-----Original Message-----
From: Ben Cook LUX [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 16 June 2004 13:06
Subject: LUX SALON: STATE OF THE UNION. Wednesday 23 June 7pm[Scanned]


you are invited to:

LUX SALON: STATE OF THE UNION: BRUCE BAILLIE & LENKA CLAYTON

Wednesday 23rd June 7pm for 7.30 start
A US election year special. LUX is pleased to present a new print of Bruce Baillie's legendary American travelogue Quixote (USA, 1964-67), made coast-to-coast over a four year period. Baillie's film is a lyrical, patchwork portrait of the margins of 60s America, from the supermarket aisles to the circus big top. 
Lenka Clayton's concept in Qaeda Quality Question Quickly Quickly Quiet (Germany, 2003) was a simple one - take the 4,100 words from George W.Bush's infamous 'Axis of Evil' speech, and splice them together in alphabetical order. The result is powerful: a mesmerising snapshot of the posturing, rhetoric and obsessions dominating American politics in the aftermath of 11 September.

LUX SALON take place at LUX office. Admission is FREE but booking is essential as space is very limited, please don't book unless you are definitely coming as this deprives others of a place. For Directions see http://www.lux.org.uk/directions.html. To book a place email [log in to unmask]

BRUCE BAILLIE
QUIXOTE
USA, 1964-67, sound, colour, 45mins, 16mm
'Baillie's trip is wedged between two generations of youthful nomads; the Beats (contemporaneous with Hollywood's heydey of Western expansion) on one side, the hippy transhumances (and Easy Rider) on the other. That Quixote could be claimed, at different times, by each is a sign of its hinged position to two vastly different projects. Unlike either generation, Baillie could not be comfortable with the ethos of non-commitment or, for that matter, transcendence. Like both, he would be in but not of, and vice versa, except that in Quixote, these states are emblematic of the conquistador, an altogether diaristic myth.' - from "Quixote And Its Contexts" by Paul Arthur, Film Culture #67-68-69, 1979

LENKA CLAYTON
QAEDA QUALITY QUESTION QUICKLY QUICKLY QUIET
(Germany, 2003, 20 mins, video)
President Bush's first State of the Union Address changed the world. It was broadcast live on the 29th January 2002, four months after the attack on the World Trade Centre, and marked the beginning of a new political era. It was in this speech that Bush began dividing up the world, declaring war on terrorism and naming North Korea, Iran and Iraq as an "axis of evil". 
A speech is more than the sum of its parts. The words that make it up are twisted, negated, spun and stressed into shape so that the listener is unwittingly carried along with it, influenced by much more that what the speaker is saying. This film attempts to remove the political baggage from the speech and to extract only its substance, the 3,814 words which were actually spoken. From an original duration of 48 minutes, just over 18 minutes of alphabetically ordered words remain, no footage has been added and no word omitted.