Paul Rowley

OFFSET

2012-01-18T11:23:00.000-05:00

I'm not on here much these days.

You can check out our recent projects on the STILL FILMS website.
Or follow us on Twitter here.

BUILD SOMETHING MODERN

2011-01-21T06:13:00.000-05:00

Interview at the Centre Pompidou

2011-01-14T18:24:00.000-05:00

ripbm on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

THE ROOMS Q+A at The Pompidou Centre

2011-01-14T18:18:00.000-05:00

ripbm on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

BUILD SOMETHING MODERN

2011-01-14T07:44:00.001-05:00

Accidental sculpture PS1

2010-10-18T07:41:00.002-05:00

The Rooms

2010-08-10T13:45:00.001-05:00

The Rooms - trailer from Still Films on Vimeo.

Vowel phonemes of Igbo

2010-07-25T12:19:00.000-05:00

Djerba

2010-06-26T09:15:00.000-05:00

Not i

2010-06-16T10:27:00.004-05:00

Not i

2010-06-16T09:04:00.003-05:00

WERK

not i (unmatted)

2010-06-10T21:44:00.003-05:00

(0.12.24.02)
(0.09.02.23)
(0.07.27.12)

not i 01 (0.00.18.01)

2010-06-09T21:47:00.000-05:00

not i. Don't hurry, it'll kill you.

2010-06-08T21:48:00.002-05:00

MOROCCO - script in progress

2010-06-06T11:15:00.001-05:00

MOROCCO

In Progress: Miss You Much

2010-06-02T22:26:00.003-05:00

Music video for Veda Beaux Rêves.

WERK test 02

2010-05-25T09:06:00.002-05:00

WERK

all the time the buzzing

2010-05-25T08:00:00.001-05:00

WERK test 01

2010-05-24T12:16:00.003-05:00

WERK

Police locker graveyard, Queens

2010-05-24T12:01:00.002-05:00

Cosmetic Parallax

2010-05-22T05:54:00.001-05:00

Brooklyn midnight gay bar

2010-05-21T20:36:00.001-05:00

Chrystie street

2010-05-19T09:38:00.000-05:00

Brooklyn

2010-05-17T10:27:00.000-05:00

Joshua Light Show at Abrons Center for the Arts

2010-05-16T10:43:00.000-05:00

Joshua Light Show
English Kills
Spectrum

Icarus chair

2010-05-16T00:33:00.001-05:00

LAX installation. In progress shots.

2010-05-14T03:45:00.004-05:00

A few shots of the installation Mr. David Phillips and I made for the International terminal at LAX airport Los Angeles. There are two parts to the piece, one on the 5x5 video wall, the second on a 58 screen 'filmstrip' that weaves through the building. These are a few shots of the install in progress David took while doing the programming in LA last month.

The piece is called 'Local Time' and is composed of thousands of still images of mid Twentieth century clock faces, animated to mimic the motion of an flipping analogue airport information board.

The piece will be a permanent feature at LAX and was commissioned by the City Of Los Angeles and the airport.

Tu m'en veux pas

2010-05-14T02:33:00.001-05:00

Fruit Flavoured 1.0

2010-05-08T08:43:00.002-05:00

LAX shots

2010-05-08T08:31:00.002-05:00

Mr. David Phillips and I were recently selected to install a permanent video work in the international terminal at LAX. David was out in LA last week doing the install. Here are a couple of screen grabs from the early stages of the piece.

Mixing at Ardmore Sound

2010-05-03T11:53:00.000-05:00

Pyjama Girls

2010-03-31T11:02:00.003-05:00

Poster for our new feature doc which has its premiere at Stranger Than Fiction in Dublin April 17th. Design by Sue at Sink. Photo by Giita Hammond.

New film - new postcards

2010-02-09T19:26:00.001-05:00

Design by Niall&Nigel

Athens

2010-01-27T11:48:00.000-05:00

TG4 AERTEL

2010-01-13T11:56:00.001-05:00

Embassy halftone

2009-12-18T22:00:00.000-05:00

Rooms Still

2009-12-14T09:42:00.003-05:00

Rooms Still

2009-12-13T10:02:00.000-05:00

Rooms Still

2009-12-12T10:24:00.000-05:00

Rooms Still

2009-12-09T17:03:00.004-05:00

New Work: Surface Noise

2009-11-24T13:13:00.004-05:00

Still from a new video piece I made this month with David Phillips and Tim Blue. It opens at the VOID gallery in Derry Saturday November 28th. More info on the show and VOID here.

