The Occasional Advent series (10 x 1-2 mins*, 2022, HD video)
View the series on Mattflix
The Occasional Advent series is made up of ten very short films – seasonally-themed – which were released advent calendar like (i.e. one by one) between the 1st and 24th December 2022. A new one appeared every two to three days, where it joined the others.
They each last between 1-2 mins and involve quite a lot of filmmaking glee, variation, and stop-motion.
*(there is, technically, an eleventh part: a 55 second trailer which explains/sets up the premise behind this)
Niebla (7 mins 20 secs, 2021, HD video)
This fourth (and final) episode in ‘The Variations’ cycle includes: two more adverts, considerations of the future, a multiple projection spectacular in miniature, a riverine jaunt, much fog, and an ending x 2.
Besides that it also provided an opportunity to use the last reel of film in the fridge.
The Orrery (6.75 mins, 2021, HD video)
Part three of ‘The Variations’ cycle, incorporating: stop-motion, time lapse, live action, mixed media animation, and analogue and digital media.
Taking a playfully structuralist approach (think: Hollis Frampton at his most benign), each video reworks recurrent motifs, imagery, and narrative tropes, parlaying them into an extended, ever-evolving open ended cine-anagram.
(in this episode there are actual anagrams, too)
Glad Hand/Sad Hand (7 mins, 2021, HD video)
A newsletter that turned into a film about hands (fast forwarding through slow times).
Advertisements for myself (the film) (8 mins, 2021, HD video)
A promotional vehicle with lane-changing tendencies, but both hands kept on the wheel at all times.
Despite sharing the same name as my #advertsformyself project this is a standalone 8 min video, featuring a whole lot of new material (75% non ad related!). This is the first in an intended series of four.
Advertisements for myself (12 x 1 min*, 2020, HD video)
View the series on Instagram and Facebook at #advertsformyself or, all gathered together, on Vimeo
I’d been wanting to make some advert-shaped pieces for a while: lo fi but formally venturesome, spirited but slightly gauche. And then the precarity of my work situation suddenly gave me a subject!
These were made primarily for the web: so bearing in mind the particular constraints around brevity, form, and the frame size at which they’d be viewed…
After a couple of episodes a Canadian friend wrote to ask whether things were okay, which was kind. I explained that, yep, the Fine Art school is closing down, and nope, I had no idea what they were doing with me – but I’m still employed at the moment, and the University occasionally makes reassuring noises, but then again… so it’s kind of a dangling thing. Like Saul Bellow’s ‘The Dangling Man’? Maybe…
*(there is, technically, a thirteenth part: the 39 second teaser trailer, which sets up the premise behind this)
My summer with Raúl (12.5 mins, 2019, HD video)
A newsletter meets home movie, made by an experimental filmmaker who was constructing a papier mâché skeleton but whose leg (the filmmaker’s) suddenly went wrong. It got fixed, but (spoiler alert) that’s just kind of incidental.
Possibly a diary but probably not a documentary: this is a play with form, animated with glee, edited with joy.
Magic Explained (7 mins, 2019, Super 8 on HD)
Prestidigitation before the age of the pixel. Very lively stop motion and open shutter piece, all done in camera – but transferred to video for ease of viewing.
See the first 2 mins HERE
Prizewinner at Chicago Underground Film Festival.
a celebration of sides (4 mins, 2019, HD video)
My contribution to the group exhibition 1d for Abroad at TINTYPE gallery: a perky 4 minute consideration (made up) of a whole lot of postcards.
A very brief glimpse available HERE
The Popular Touch (23 mins, 2018, HD video)
Work, film, work, film, work – day to day – week to week. This is a home movie domestic comedy experimental film drama. Autobiography too. It’s also part four of an ever-growing trilogy.
Starting in 2003 I decided to make a series of pieces alongside my regular films, a strand that would constitute an ongoing fictional autobiography. But as all creative work is, to some extent, autobiographical, and as I appear in most of my films, and all the people in these films are who they say they are, then what made this different from the rest – or from real life, really – became kind of blurred. Fuzzy even.
So this is fuzzy fiction – latest in the line. Suitable for All.
Introductory 2 min extract available HERE
gadabout (guided by pigeons) (5.5 mins, 2017, HD video)
Using the Islington Gazette and local pigeons as my guides I strolled, re-strolled, and strolled some more along the Essex Road: updown, downup. Paving stones, buses. Railings railings railings. More buses. Abandoned dummies and mystery blotching on the concrete – is that gum or lichen? – as shadows sundial the day away.
A combination of live action, stop motion and table top animation – my contribution to Essex Road IV draws on the glee of motion through cinematic artifice: a 25 fps flick book of a film.
Watch film HERE
SKIPPER (mistic speech) (12.5 mins, 2016, HD video)
Circles, holes, cats, ribbons, ducks, flat furniture and moth. Experimental and domestic, no story but much glee.
p.s. The strange spelling of mystic in the title is deliberate. It comes from a translation of Aristotle’s ‘Metaphysics’ where it talks about things being “… as in a riddle, or with a cloudy voice… mistic speech”. Some condensed vapour also features…
The Riddle (ghost chair) (11 mins, 2014, HD video)
Experimental but heartfelt, all fiction + mostly video.
Featuring: phantoms, parakeets, some animation, much smoke, Super 8 hi-jinks, several actors.
This is: an extrapolation from ‘Making things meaningful’ (2003), a deviation from the first paragraph of ‘The Riddle’ (1812), a science fiction story, a fairytale, a consideration of representation and form PLUS several science explorations by the filmmaker.
Kodachrome 40, 50, 60… go (11.5 mins, 2014, Super 8 + 35mm slide projection/live performance)
Spoken word, multi projection piece. A fever dream vision of dwindling technologies – and another all analogue foray.
See trailer HERE
The SEVEN Wonders (19.5 mins, 2012, HD video)
The tenth episode in the ongoing Badger series. Themes? Living in the culture of the copy; originality and ownership; inexplicable illness; life on other planets. And wonder, times seven.
Prizewinner at FLEX festival.
We Are Time (11.5 mins, 2012/13, 16mm + vinyl record/live performance)
Performance piece with intensely worked time lapse, stop motion and open shutter (celluloid) film projection. And very live sound too – voice, vinyl record and audio cassette adding to the all analogue mix.
See trailer HERE
PAUL TARRAGÓ 