Energy of Fish (a poem written immediately upon waking from a dream)

I’ve started

I’ve begun the journey to Brazil

the one that has waited for me, patiently, 

drinking a fresh coconut, top hacked off,

sex-like wetness around your smiling mouth,

amused at how simple it has been, all along.

a room with roaches

and mutliple bed nests

is my gas station on the way

and with an electrical jolt

i run into you, outside.

you’re not surprised. only you seem to move away from me.

i’m hurt. my forcefield kicks at you, pushing you away.

you come immediately closer and invite me upstairs

where you show me your drawings, experiments,

exquisite and playful intricacies on the page, 

energy that flows from you.

i smell your hair as i kiss your head, and with true tenderness 

tell you i love you 

and we decide to walk a little way together

on my journey to Brazil,

up a sandy path, 

barefoot

another comes with us, a girl from long before, still your friend,

never mine,

and after a struggle inside to see her as you do

i know it’s ok,

that i am not you, and all that i am is walking to the boundless city of sand

where i will find my shifting shape 

and its rose of glass.

Sonic Portrait of the Funkhaus, Nalepastraße

Hi all!

Here's my latest project! It's a collaboration between me and my good friend and musician Kathy Alberici. We were commissioned by CTM Festival in Berlin, and this is what we came up with. We've been working on it for months, and the first live performance was on Saturday 1st Feb in Berlin!

Here's some info about it:

Analogue filmmaker Martha Jurksaitis and multi-instrumentalist Kathy Alberici present a "Sonic Portrait of the Funkhaus Nalepastraße", using a mixed-media approach to capture elements of history and ecology of the home of the former DDR National Broadcasting Corporation examining the acoustic, visual and atmospheric environments of the building. The project is one of two created as part of the Berlin Current Call for Works.      

Kathy and I collaborate under the name 'Polymitas'. We'd really love to tour the piece too, so if you'd like to invite us sometime that would be great. :) I processed all of it by hand, and Kathy worked with a lot of magnetic tape, including some we salvaged from the Funkhaus itself.

Featuring guitar by Calvin Xang and bass by Shigeru Ishihara.

Jan St Werner (Mouse on Mars) chose us as one of his top picks of CTM this year, which was a great honour, and we were featured by Wire Magazine, who also premiered our first collaboration online - a Super 8 film with soundtrack called 'The Garden of Polymitas'.

You can also find it on the Cherry Kino vimeo.

Here are some shots from the film (taken during rehearsals from projections against the wall!)

And here are a few photos from the live show:

x Martha / CK
(one half of 'Polymitas'! )

Some of my new films for you to watch! x

Hi!

Ok so I have loads of news...!

Recently my friend Kathy Alberici and I won a commission to create a new audio visual piece for the CTM festival in Berlin! I went over to Berlin a few weeks ago to get started - our project is based around the 'Funkhaus', the old broadcasting station in the former GDR, East Berlin. It's an amazing place... Loads to explore. We found some magnetic tape, and got some sounds and footage, and generally got familiar with the buildings. We even got into the main concert hall, which I'm told is very rare... it was open for cleaning, and we witnessed a big grand piano being hoisted up the stairs and into the auditorium. We also collected the sounds of the wood creaking beneath our bare feet as we walked around.

Some news on my films:

'Bird' was selected to screen at Colour Out of Space festival in Brighton! It's on now!

'Iron Work' screened at Antimatter Media Art Festival a few weeks ago, which I'm so delighted about!

'Salt' and 'Peach' are currently touring venues in North America as part of the Frenkel Defects programme, curated by Kevin Rice.

'Peach' is also due to show at the great TIE festival in Colorado this month too!

I also made a new film not long ago called 'Attraction', which I include below for you to watch if you feel like it. :) It was originally shot on Super 8 and then I used the JK optical printer to blow it up to 16mm in different ways, and then I edited it a bit by hand, and then did the final edit on a digital programme. Phew! A long process. But totally worth it - I'm really happy with the result. I showed it on Light Night in Leeds this October, to about 360 people in one night! Bonkers, felt so high afterwards. x

Attraction from Cherry Kino on Vimeo.

Here's a film 'Alana and the Carnival' that I made for my niece on her 4th birthday, of Chapeltown Carnival! The song is 'Amor em Jacuma' by Brazilian musician Lucas Santtana (it just seemed to work so well).

Alana and the Carnival from Cherry Kino on Vimeo.

