In Girum

This innovative collaboration between director Nick Cope and electroacoustic composer Dr Tim Howle has produced a clever and interesting fusion of sound and image, which takes as its subject and inspiration the bright flashing lights and dizzying lateral movements of a spinning fairground ride.

If you were to take a 30 second excerpt from this film and include it in a longer feature with some kind of context then it could prove to be a very effective piece of filmmaking, but the problem is that at nearly seven minutes in length and with no apparent payoff or raison d’être, this film just feels too gratuitous.

Nick Cope uses some innovative camera techniques to generate a kaleidoscopic perspective on his subject matter and, with the aid of Tim Howle’s experimental composition, he succeeds in creating the unsettling sensation of an alien, extraterrestrial environment in the close-ups of the ride.

Be that as it may, I’m not convinced that this alone justifies the running time of the feature and, given the lack of progression or transition in the piece, I think this is best filed under experimental.