“Waiting…"

On Thursday February 17^th the Lighthouse Cinema Wolverhampton is the venue for “Waiting” a screening of films produced by Graphic Communication students in response to the question “what is waiting?”. The English Oxford Dictionary’s generic definition; “the delay in a meal while we await the arrival of someone" is an example we probably all recognise and yet there are many others more mundane, more dramatic. The act of waiting can bring with it an auto-response vocabulary of words and gestures we use to deal with routine delays, or it can initiate the unexpected by suddenly relocating us to a unique moment in time with its own personal and intense narrative.

Approaches and ideas draw on occurrences of waiting in everyday life, popular culture and film, and were supported by visits to Birmingham’s Eastside District and the Liverpool Biennale; whilst the filmmaking process fully engaged many students for the first time with the skills of writing, direction and editing.

The screening schedule comprises fifty eight films, each approximately a minute in duration and initiated through individual interpretations of the theme. Sequences are informed by diverse influences including amongst them; re presentations of personal narratives, time motion audits of daily routines, deconstructions of game show fragments, references to contemporary art practice, the semiotics of medical drama, the intertextual language of film, the syntax of call queuing systems, and manipulated rituals of celebration and performance.

The waiting screening starts at 12.15 pm on Thursday February 17th