We worked with proprietary instruments typically used in film restoration labs to scan 35mm film prints for damage. By re-programming the machines, we were able to isolate only the damaged elements of old film prints, the dust, dirt, and scratches. The original film was then deleted from the files, and what remains is a digital record of the markings of time and use on the physical material of the film itself.

North Korea

2009-11-22T21:11:00.002-05:00

Paju

2009-11-20T21:06:00.000-05:00

Seoul

2009-11-20T21:05:00.000-05:00

Paju

2009-11-19T21:09:00.000-05:00

Seoul

2009-11-18T21:03:00.000-05:00

Athens

2009-11-07T08:36:00.000-05:00

Breakfast, October.

2009-10-23T17:18:00.000-05:00

Berlin

2009-10-08T05:28:00.003-05:00

Prora

2009-10-07T05:31:00.000-05:00

Pankow

2009-10-07T05:29:00.000-05:00

The Photographer

2009-10-06T05:32:00.000-05:00

Acropolis

2009-10-05T05:33:00.000-05:00

Athenian suburbs after the fires

2009-10-04T05:36:00.000-05:00

The listening station

2009-10-03T05:38:00.000-05:00

The Bunker

2009-10-02T05:39:00.000-05:00

The security booth

2009-10-01T05:41:00.000-05:00

The devil's mountain

2009-10-01T05:40:00.000-05:00

Eucharistic Confection

2009-09-04T02:36:00.002-05:00

Los Angeles : Archive

2009-08-09T10:08:00.004-05:00

Los Angeles

2009-08-02T11:03:00.003-05:00

Yasmine Belmadi

2009-07-28T11:10:00.005-05:00

Really tragic news from France. Yasmine Belmadi was killed in an accident last week in Paris, the day after finishing his most recent film. He was getting rid of a cigarette from his moped, and hit a lamp post. He was 33.

Belmadi appeared in many films over the past decade, in Sébastien Lifshitz's beautiful and gentle portrait of family, Wild Side, François Ozon's Les amants criminels, and Nassim Amaouche's Adieu Gary, which won the Grand Prix at the Semaine de la Critique in Cannes. It's for his first role I'll really remember him for though, the one I saw him first in, Lifshitz's Les Corps Ouverts. Strobe lights blasting on a young Arab man caught up in flashes of sexual doubt.

Fire Island

2009-07-27T18:58:00.005-05:00

Museu de Carrosses Fúnebres

2009-07-21T13:57:00.004-05:00

prora01.1(0.00.00.00).tif

2009-07-15T11:45:00.005-05:00

SEAVIEW DVD Release

2009-07-10T16:04:00.006-05:00

SEAVIEW, our feature documentary from last year, is now available on DVD through Indiepix. The DVD included a version of the film that will play internationally, and several new special features including:

- a short with soundtrack composer Dennis McNulty who discusses his approach to the film.

- a short film by the directors made during the production.

- footage from the rap workshops in the camp.

- a postcard gallery of production stills.

All the information about ordering the DVD is available on the Indiepix website here.

The chair.

2009-06-26T16:25:00.005-05:00

At the excellent Pictures Generation show currently up at the Met, they're showing a stack of Jack Goldstein's 16mm films from the 1970's. On film too. Such great films...

Cavo Rosso

2009-06-23T09:11:00.003-05:00

Eggshells

2009-06-10T08:06:00.001-05:00

Blocking out a new film

2009-06-09T14:53:00.002-05:00

A building

2009-06-08T14:51:00.000-05:00

Light minus one

2009-06-05T09:42:00.001-05:00

Raval

2009-05-19T16:12:00.002-05:00

Mies in Barcelona

2009-05-16T07:30:00.004-05:00

The Barcelona Pavilion. Mies van der Rohe designed it for the 1929 Barcelona International exhibition. It was taken apart, and then in 1986 rebuilt. The combination of materials and angles in bright light create striking areas of flatness in both in actuality and in photographs - collapsed and skewed parallelograms dividing the frame into crisply drawn areas of light, shade, and stone.

While I was there an installation by Antonio Muntadas was on show. The project investigated the period when the pavilion didn't exist, from 1930-86. Along one wall of the space Muntadas had placed three boxes that contained cards, like files, or library cards almost. The cards referenced all the articles written about the place while it wasn't standing, but was resting as stone and marble flats stacked up in rows in a Catalan warehouse.

