Eelyn Lee Showcases New Work at the Barbican
Last night in Barbican Cinema 2 writer, producer and curator Gareth Evans presented some of the edited results of Eelyn Lee's 5-day Monster Lab. Last week Eelyn led a group of 18 collaborating performers, musicians and artists through an experimental process in the Barbican's studio theatre, to find new ways of creating improvised film. Loosely inspired by Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the project explored notions of monster, demons and fear, using the setting of the estuary to locate the work.
Evans had visited the Lab on Day 4 and observed the process in action. After seeing the three scenes projected in the cinema, his first comment to the audience was:
"...The idea that we would see something translated so profoundly from a theatrical space to a cinematic one in just a handful of days is really extraordinary... the process starts ironically in a theatre space and becomes more cinematic as it goes on. A wonderful paradox..."
Eelyn Lee and long-term editor/composer Francis Morgan-Giles spent three days editing the footage shot by cinematographer Dominik Rippl. The results are three scenes of a monster story: the river; the hideout and the market. Lee says,
'We have enough footage to cut together four more scenes to complete the story cycle. I am really pleased with the results which are dark, full of suspense and evoke a strong sense of the estuary. We have truly created a new visual language through this unique process. It's very exciting.'
Eelyn is currently looking to transfer the process, characters and stories to a real setting along the Thames Estuary and further develop the work to create a feature length film.
