Chris Welsby

! irst one drop of rain, then another, hit the lens, blurring the vistas in front of it. A gust of wind moves the camera, precariously attached to a homemade windmill, and frames the natural scenery. The raindrop is not a stain, nor is the wind a disruption; rather, these elements represent some of the many ways in which nature participates in Chris Welsby's films. The rain, the wind, the tide-these are his intimate co-workers, accompanying his solitary journeys to mountain vistas and coastal estuaries and actively shaping the films' form and temporality.

Introductory overview of New Zealand artists who began working in film and video between 1970 and 1985, following their work up to 2010 and beyond.  This piece was originally titled A Place Near Here and  published in Illusions #35.  It has been significantly updated since then. Back issues of Illusions are available from PO Box 6476, Marion Square, Wellington, New Zealand.

Shore Line I (1977) © Chris Welsby irst one drop of rain, then another, hit the lens, blurring the vistas in front of it. A gust of wind moves the camera, precariously attached to a homemade windmill, and frames the natural scenery. The raindrop is not a stain, nor is the wind a disruption; rather, these elements represent some of the many ways in which nature participates in Chris Welsby's films. The rain, the wind, the tide-these are his intimate co-workers, accompanying his solitary journeys to mountain vistas and coastal estuaries and actively shaping the films' form and temporality. Welsby-born in Exeter, Great Britain in 1948-started his career as a filmmaker in the early 1970s after training as a painter and spending some time working as a sailor. His attentiveness to the structural relationship between landscape and natural systems is an integral part of his work. At the core of Welsby's cinema is a relational process with the environment in which contingency and interaction present a very particular way of understanding technologies and the apparatus of filmmaking. As part of the avant-garde collective London Film-Makers' Coop , Welsby shared an interest in exploring the temporal and material process of film. He immigrated to Canada in 1989, where he became a professor of Film and Digital Media at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia-a post from which he recently retired.