Rushes Grade Omer Fast's Nostalgia

Nostalgia, a new three-part film installation by artist Omer Fast opens at the South London Gallery on October 7 2009.
Graded at Rushes by colourist Denny Cooper, the film recently won Fast the 2009 Nationalgalerie Prize for Young Art, thought of as the German equivalent of the Turner Prize.
Rushes completed work on one strand of this three-part art installation piece, which is a compelling exploration of transcontinental migration.
This story was inspired by a conversation between the artist and a west African national seeking asylum in London. While not a straightforward adaptation of his experiences, the work picks up on one strand from his life story and embeds it in several scenes that repeat in each film.
One part depicts a migrant from a dystopian Britain seeking asylum in Africa. This narrative is presented alongside an extract of original footage and a dramatisation of an encounter between the artist and an asylum seeker in Britain. Deliberately combining these disparate elements, Fast presents a contemporary recollection of displacement and loss in a film narrative that is set in the future, but which appears to have been produced in the past.
Cooper commented: "Omer and DOP Nina Kellgren were seeking a very specific look. The theme of displacement was conveyed through the visual anachronism of sepia tones applied to modern settings.
"Though Omer usually shoots on pristine data, he opted in this case for the inherent, grainy texture of 16mm film to enhance this aesthetic. The grade was all about unobtrusively exploring the artistic dimension of this approach whilst ensuring image - integrity through a compressed HD workflow and projection."
Fast's installation open at the South London Gallery on October 7 and the Berkeley Art Museum, California on October 25. It is currently also on show at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin.
(KMcA/BMcC)