Erota / Afini

The photos were found, together with the two poems, after my great-aunt Tina had died. They formed the basis of the two works, a book made collaboratively with Felipe Ehrenberg and printed at Beau Geste Press (see more about making the book, under Texts). The film made in the same year premiered at the Second International Festival of Avant-Garde Film, National Film Theatre, London in September.

Opening / closing title - "PROJECTIONIST: Re-run film - Do Not Re-Wind". The film in effect is shown twice, from the head to the tail and from the tail to the head. Whilst the projectionist re-threaded the projector, I played a short composition on the grand piano kept in the main auditorium. "The Film of the Book; two sets of photographs with accompanying words and sounds. The image, the word, the sound presented in a simultaneous backwards/forwards state."

"Other structurings of particular interest were Mike Leggett's Erota / Afini, which could be projected forwards and backwards, right way up and upside down, whichever way yielding one combination of rightway up upside down in the imagery and one combination of intelligible sound track (this film also managed to be humorous in a non-distractive fashion and contained a very beautiful and complex superimposing / disuperimposing / zooming in / zooming out with a series of old stills washed in pale greens." - J. Du Cane, Time Out (1973).