Sign

Du Cane describes his cinema as “as close as I can get to an immediate transference onto celluloid of my flux-like process in response to being here now, filming.” Sign is a “room film”, shot entirely in what appears to be the filmmaker’s studio: film cans, reels and other cinematographic can sometimes be distinguished amongst the rapid camera movements. Du Cane’s rarely shown films are amongst the most pure and radical of their period. Instinctive yet formal, structured and organic, the physical world is turned into a screen-based labyrinth that is both surface and depth, through the retinal rush of incremental superimpositions and delicate cameral control.

Founded in 1966, the London Film-Makers’ Co-operative started life at Better Books, a counter-culture bookshop on Charing Cross Road, where a group led by poet Bob Cobbing and filmmakers Stephen Dwoskin and Jeff Keen met to screen films. Initially inspired by the activities of the New American Cinema Group in New York, the London Co-op grew into a pioneering organisation that incorporated a film workshop, cinema space and distribution office. During its four-decade history, the Co-op played a crucial role in establishing film as an art form in the UK and participated in a vibrant international film scene. This BFI Player collection brings together new scans of films distributed by and/or produced at the London Co-op.