H2 Meet Nichola Bruce XXXX
See examples of Nichola's work:
Can you tell us about a film you have shown at the Electric Palace or at our film festival?
The first film was a short based on my archive of film from Hastings from 1983 onwards, was Acts of Memory, made in 2001. Rebecca E Marshall designed the titles for it. Then some long ones - I Could Read The Sky, Moonbug, Pale Shadows and also many screenings of other experimental works sometimes independently or through Hastings Filmmakers screenings, or Black Huts Poetry festival, or Shot by the Sea. There is an intimacy to the Electric Palace that creates a more intense way of showing work and also an energy of openness to expanding the cinematic experience to take the work elsewhere, like in a gallery or street or shopping centre.
Do you remember a moment when your love for the moving image was sparked?
Aged 5 standing on my seat in a cinema watching Snow White and the seven dwarfs and being thrilled by the wicked queen.
Can you tell us about a film that you would have liked to make?
Oh so many, especially ones that I’ve written and drawn but not yet found a place to grow them, mostly exploring.
What does filmmaking offer you as an artist?
A way of expressing the multiple layers of visions, sounds feelings streaming inside my head. Getting my inner world out.
Is there something you try to subvert, avoid or rebel against in your work? I like trying to go into places I have not creatively ventured into before. Most funding depends on knowing where you are going. I like getting lost, when I’m making something, I like surprises, and then it might be one moment or sound that leads me out of a struggle into a different place.
How do you plan your work – with a script, storyboard or another method?
Often what I do is hard to explain with longer works, so I draw and write at the same time. I end up with script and storyboard, and then redraw and rewrite every day when filming with cast and crew if needed. And sound can shift the meaning of an image, so when editing always work with that, in parallel from the very earliest stages. But almost everyday I just film things that excite me as an archive of ideas. Some of these moments hold in their own right, some of these moments are just clues to another idea. Small moments find their place and you never know when or where.
Do you need to collaborate to make your work?
No and yes, I’m compulsive, so making work and probably going further in, is a solo activity, but I also love working with others because they open up weird possibilities. People are beautifully weird aren’t they? I presently work a lot with other local filmmakers Sam Sharples mainly editing and Jack Pyke Bruce.
Has living in Hastings influenced your work?
It's embedded in me, I blame the sea.
Is there a difference in producing films for a large screen or making work for online viewing?
Working on a small screen I found we were cutting scenes quicker, and quicker and quicker. A big screen is a landscape in front of you and your eye can follow a small figure travelling across it, like taking the eye for a walk. A smaller screen, a square keyhole into the world, gives you different kind of eye brain exercise. But I love the access of a phone screen, the magic box we carry in our pockets.
Does size matter? It changes things the way I see things.
When we were editing out of the spare office at the Electric Palace we would often screen the work privately in the cinema in the middle of making a film to see if its rhythm or feeling was right on the big screen … and I still continue to do this with work and called in last week to check an edit.
Have developments in camera technology changed the way you work?
I’ve always carried like home movie cameras, the smaller the better. Digital cameras changed the way I made my early films, like the one on the Artist Rachel Whiteread, or Moonbug with the Apollo astronauts, where it would have been impossible going in with a crew, and a lumbering great shoulder camera, it was empowering to film these myself. It changed the dynamic. Every change from film to digital has a different aesthetic. But I like that. Phone cameras are liberating.
Do live audiences in a cinema matter to you?
Yes, you find out about the power of image and sound in ways you never realized, which you get from a crowd, where there is a sort of hidden ether that is transmitted by people experiencing the same thing.
Can you tell us about an unusual event where you have screened your work or attended a film screening?
In Hastings Castle we put up 26 unusually shaped screens, like thought forms, outside in the grounds, some made by some of the Radiator Arts crew and had a large metal brain form sculpted by Lee Dyer, with projections inside. It was called Strangeness of Seeing a personal alphabet of seeing, made with Rebecca E Marshall.
Also loved it when Shot by the Sea did open air screenings at Herstmonceaux Observatory of Science Fiction films with lasers.
Unforgettable memories early days dancing in the street after an Electric Palace Staff party, and on another occasion watching Andrew Kotting blow up his inflatable ‘dead dad’ in the cinema. There’s too many to put down.
What continues to inspire you as a filmmaker or artist?
Waking up.
here are the links to some of the films. Two photos , the working one with drawings i like even if its fuzzy.. the other is a bit lockdown and done quickly .. please feel free to retouch, it needs a photo credit : Photograph by Duncan Pyke.
Acts of Memory: https://vimeo.com/237566144
I Could Read The Sky: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/icouldreadthesky
Moonbug: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Moonbug-Men-Who-Walked-Moon/dp/B07SPWH39X
Pale Shadows - adaptation of part one of Alcina: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/paleshadowsalcina:
The Monument - Rachel Whiteread: https://vimeo.com/159961392
this still is from Pale Shadows - adaptation of part one of Handels Alcina.