Vistasound

The shooting of Vistasound commenced in 1977 and centred on a holiday postcard upon the surface of which was pressed a recording of a popular 1950s song. Vistasound then developed by raising questions around the associations that are made between the words in songs and particular places. Though music can function in a variety of ways in film, within dominant cinema it is generally used to manipulate the audience emotionally. Vistasound attempts to oppose such manipulations by opening a critical space such that the relation between the various sound images, (music, sound ‘effects’, spoken words, etc.), and the visual images (that of the film-on-the-screen, the photographs, people and places shown in it), are consciously understood in relation to the film’s overall construction.

Founded in 1966, the London Film-Makers’ Co-operative started life at Better Books, a counter-culture bookshop on Charing Cross Road, where a group led by poet Bob Cobbing and filmmakers Stephen Dwoskin and Jeff Keen met to screen films. Initially inspired by the activities of the New American Cinema Group in New York, the London Co-op grew into a pioneering organisation that incorporated a film workshop, cinema space and distribution office. During its four-decade history, the Co-op played a crucial role in establishing film as an art form in the UK and participated in a vibrant international film scene. This BFI Player collection brings together new scans of films distributed by and/or produced at the London Co-op.