The films of Jeff Keen (1923-2012) are some of the most extreme works of cinema you’ll ever encounter – extremely chaotic, that is, and occasionally extremely violent. You don’t really watch his films in the way you watch most movies, because there’s simply far too much going on: too many frantic edits, too many layers of footage being superimposed, too many slogans and bursts of animation and distortion effects constantly bombarding you. Rather, viewing the late British filmmaker’s works feels overwhelming, almost transfixing, like something monstrous and inescapable is confronting you.
No wonder two galleries have collaborated on showing a pair of pieces from the mid-’70s – a single film of his creates more than enough mayhem for each small space. ‘Rayday Film’ (1968-70), at Hales Gallery, is a sort of crazed homage to comic book superheroes (the title comes from a comic-book Keen himself produced). Sped-up, multi-exposure footage shows Keen’s wife and friends acting the role of various masked or costumed characters, and performing weird, cultish rituals in various locations around Brighton, where they all lived. Thrown into the mad mix are images of toys and dolls being melted, sections of damaged film stock, fragments of stop-motion animation, and a montage of TV clips showing wartime atrocities. Oh, and the soundtrack is a near-constant cacophony of overlaid tracks, forming a pulsing, shrieking vortex of white noise. Needless to say, there isn’t much in the way of a coherent plot. And yet, amidst the sensory assault, certain themes can be picked out: war, and media representations, and the dark mythological energies that lurk beneath the surface of civilised existence.
At Kate MacGarry, a few minutes away, ‘The Cartoon Theatre of Dr. Gaz’ (1976) tackles the same sorts of ideas, but with more emphasis on animation – a lo-fi, stop-motion maelstrom of sketches and cutouts (imagine the surrealism of Monty Python collages, but more disturbingly demented and visceral). And around the walls of both galleries are all sorts of original paintings, props from the films, toy soldiers and comic books and other pop-cultural ephemera collected by Keen. It all makes for a fascinating portrait – both of Keen as a pioneering artist, but also of Western society and its manic, and at times terrifying, excesses.