Guest
John Maybury’s dark, queer state of the nation film starring Tilda Swinton and Rupert Everett. The media is lampooned, alluring black humour is deliciously if painfully proffered, and technical innovation rules. A partially-evil twin to Jarman’s The Garden. Maybury draws on his rich history of Super 8 and pop video experimentation and looks at AIDS, drugs, rape, gay-bashing, ignorance, gender identity, race riots and S&M. Remembrance of Things Fast represents the culmination of Maybury’s work in video, which has developed alongside the technology itself. Starring Tilda Swinton and Rupert Everett in lead roles, the tape confronts the conventions of world television and satellite broadcast, drawing on the fragmentary nature of the medium and the cliches of the three minute attention span. At the same time, it replaces bland mainstream images with darker, more satirical observations and studies. The environment is surreal, a virtual reality television land of landscapes and imaginary cities, enhanced by Marvin Black’s dark, dense soundtrack. It is a cyberspace where the impossible is all too possible. Within this parallel world, a series of archetypes act, observe and comment, informed by a strong sexual sensibility. ’..a mesmerising, sometimes hysterically funny, cinematic bricolage with a strong sexual and mostly gay sensibility’. - Cordelia Swann
