Mark Lewis is one of Canada’s most renowned and internationally acclaimed artists working in digital and film moving image media and photography. Currently based out of London, England, his work was recently featured at the 53rd Venice Biennale.
“These two short documentaries are much more than an amplification of Mark Lewis’s lauded artwork, although they directly relate to the film installations that took this year’s Venice Biennale by storm. They fuse his curiosity toward historical filmmaking techniques with a carefully aestheticized approach to cinema as both a fan-based and industrialized cultural phenomenon.” – Noah Cowan, Toronto International Film Festival
BACKSTORY
Dir. Mark Lewis | 2009 | USA | 39 mins.
In this documentary, Lewis has created an imaginative portrait of the founders of rear projection, the Hansards – a father and son team – who were responsible for much of the rear projection techniques used in 1920’s Hollywood films. In rear screen projections, actors stand in front of a translucent screen while film is projected from the rear. This style of projections, best known for its use in revealing the outside scenes out of car, taxi and train windows, was used brilliantly by Stanley Kubrick in his film 2001: A Space Odyssey and director Alfred Hitchcock in the film Notorious.
CINEMA MUSEUM
Dir. Mark Lewis | 2008 | Canada | 36 mins.
Mark Lewis’ camera gives us a guided tour through a private museum in South London full of cinema ephemera including ancient cameras, film cans and classic movie posters.