And finally, here's my film 'Salt'. The digitisation is not great, it's very rough and jumpy (the original is not like that), and I will replace it as soon as I get a professional telecine of it. I hope you enjoy it! Comments always welcome too. :)

x Martha

Salt from Cherry Kino on Vimeo.

Nail Art - a 16mm film I made

Hi!

I made a film on 16mm a few months ago called 'Nail Art'. Here's the synopsis, the film, and some still images too. I hope you like it!

'Nail Art' is a 16mm film made entirely using nail varnishes and nail stickers as my materials. It's a visceral response to the craze for nail art, and considers whether nail art is wholly at odds with female freedom, as an activity that requires maintaining a veneer at the cost of empowered physical action in the world, or whether it's a modern-day equivalent to patchwork and a piecing together of feminine community and the emergence of a fresh and active aesthetics. Nail varnish and filmmaking do have some parallels - both involve toxic chemicals coming into contact with lungs and hands, both contain organic substances (keratin / gelatine respectively), and both can be somewhat preserved through the use of a sealant (clear top-coat / film guard).

I chose to make my film on 16mm Ektachrome, a film stock now discontinued and considered perhaps 'dead'. The film you see is the original, which I processed with my hands, and which will progressively become more and more worn by the projector each time it is played. I won't try to 'patch up' my film (or nails). I will let it gloriously scratch and wear off through being well and truly used. Nothing is pristine. Underneath their attractive coatings, nails are full of bacteria and dirt. My film is living and dying at the same time, perpetually moving. Nails supposedly keep growing after death. Is the same true for analogue film?

x Martha

Some Experimental Film Artists I am really loving at the moment!

Hi all!

I wanted to write a post about some of the filmmakers I've been really happy to discover recently.

The first is Leslie Supnet, an animator based in Winnipeg, Canada. Her film 'Sun Moon Stars Rain' is so wonderful! I'm really interested in how filmmakers and musicians collaborate at the moment, having just made three music videos myself, and one film/poetry/music collaboration, and Leslie's film really nails it in my view. I love it. Here it is:

sun moon stars rain from Leslie Supnet on Vimeo.

The next person I want to flag up is Dinorah de Jesus Rodriguez. Dinorah sent me an email earlier this summer about a post I'd written on Frameworks to do with watercolours made especially for photographs, that I used for applying directly to the film strip. I got intrigued and looked at her work on vimeo, and it really blew me away too. Here's some of Dinorah's work:

Is It True Blondes Have More FUN? from Dinorah de Jesús Rodriguez on Vimeo.


I also really like the work of Ж, who I hope to collaborate with on a piece:

Revém Natura Experiencia #0 from Ж on Vimeo.

x Martha 

Hex of Ergot (Popping Corn) - a Super 8 film

Hi!

I wrote a post a few months back about the 'micro-residency' of one day I attended, hosted by Spur and Project Space Leeds. This is the result! Shot and hand-processed in one day, and edited in camera. I hope you like it!


The Hex of Ergot (Popping Corn) from Cherry Kino on Vimeo.

x Martha

My new film 'Silva Shade'

Something draws me to you.
A berried whisper,
soft tongue of pine,
the promise of a bed of needles
to while away some time
in your luscious silva shade,
filling myself up with your
strong steady scent
that strengthens my muscles,
stretches my spine.

A cool woody balm
for such a boiling heart.

Silva Shade from Cherry Kino on Vimeo.

- This film, made in a Finnish forest in April this year, was hand processed in coffee developer (caffenol) to a black and white negative, fixed using sea salt water for 20 hours, and I then hand-painted it with photographic watercolours. I wanted to use a filmmaking process that was gentle on the magnificent environment I was in, and that's what I came up with. I then inverted the film to create a positive image, where instead of being black, the trees are coloured. 'Silva' is Latin for forest, and 'silver' is the essence of cinema, in all its many shades. I recorded the sound in the same forest. I hope you like it!

Here are some still images too. I intended to only post a few but got so fascinated by how different every frame is that I couldn't help myself and have posted a whole ream of them!

If you can scroll down that far (!), at the very bottom are photos of the ingredients I used for hand processing the b/w film. 

Here are a few photos of the ingredients used in the processing:

washing soda, cheap coffee granules, vitamin C powder for horses, and sea salt for fix!

Kitchen weighing scales...

The pungent mix...

x Martha