Ian Helliwell

Ian Helliwell is an experimental filmmaker based in Brighton, England. Entirely self-taught and self-funded, Helliwell has produced over 50 short films on Super 8 mm film since 1994. His work has been screened at many international avant-garde film festivals, including: the Avanto Festival in Helsinki, Rotterdam Film Festival, Hamburg Short Film Festival, S├│nar in Barcelona, Impakt in Utrecht and Kill Your Timid Notion in Dundee. His 2007 26 minute sound piece Expo 67 - a Radiophonic Collage, has been broadcast on radio stations in England, France and USA His work is notable for its low-fi aesthetic, with Helliwell himself doing everything including producing the visuals and the accompanying music. For this reason, he is more of a fine artist than a filmmaker. However, he is as much a part of the Brighton music scene as the contemporary art scene, and his films are sometimes screened at musical events and concerts. Exploring direct animation techniques, Helliwell applies cheap, domestic materials (such as felt-tip marker pens, household bleach, and sandpaper) to strips of super 8 film which he edits with splicing tape, and then transfers onto mini-dv, via a simple telecine set-up in his bedroom. During the process (which with Helliwell's improvised equipment, simply involves videotaping the images produced by 1 or 2 Super 8 projectors), the reels of film are superimposed onto one another in a combination of different speeds. The video taped results have a charming, homemade psychedelic quality, which feel more intimate and personal than the many similar psychedelic reels produced in the 1960s. Since 2008 he has used a computer for the mastering of his super 8 films, adding a great deal more flexibility to the same basic equipment set-up.