Tucked away as it is close to the bustling Plaça Espanya, and usually visited by maybe only one or two people at a time, the pavilion itself casts a quiet sense of removal on its visitors. While standing in the place alone and considering the lines of light and stone dividing the room, it feels as if you have stepped into somewhere where regular dimensions have shifted. Near and far become intertwined, and space is flattened by the walls that define it. Here, you can consider that by entering into the pavilion, you have in fact stepped into a place that does not exist.

Pink gun for a boy

2009-05-11T08:00:00.001-05:00

Shaky, rainy, kino.

2009-05-09T14:14:00.002-05:00

Barcelona

2009-05-07T14:52:00.001-05:00

After Ellsworth Kelly

La France

2009-03-29T15:16:00.001-05:00

Greenport

2009-03-28T15:13:00.000-05:00

Hannover

2009-03-23T07:55:00.002-05:00

Studio Sunday

2009-03-22T07:51:00.000-05:00

A new suit, and a completed second draft.

Werkstatt Kino München

2009-03-20T08:36:00.002-05:00

Best projection booth ever.

Brooklyn

2009-03-18T17:38:00.000-05:00

New studio table. Artist admin day.

Asyl

2009-03-06T08:00:00.006-05:00

I think Kurt Kren's Asyl has to be one of my favourite films ever, certainly one of my very favourite short films. When I was in Germany last month I came across a book about him, all in German, which meant my understanding of it was limited, but the diagrams he drew to plan out his structuralist films are amazing. Here's the planning he did for Asyl. Some are for timing, some for different areas of the 16mm frame to be exposed at different times during the year.

There are a few of his films on UBU but they're more the films he did with the Vienna Acionists/

Mood triangulation

2009-03-04T20:38:00.002-05:00

Touring Deutschland with a 35mm film

2009-03-02T16:15:00.002-05:00

We find that each city and cinema has a preferred way of knotting the print to the cart.

A silent film

2009-02-08T05:03:00.001-05:00

Brooklyn

2009-01-31T10:35:00.001-05:00

Transposition

2009-01-28T11:51:00.009-05:00

While having breakfast with my friend Emily (also my musical collaborator and piano teacher - we're doing Messiaen 'Hawari' in March, she music, me video) we were discussing my wirehair dachshund Finnegan and his love of piano playing. Finnegan has a Jaymar toy piano which he likes to nose around on. He especially likes to join in when someone else is playing. So in order to facilitate this, we have his Jaymar now sitting under my Kranich and Bach.

Emily suggests that Finnegan is most likely the reincarnation of the great Chilean pianist Claudio Arrau, one of the greatest piano players of the twentieth century. I can't be certain, but will update with developments as Finnegan's Chopin improves. there sure is a likeness there.

Seaview German Cinema Release

2009-01-23T08:49:00.007-05:00

Seaview is starting it's German cinema release this week at the FSK Kino in Berlin. The film is now being distributed by the Arsenal in Germany. Nicky and I will be at the screening on the 7th, and then at all dates on the tour starting February 16th. Just click on the image above for the tour dates. If you have friends in Germany who might be interested in the film please do pass the information along. Thanks!

20th January 2009

2009-01-20T11:01:00.001-05:00

Film Ireland

2009-01-15T11:28:00.003-05:00

The January/February issue of Film Ireland magazine, was guest edited by Seaview c0-director Nicky Gogan, Darklight programme director Derek O'Connor and myself. It's now available for sale in shops and from Film Base in Temple Bar.

Central to the magazine for this issue is a section we call Leading Lights. We asked 20 filmmakers, cinematographers, curators, designers, visual artists to submit an image that is important to them, and to write a few words about it. The result is a very interesting cross section of ideas about the image from a very diverse group of image makers.

You can find extracts from the articles here.

Some favourite cinematic moments of 2008

2008-12-31T10:25:00.033-05:00

It's been a year of much travelling for me. With 'Seaview' on the festival circuit, I ended up all over the world introducing our film and watching other films whenever I could. A year of meeting other filmmakers, film fans, programmers, and artists in festival bars and cinemas from Berlin to Brazil - from an oddly fabulous/tedious Quantum of Solace style cocktail party with insanely heavy security in Santa Teresa, to a white chocolate mango birthday cake from the Cheapies at the Gossip Studio, or driving through the south of Morocco and over the Atlas mountains imagining all the way how this place could be captured in a film, or dancing with new friends to Donna Summer on a very sticky carpet at the Sheffield Scottish ceilidh roller disco... it's been an amazing year.

