, Bailey Hayden.
DIT '11
Short film "The Distance" completed October 2010
Cast: Leon Kavanagh
Special thanks to: Alice Kavanagh
Director, Camera, Edit & Producer: Dean Kavanagh
HD | Colour | 11min
