"Flickering Shadows" Review

FLICKERING SHADOWS 

(Ikon FCL, 60 minutes, £14 — mail order from Ikon FCL, 86 Palatine Rd, W. Didsbury, Manchester M20 9JW)

CERTAINLY no danger of Ikon being accused of selling out to commercial interests with this release. It's a collection of nine short films originally shot on Super 8 by one Ivan Unwin, a man enjoying the support of the Arts Council in his recondite artistic endeavours.

As with Ikon's weighty William Burroughs double pack, "Flickering Shadows" is resolutely self-referential, defying easy access and daring you to be dismissive. There are at least some very brief clues supplied to what's going on in Unwin's brain on the insert — "Bunker Protection For Mr Capital MP" is "A Government test film, recording the consequences of eating dehydrated food with festive over indulgence". There's this bloke, see, who stuffs himself with Ryvita plastered with tomato ketchup while growing an artificial turkey to hideous proportions. When he eats it, he blows up like a balloon . .. See "Eraserhead".

In "A Question Of Entertainment", The Rabbit Man models a clay target for his shooting arcade from one of his pet rabbits. "Machine Maintenance", apparently inspired by the real-life closure of the Shelton Steel Works, depicts a fantastical mechanical structure, tended by a technician with what looks like an Anglepoise lamp on his head. And so on.

The jerky motion and approximate colour balance of Super 8 (subsequently transferred to video and edited) gives these films an automatic sense of disorder and illogic. Soundtracks are wobbly and nightmarish, played on decrepit keyboard or by unnamed guitar-bands. Unwin's technique seems to be based around the "environments" he's constructed for most of these films, such as the eponymous Light Station of the ominous rocking horse on a pedestal in "Meditation On A Rocking Horse". The settings provide the framework for the films in the absence of plot or dialogue.

So? Some atmospheres and distorted emotions, and an oppressive sense of hidden mechanisms and unseen forces at work. Some black humour, too. But these films look like experiments waiting to be written up. It's not a night at the pictures.

ADAM SWEETING