I think the year began when I left Brooklyn for Berlin, where we premiered 'Seaview' at the Forum. And now I'm getting ready to pack my bags and head to Berlin again, where the film will start its German theatrical tour. In between it's been a year of extremes, losing loved ones too soon, finding new friends, and hopefully the end of one horrific era and the beginning of something more human.

I thought of putting together a 'top 10 films of 2008' list here, but realised that I've been popping around so much that I really don't know what was in the cinemas where, what was released, what wasn't. I've also missed seeing a lot of the films that were showing here in New York. So instead, here, in no particular order, are some of my favourite cinematic moments from the year. Some of these films were even on top lists and in cinemas last year, but I only got around to seeing them in 2008.

...

My Winnipeg - Guy Maddin
This was at Berlin last year. Hilarious, inventive, unexpected, and possibly the liveliest film about cultural narcolepsy ever made.

...

Bad Blue Boys - Branko Schmidt
I saw this film with Nicky at Hot Docs in Toronto. A 25 minute portrait of an ex-soldier in Croatia. We never see his face... just his family, his hands, his stash of hidden guns he uses to go shooting with other ex-military mates. It's a disjointed, disturbing, fractured insight into what happens to soldiers when the fighting stops.

...

Impovvisamente l'inverno scorso
Suddenly last winter - Gustav Hofer/Luca Ragazzi

From two perfect Italian gentlemen, a film that is as delightful as it is troubling. Gustav and Luca find themselves making a film in the midst of a huge homophobic backlash to proposed changes in the Italian law that will grant equal rights to same sex couples. They document the events from their own perspective in a way that is disarming, genuine, and wonderfully human. It's never easy for documentary filmmakers to put themselves so centrally in a film without it seeming uncomfortable, but these two do it with such honesty and lack of pretence you cheer and weep with them through the frames.

...

General Idea: Art, AIDS, and the fin de siècle
Annette Mangaard

With gallons of blue paint and amazing archival footage, this is a great art documentary about knowing what to do with the times you find yourself in.

...

Hunger
Steve McQueen

From the piss running under cell doors, to the cigarette butts crushed in disposable metal ashtrays, this film captured so powerfully both the horrors of the Maze prison and the violence of the times. The approach to storytelling is visually driven in a way that I really found perfect in describing the cold brutality of the events. The acting, the camerawork, the meticulous research... it all came together to make possibly my favourite film of the year.

...

Stellet Licht
Carlos Reygadas

Having tried to create a similar shot to the opening shot of this film myself in Mexico, it's wonderful to see someone do it and get it right. This film brings us the miracle of the unexpected. Mennonites in Mexico with a crumbling marriage and forbidden love. For me, the most perfect cinema of our moment has these instances of compacted unexplainability - the compression of our time with spikes that erupt - like in Stellet Licht, like the rocket in Still Life, like the murderous red raincoat. An outburst - one we should see daily, and cinema still gives us. Again possibly my very favourite film of the year.

...

La Frontera Infinita
The infinite border
Juan Manuel Sepulveda

Here's another one of my favourites from Berlin. La Frontera Infinita is a beautifully paced documentary about people attempting to get through Central America to the Mexico-US border. Rather than take us on a literal journey, the film hovers in certain points along a train line, and witnesses the passing through of hundreds and hundreds of people. We're often unsure where we are along the route, but this is the wonder of the film - it's like the whole journey is folded into a single location, and that location is a loop.

...

Corridor 8
Boris Despodov

From everyone's favourite Bulgarian friend, Corridor 8 takes us from the Black Sea through Bulgaria, Macedonia and Albania to the Adriatic, along an EU-proposed highway that was supposed to link all three countries. This description does little justice though to a hilarious and clever film that follows a simple line to show how ridiculously absurd and complicated our world has become. The highway was never built, train tracks stop a few hundred feet short of connecting, and locals grow mushrooms in the half-dug tunnels...

...

Two great shorts about work from Silverdocs. The Tailor by Oscar Perez is one of the funniest docs I have ever seen... pure genius. What would the drop know about that by Jan Zabeil is a beautifully shot portrait of a monumental building and those that stay inside alone at night to clean it.

...

Still Life
Jia Zhang Ke

This film I think was probably more of a best of 2007 film, but I only got to see it early this year. Bodies buried under blocks and addresses wiped away by rising waters from the three gorges project. I loved this film. There's something too about the falling off my chair moment in the middle that is all the more stunning because of just how unexpected it is. I also loved Useless by the same director which I saw at the Rio de Janeiro Film festival, especially the first sections shot in the garment factories. You could put these scenes and the opening factory shots from Jennifer Bachiwal's Manufactured Landscapes together on loop and I would be very happy.

