Friday 27 September 2013

Stuart Croft - Century City



Stuart Croft - Century City
8 min 46 sec, continuous gallery loop
As an artist and a film maker, Stuart Croft utilizes the aesthetics and linguistics of cinema and presents it in the context of a gallery. Writing and directing dialogue based narratives, Croft's films often weave together Hollywood styled characters in an endless cycle of story telling. Always shown on loop the films never have a beginning nor an end just an elliptical narrative that folds into itself. 

In Century City, the murder of an actress prompts an illogical, circular phone conversation between a detective in Cape Town and a movie director in Los Angeles. As the plot unravels so does the fiction of the film studio. Lighting rigs, camera's and scenery flats start to interrupt the narrative and thus our attention is directed towards devices and structures deployed in film making.


This is an edited clip from the film (8 min 46 sec) which is played on a loop. Century City was also shown by Open File as part of 'Admitting the Flats' at MK Gallery, May 2012