David Leister

Harry's perfectly normal adopted son Alan becomes disfigured by a Lollipop lady and thus becomes the boy with the big face and has to live through lives challenges due to alarming appearence.

Then a rising star on London’s stand-up circuit, in the mid-90s Harry Hill made a series of 16mm short films with experimental filmmaker and projectionist David Leister, full of madcap comedic flair and DIY spirit.

Following a fire in the studio, this film is a result of the after-effects of the smoke damage. The smoke left a negative imprint on every surface, in every drawer, in every box. Solid marks and traces remained ‘fixed’ as photographs, ‘exposed’ as photograms. These ‘negatives’ are re-exposed as a 16mm film.

The greatest British film company emblematically deconstructed.

John and Marge Schlintz have lived across the street from my parents old house in Franklin, Wisconsin, ever since I can remember. John always seemed to be cutting grass, and always in a different pattern. I always wondered about this. So 50 years later I asked him.

Resembling a lost instructional film, Medicine Box draws attention to the repeated cycle of medical ingestion and how a small pill can have such a large effect on the human body.

Optical printing brings to life the Bride of Frankenstein. The film is re-appropriated, re-animated and given another life via the filmmaker's 16mm laboratory. Visually hovering between the conscious and unconscious, the film’s frame lines shift between lucid imagery and unfocused narrative.

Sally Rand's famous Bubble Dance routine is re-created and reprinted in a 3D-ish effect, this time with extra added foley.

The Masque of the Red Safelight delivers a warning to an out-of-focus gathering, with a pinch of vinegar syndrome. A degraded archive print is preserved under glass along with a crunchy optical soundtrack, with the viewer struggling to see through the fogged emulsion and shivering frame line.

A 35mm trailer print of Mission Impossible is cut up, dismantled, refilmed, replayed, reassembled, re-edited with tape and scissors and repeated to abstraction. Printed by torchlight and developed in a bucket.

Starts Wednesday steals from a selection of forgotten 35mm cinema 'snipes' that offer days of the week for a film that never arrives.

A faded film ending from the 1966 Royal Ballet of Prokifiev’s Romeo and Juliet. Fonteyn and Nureyev receive endless appreciation, taking a bow in front of a non-existent audience whilst still in performance mode.

Actions speak louder than words in this cryptic re-appropriation of 16mm found footage about selling insurance. A film where you need to read between the lines.

In this town, I reckon that every place has had a coat of paint since I've lived here. There's always a bit of gloss drying somewhere

Set to the recollected soundtrack from the film ‘Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge’, 100 Foot Steps is an uneasy walk in the woods. Music and birdsong create a sense of familiarity as the woman takes her steps, leading us to an abrupt end. The juxtaposition of image and sound creates an artificial layer of intertwined narratives without any resolution.

The 16mm image of domestic blinds also forms the optical soundtrack, making the contained domestic environment dazzle.

A simple studio ident is deconstructed to reveal more than you’d expect about what lies behind the image of Hollywood.

Then a rising star on London’s stand-up circuit, in the mid-90s Harry Hill made a series of 16mm short films with experimental filmmaker and projectionist David Leister, full of madcap comedic flair and DIY spirit.