Instant Cinema

Jeff Keen had a chance encounter with a collection of old 78 speed records at a Brighton flea market and used it as an opportunity to create a surrealist film (naming it after the poetry collection by André Breton). A requiem for B movies and the marginalised popular side of cinematic history.

In Cineblatz, the viewer is subjected to a high-impact barrage of evolving images, at once comic and terrifying. Glossy magazines are cut up and reconfigured, newspaper pages are defaced with animated squiggles, comic-book superheroes fly out, over and through at superspeed. Pictures appear only to burn up or be torn apart, toys dance in ferocious stop-motion before melting into pools of plastic decay, a hammer plunges down on an image of the assembled House of Commons - all to a crackly soundtrack of treated shortwave static. It is a hyperkinetic panorama of 1960s popular culture in meltdown, where seemingly nothing stays still for more than a single frame, as the artist ejaculates ideas onto the screen faster than the eye can properly register. Lasting just three minutes, Cineblatz is exhilarating, orgasmic even--but also thoroughly exhausting.

Made between 1970 and 1975, Jeff Keen's films always contain internal layers and films within films. The twenty-four films here include hand-painted work, animation and montage.

Omozap is a gun-wielding wildman and Keen anti-superhero akin to The Punisher. Compulsive animation and action look to the Artwar films and videos to come.

The Artwar face peers through painted celluloid and a barrage of explosions and film noise.

Made to represent an entire cinema programme, Meatdaze consists of six sections that include cartoons, supporting and main features.

Experimental short featuring motorbikes and animation. This is the second version of Jeff Keen's first film; that film became too worn.

This relatively unknown Jeff Keen film presents an insistent series of exquisitely composed action and animation sequences and must be one of the only 8mm 'cinemascope' films in the world

Breakout is an unfinished film and, unusually for Keen, contains a loose narrative. It presents the story of a young man hounded by a large pink Pontiac Continental.

One of Jeff Keen's diary films. Keen made many diary films with his daughter, wife and friends in the late 60s and 70s. These were edited in camera and used multiple exposures. They would then be projected in various combinations though usually as a four-screen.

'Afterblatz 2' was shot on video and screened alongside 'Omozap Terribelis'. It uses the toy 'My First Sony' to present a number of computer-generated drawings.

Stealth bombers hover over crashing waves and ruined land. Using found footage and several thick layers of video, Jeff Keen presents and visceral version of Armageddon

One of Jeff Keen's diary films. Keen made many diary films with his daughter, wife and friends in the late 60s and 70s. These were edited in camera and used multiple exposures. They would then be projected in various combinations though usually as a four-screen. Rosa Canina was always show in the bottom right-hand corner

This bright animation cuts from interiors to exteriors and pushes pictures of Keen at different ages up against violent actions and symbols of violence.

Rayday Film was shown projected in several 100-foot length parts from multiple projectors. The friends and family who featured in costume and character within - like Motler, the Word Killer who reflects Keens preference for action over thinking - performed similar actions in front of the screen. After a final performance in 1976, Keen spliced the parts together so it could be shown according to normal cinematic convention.

Jeff Keen processes his cinematic past in this filmic attack on his back catalogue.