...

Joy
Christine Molloy/Joe Lawlor

An intro of sorts to their debut feature Helen which I am very much looking forward to seeing. This for me is the perfect culmination of their extended period of research into the long, single take short film. It's a wonder that takes you by the hand and leads you gently to somewhere you've never been before.

...

Wild combination
Matt Wolf

A really smartly made doc about a fascinating figure that many had already started to forget. Lights on the water and balloons on the ceiling - our history is always with us.

...

Syndromes and a century
Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Another film that was really a last year pick, but again it was 2008 before I found a way to see it. This is just perfect filmmaking. I could talk a lot about why I love this director, but among many things, I love the way he uses pop songs in his films - the most tender sugary pop, or the most insane hi-nrg disco. That one music video track from Worldly Desires is on constant play in my head. I recently found a load of 60's and 70's Thai pop music that I listen to a lot in the studio. Playing these tracks, while thinking of booze hidden in a prosthetic leg, outdoor mass aerobics, smoky sexy slow dolly shots... it doesn't get much better than this.

...

Derek
Isaac Julien

There is a lot I like about this film. Most of the footage I'd seen before back in the day it was broadcast, but it was great to see it put together so carefully. Tilda Swinton's voiceover worked well too - especially the gentle but urgent battle cry at the end...less money, more films...

But what I really loved about this film was when I saw it first in a press screening in Berlin. For some reason the surround channels got scrambled... the voiceover was practically inaudible, and the images were buried under waves of interfering surround sound. The images flickered on the screen while this music, which I think could be described as the sound of memory, played out. It was amazing. I was stunned at how courageous the filmmakers were being, how they were making a film about Jarman and remaining so close to his aesthetic.

Then the reels were rewound after 10 minutes and the film re-started. This time everything seemed normal again. The film played out, but the mistake stayed with me. It was a momentary glimpse into a film I want to make some day.

...

The mad fox
Tomo Uchida

This was maybe my favourite replay of the year. BAM had a huge Uchida season. This film just blew me away with its exploding sets and lights and fox masks.

...

4 months, 3 weeks, 2 days
Cristian Mungiu

This only made it over the New York in 2008. So tense it was almost a full-on thriller - a real time stalking of a personal and political crisis. Top art-house cinema.

...

Residential Erection
Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung

Demented political animations that lampoon everyone from every angle and get across big political ideas in less time than it takes you to read the front page of the New York Post.

...

The 7 lights
Paul Chan

I saw this gorgeous video show at the New Museum earlier in the year. There's certainly a lot to be said for turning the video projector on its side! The videos to me read as part lament, part a record of a hopeless time. But their beauty revealed an optimism or glimmer of hope that could be taken away and saved for later.

...

Three soundtracks/architectural space
Dennis McNulty

A cinematic three way tour de force. And not a film at all. Sitting in chairs we watch xeroxed stills reflected inside black plexiglass while listening to a series of soundtracks and narratives on headphones. We made our own films. The room filled and flowed with sound from other pieces, and yet everything in the room came together as one.

...

Muhheakantuck - Everything has a name
Matthew Buckingham

Matthew Buckingham's film screened on a water taxi navigating the Hudson river. As the tracking shot on screen played, the taxi brought us up and down the river to match the film's movement, and the voiceover gave a perfect and much needed context to the island of Manhattan.

...

Wishing you all the very best for 2009.

.

HDMI

2008-12-29T15:42:00.000-05:00

Healing the hungry heart (1997)

2008-12-23T19:31:00.002-05:00

Transgender Scientists - pt 2

2008-12-23T13:38:00.003-05:00

Another PDF of the most recent in this series

Transgender Scientists

2008-12-18T16:29:00.006-05:00

Collage is how I first started making art. I've been making these cut-out works on and off for almost twenty years now, and when not distracted by moving images, I come back to focus on these simple layouts and juxtapositions. Unlike films, which take me years, each of these takes just a few minutes to complete. Here's the first batch of a new series. I was thinking about famous transgender scientists when I was working on them.

Brooklyn

2008-12-14T11:11:00.001-05:00

LEADING LIGHTS

2008-12-02T20:28:00.005-05:00

Pasila x-5

2008-11-25T07:55:00.002-05:00