A Completely Novel Series of Films … The Miller & the Sweep (with Rob Gawthrop)

5 mins 16mm silent  1984

Dust, grain, flour. Negative/positive; film ‘history’ re/presentation, figure antics and play.

‘Jo Millett and Rob Gawthrop’s film is a re-make of a British film of 1898 by George Albert Smith in which the miller and the sweep fight each other with soot and flour. In their modern version, the artists show the film in negative and backwards, adding a further reversal to the tonal transformations of the original.’ [From A Century of Artists' Film in Britain at Tate Britain in 2003/4]

Also in 2004 shown at the Curzon Cinema London in association with Hayward Gallery Eyes Lies Illusions;  at Lumiere Cinema, Westminster University Experiments in the Moving Image and performed at the Lamp in Hull.

Excerpt from The Miller & the Sweep from Jo Millett on Vimeo.

Available from Lux