A film on unemployment that invites the spectator to resist capitalism and the consumption society, made by Mike Dunford, who was unemployed at the time, with the intention of providing a catalyst for discussion at Claimants Union meetings.
'Still-Life with Pear' takes a subversive position towards the illusion inherent in the film-image, its apparent transparency to representation, but rather than dealing with this by countering with strategies of foregrounding the actual materiality of the film-strip, the narrative construct is...
"In 1983 I was working in San Francisco as a housepainter and much of the time we worked in Burlingame, south of the city. This tape is a meditation on that suburban world, with the actor, me, moodily, incoherently expressing his alienation from the society he inhabits." – Mike Dunford
Another approach to the same complex of story and videographic operations. This time the videographic work takes primacy and is almost wholly abstract. The story-telling strand is presented (enclosed) as a self-contained element within the overall image although even here the unity of sound and...
Marks another stage of work which I called “distributed narrative”. In this a strand of thought, an idea or a story, and related or unrelated material that adds or conflicts is constantly re-presented over the course of the work, to create in the totality of the viewing a synthesis that is...
Ronald Reagan had been elected US president in 1981, and began the long unwinding of post-war progressive economic and social policy awaited by the American ruling class, but which had produced social welfare and full employment for the 50’s and into the 60’s when a combination of the cost of...
