While Morgan Quaintance weaves together personal and historical narratives to lay out a rich, layered universe, his films always feel direct, bare, and immediate. Whether he’s sharing memories of his youth or exploring the echoes of history in race and class, he finds a way, by introducing an edit or a piece of music at the right moment, to tap into the senses.
In this screening—which brings together Quaintance’s moving-image work from the last five years and culminates in the North American premiere of his newest film, Repetitions —archival, autobiographical, and found material are all vehicles for expressionistic studies of memory and modern life. Moving between nonfiction and abstraction, dreamlike textures and kaleidoscopic juxtapositions propel considerations of topics as varied as avant-garde music, industrialized labor, and the working-class London of the 1990s. Quaintance’s recent and ongoing Miniature series, selections from which punctuate the screening program, show that even the most compact gestures can conjure an entire world.
A Better World. 2022. Great Britain. Directed by Morgan Quaintance. 3 min.
Palace. 2022. Great Britain. Directed by Morgan Quaintance. 3 min.
Numerology. 2023. Great Britain. Directed by Morgan Quaintance. 3 min.
Surviving You, Always. 2021. Great Britain. Directed by Morgan Quaintance. 18 min.
RIP. 2022. Great Britain. Directed by Morgan Quaintance. 3 min.
Anne, Richard and Paul. 2018. Great Britain. Directed by Morgan Quaintance. 15 min.
Rollostraat 18. 2022. Great Britain. Directed by Morgan Quaintance. 2 min.
Repetitions. 2022. Great Britain. Directed by Morgan Quaintance. 24 min.
Program approx. 70 min.