The Ghost Paintings 1-4

Director & Producer: James Clayden
Cast: Tom Wright, Helen Hopkins, Faruk Avdi, Meg White, Shelley Lasica, Thomas Eckersley

Runtime: 1. 9’30' 2.14’30” 3. 20’30”  4.14’30”
Country: Australia
Language: English
Festivals: Rotterdam International Film Festival

James Clayden’s Ghost Paintings series, produced over the past 17 years, represents a bold and unique synthesis of film and video art. Carefully layered textures, colours and sounds become a sort of visual poetry that defies rational analysis, but that nevertheless invokes thought in the viewer.

“Clayden’s film and video work revels in mood, texture, fleeting association … (it) can be cryptic, but it wields an immediate, sensory impact.” — Adrian Martin

The Ghost Paintings were begun in 1986 on Super 8 film, and have been continued in more recent times in the new and liberating medium of digital video. ...Clayden has often spoken of his desire, through art, to strip away the inessential and pierce to the pure heart of things. These Ghost Paintings chew up pieces of classic literature, grand mythology and the daily atrocities reported in the news, in order to arrive at crystalline pictures of doubt and angst.

Adrian Martin is a Melbourne critic, best known for his regular film reviews in The Age

Rotterdam International Film Festival - Catalogue note:
Two sections from a four part work, each able to stand alone. Each is an intense exploration combining fragments of an encounter between characters in a narrative we cannot fully grasp, and shards of dialogue with images of people, interior spaces and locations pushed by the possibilities of digital technology to the point of abstract forms. Meanings rise to the surface and disappear, hints of emotional turmoil between the three or four actors dissolve into moments of painterly beauty, almost as if inspired by a Francis Bacon painting. And the analogy is not inappropriate as these characters also seem to be trapped in space and in existential dilemmas that we cannot fully fathom, just as are Bacon's twisted figures.

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Hamlet X

Director & Producer: James Clayden
Cast: Tom Wright, Helen Hopkins, Faruk Avdi, Shelley Lasica

Runtime: 118'
Country: Australia
Language: English
Festivals: Melbourne International Film Festival, 2004
Commonwealth Film Festival, UK, 2005
London Australian Film Festival, 2005
Buenos Aires Film Festival, 2004

"In this digital film, made in 2003 by Melbourne artist James Clayden, there are dread-filled images reminiscent of the gruesome crime shows that are so popular on our television screens at present: a man's naked body on the floor; a starkly neon-lit tram stop; a woman looking into the camera and undressing; two men standing over a third, interrogation-style; the grainy flash of a small child's face; an abandoned loft that seems to simultaneously receive and empty out all who pass through it. But the narrative of sex, violence and power comes to us in splinters (is it remembered, dreamed, reconstructed?) as does the faint echo of Shakespeare's Hamlet. A powerfully atmospheric and suggestive work, with luminous performances from Helen Hopkins, Tom Wright and Shelley Lasica, and a haunting musical score by Ad Hoc."

Adrian Martin, film reviewer for The Age

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The Marey Project

Director & Producer: James Clayden
Cast: Helen Hopkins, Ian Scott, Kevin Hopkins

Runtime: 90'
Country: Australia
Language: English
Festivals: Melbourne International Film Festival

A mysterious mix of loss and longing that investigates a man's imaginings, taking him to the edge of the abyss before he discovers what it is he needs most. Experimenting with a host of strange phenomena including phantoms from his past and present, Walter Hey confronts a power that could hold the key to his deepest dreams... or darkest nightmares. The Marey Project is a challenging new work inspired by the photographic and chrono-photographic experiments of the 19th century French physiologist E. J. Marey. It is an eerie work, with intriguing whispers, reminiscent of Chris Marker's La Jetée (1962) in its clash of science with humanity.

"Local artist James Clayden has long been known for his painting and theatre work, but in recent years his innovative experiments with film and video have come to the fore. The Marey Project (referring to the pioneering cinema inventor Etienne-Jules Marey) mixes Clayden's penchant for abstraction with strong narrative elements: a series of kinky sex murders, and the making of a film. It is a powerful, remarkable and mysterious piece, among the peaks of recent Australian cinema."

Adrian Martin, The Age

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The Desealer

Writer, Director & Producer: James Clayden
Cast: Meg White and Luke Ryan

Runtime: 60'
Country: Australia
Language: English
Festivals: Melbourne International Film Festival, Brisbane International Film Festival.

A young man walks into an empty building that is undergoing reconstruction. He is told he must leave the site for safety reasons. Confused, he tries to explain to a group gathered in discussion that this is the hotel he has been living in for the past eight weeks. They tell him he must be mistaken, as it has been in this state for over three months awaiting permits for building to take place. He is escorted from the building. A young woman from the group follows him out onto the street, suggesting if he hasn’t anywhere to stay, she has a spare room he could use for a couple of nights until he gets his bearings. He takes her up on her offer.

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