Morgan Quaintance

The proposed metaphysical highs of psychedelic drugs versus the harsh actualities of concrete metropolitan life. These two opposing realities form the backdrop of an adolescent encounter in the city of London, told through still images and written narration.

Letter from Tokyo is a documentary film that looks at art, culture and politics in Tokyo, Japan. Shot over three months during the summer of 2018, and with a particular focus on grass roots arts initiatives, the use of public space, and queer politics, the film provides a snapshot of Japan’s capital in the run up to the 2020 olympics.

Numerology. 2023. Great Britain. Directed by Morgan Quaintance. 3 min.

What kind of power is accessible through the discovery of a voice? Morgan Quaintance interlinks two anti-racist and anti-authoritarian liberation movements in South London and Chicago’s South Side with his own biography to explore what happens when speech is ignored, and the voice fades.

RIP, Rollostraat 18 and Sixth Form Acid are all part of a series of ‘miniature’ films that Quaintance is continually producing. These short films are all under three minutes long and allow the filmmaker to explore a single formal or conceptual idea. The process of realisation can either be loose and improvisatory or time intensive and heavily edited. Each of the films uses either archival material, or footage Quaintance has shot using a DV of High 8 video camera. Using these mediums, instead of 16mm, allows for quicker production and a more intuitive approach.

no sound, loop

A Better World. 2022. Great Britain. Directed by Morgan Quaintance. 3 min.

Pitched between documentary and abstraction ‘Anne, Richard and Paul’ is a portrait of the experimental music and performance trio Bow Gamelan Ensemble, comprising archival footage, 16mm film and SD video.

Walking Distance uses footage of Mount Fuji from Quaintance’s personal archive. It combines this material with an exploration of the distances covered and locations visited during a period of research and production in Tokyo during April 2024.

“Forever Prisoner”, mixed media

Commissioned for S-AIR’s 2020 residency programme, Letter from Sapporo (2021) is a collage film offering a glimpse of daily life in the Japanese city of Sapporo. The film is the product of approximately 16 participants capturing material with their smartphones. Focusing on moments of stillness, intimacy, labour and humour, disparate material is wedded into a compelling and coherent whole by Quaintance’s subtle editing, original music and vivid sound design.

no sound, loop

An installation echoing post-election billboard vandalism in Dakar, Senegal.

Strawberries is part of a series of ‘miniature’ films that Quaintance is continually producing. These short films are all under three minutes long and allow the filmmaker to explore a single formal or conceptual idea. The process of realisation can either be loose and improvisatory or time intensive and heavily edited. Each of the films uses either archival material, or footage Quaintance has shot using a DV of High 8 video camera. Using these mediums, instead of 16mm, allows for quicker production and a more intuitive approach.

A portrait of Jamaican-born artistic polymath Barbara Samuels. Featuring an account of her first generation, diasporic experience in Southend and London, and her discovery of hippiedom and the personal freedoms offered by entry into creative life.

Palace. 2022. Great Britain. Directed by Morgan Quaintance. 3 min.

The film explores notions of home and belonging in contemporary society. Comprising interviews with workers at the Edo Tokyo Open Air Architecture Museum in Tokyo, and fragments of conversations with renters in that city and London, a productive dialectic opens between the museum’s preserved historical ideal of the domestic and the often unsettling realities of temporary accommodation in modern cities. Combining trademark immersive sound design with impressionistic images and abstractions, Quaintance crafts an austere, oneiric and subtly affecting portrait of residential precarity.

An ongoing series of short shorts that are all under four minutes long. Each explore a single formal, conceptual or structural idea. The process of realisation can either be loose and improvisatory, or time intensive and heavily edited. Each of the films use footage shot with a DV camera, mini VHS or High 8 video camera. Using cheaper and handheld mediums, instead of 16mm (or a larger, more expensive HD digital camera), allows for a quicker, more intuitive and playful approach to production.

A solarised drift across country and the unconscious.

Combining low resolution footage, 16mm film and satellite imagery, Efforts of Nature considers the passage of time, processes of change and dissolution from two distant perspectives: the existential level of the body and the planetary level of shifting geological conditions.