The EFS Collection | Irish Artist's Film Index

The EFS Collection

Experimental Film Society

This page connects you to EFS, our associate organisation which holds a copy of a number of Irish artists' moving image works that are detailed in the MExIndex.

EFS moving image collections statement

Experimental Film Society (EFS) is an Irish company dedicated to the production, screening and archiving of experimental cinema. It curates screenings of experimental film, mainly by filmmakers and artists associated with it, both nationally and internationally. Its archive holds over fifty feature films and 500 shorts.

EFS was hailed by aemi as “the most active, prolific and intrepid group of experimental filmmakers working in Ireland today.” It concentrates on nurturing film projects which reflect a distinctive cinematic vision developed over its two decades of activity. EFS produces films that are distinguished by an uncompromising devotion to personal, experimental cinema. These films adopt an exploratory, often lyrical approach to filmmaking and foreground mood, atmosphere, visual rhythms, and the sensory interplay of sound and image. EFS grew out of the former Experimental Film Society collective which was formed and managed by the company’s founder and director, filmmaker Rouzbeh Rashidi.

EFS moving image distribution and loans policy

All EFS feature films are available to rent for screening. EFS policy in presenting short films is to do so as full EFS short film programmes curated by, or in consultation with, EFS.

Cinema or gallery exhibition of individual EFS shorts in other contexts can be negotiated directly with the relevant artist or artists. All EFS filmmakers can be contacted through EFS.

External Links

Homo Sapiens Project (161-170)

Through the works of the Experimental Film Society, of which Rashidi is a key member, cinema remains in a state of productive instability. Here, cinema can function as a sketchbook - a way of exploring some of the possible lives of an idea. This is what we encounter in Rashidi’s visceral and abrasive Homo Sapiens Project (161-170) in which he takes apart and reassembles a 35mm trailer for Brain De Palma’s little-loved The Black Dahlia (2006). read more >

Brine Twice Daily

Arkady Feed

Arkady Feed explores the forlorn yet strangely resilient and always evocative post-industrial terrain of Cork's docklands using sounds found in the area by Paul Hegarty and images picked up there by Maximilian Le Cain. read more >

Controle No 6

Constructed over many weeks, Jann surreptitiously performed for the cinema's security cameras, in empty car parks, box office booths and lifts, only later going back to comb through these tapes in an attempt to retrieve the material in which he appears. With movie star looks and an affection for body comedy, Jann could be situated as the Harold Lloyd of the Experimental Film Society of which he forms part (as unlikely as that sounds). read more >

Clandestine

Layering both space and time, Clandestine superimposes imagery and creates entrancing patterns of repetition and startling interruption. Voyaging from one land to another, from found footage to mysteriously evocative scenes shot by the artist, to the pure abstraction of hand-scratched film, it traces a haunting inner logic of memory and discovery. read more >

Saint Francis Didn't Run Numbers

Sister Mary or Mary the Junkie

Sister Mary or Mary the Junkie is an experimental 'found footage' short film. By re-filming imagery from a 35mm theatrical print of a narrative feature, the frame is adapted and reframed, to present a very different kind of film by focussing solely on one single supporting character. read more >

Some Must Watch While Some Must Sleep

At One Fell Swoop