Short films 2001-3

A body of five short films produced, directed, photographed by Oppenheimer, developing new film forms that exploit tensions between image and sound tracks to explore how an invisible violence haunts and structures the social imaginary.

The five short films are:

'Land of Enchantment' (2001, 1 minute)

'A Postcard from Sun City, Arizona' (2003, 4 minutes)

'A Brief History of Paradise as Told by the Cockroaches'(2003, 3 minutes)

'Muzak – a tool of management' (2002, 3 minutes)

'Market Update' (2001, 1 minute)

Made over a three-year period the series develops new film forms that exploit tensions between image and sound tracks to

explore challenging subjects in the shortest of formats. Each film’s form uses a mix of testimony, re-enactment, reflexive voice

over and moving text. Each film’s subject is a carefully selected moment from one of two distinct, large-scale documentary

research projects. The films are not mere illustrations of underlying theses. Through systematic, well-documented processes of

methodological and formal experimentation, each film has assumed a precise form adequate to its theoretical, visual and

narrative intervention. Together, the series offers insights into how condensing images from a violent and obscene imaginary

are inevitably haunted by that violence.

This process of experimentation used in the series led to critical reflections on the filmmaker’s methods at conferences and

symposia such as Visible Evidence (UK), Digital Poetics and Politics (Canada) and a Vision Machine Masterclass at

Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival (14.11.06), where the films were first presented as a series.

Four films from this series were broadcast on Channel 4, Film Four, and ZDF/Arte (Germany/France). Other screenings include

International Film Festival, Rotterdam; Oberhausen Short Film Festival; repertory cinemas in Europe and North America. The

films were also screened and discussed at the Lux Open; the Other Cinema (London), the New School for Social Research’s

Cinethnography Conference (New York); Queens University (Canada) and Oxford University (UK).