Hook, Spill, Cry Your Eyes Out
Digital video, duration: 02:26 (2020-2024)
EXHIBITIONS
The Model, Sligo, gallery installation as part of
Súitú, the aemi 2023 Touring Programme
The LAB Gallery, Dublin, as part of ARC MA show Unassembled, 2020
Shortlisted for the RDS Visual Art Awards, 2020
INFO
A headfirst rush into the capitalist, urban landscape, using dynamic camerawork and canny editing.
Productivity, optimisation, constant forward motion. In this experimental short from artist and filmmaker Lisa Freeman, frenetic camerawork and quickfire editing convey the body’s lacklustre requirement to always be working in our capitalist society. Using glimpses of concrete environments, bodies on treadmills, crash-test dummies, and other ubiquitous urban images, and melding these with a soundscape of ragged breathing and disjointed conversations, Hook, Spill, Cry Your Eyes Out provides a cutting commentary on what our society inflates with importance.
– Sophie Tupholme, IFFR
The work touches on things that are inflated; bills, lungs, bellies, airbags, egos
Lisa Freeman‘s Hook, Spill, Cry Your Eyes Out is a breakdown and blitz of the man-made and its stresses on mind and body. In a brief but packed runtime, Freeman takes on a dash through overstuffed, hectic modern existence. Her spasmodic yet pointedly eliding camerawork and propulsive editing throws the spectator from pip to the post, through a variety of scenarios and distinctly urban, constructed spaces where the overriding impression is of a hyperventilating rat race. The film depicts a life and gaze governed by the demand to keep going and going which is the paramount tenet of any neoliberal, capitalist society.
Lisa Freeman‘s Hook, Spill, Cry Your Eyes Out is a breakdown and blitz of the man-made and its stresses on mind and body. In a brief but packed runtime, Freeman takes on a dash through overstuffed, hectic modern existence. Her spasmodic yet pointedly eliding camerawork and propulsive editing throws the spectator from pip to the post, through a variety of scenarios and distinctly urban, constructed spaces where the overriding impression is of a hyperventilating rat race. The film depicts a life and gaze governed by the demand to keep going and going which is the paramount tenet of any neoliberal, capitalist society.
- Ruairí McCann, film critic and programmer
Text commissioned by aemi to accompany 'Súitú', an aemi touring programme featuring films by: Fábio Andrade (Brazil), Susan Hughes (Northern Ireland), Morgan Quaintance (UK), Bárbara Lago (Argentina), Sofia Theodore-Pierce (USA), Lisa Freeman (Ireland) and Holly Márie Parnell (Ireland). Read Ruairí's text in full on the aemi website.
Text commissioned by aemi to accompany 'Súitú', an aemi touring programme featuring films by: Fábio Andrade (Brazil), Susan Hughes (Northern Ireland), Morgan Quaintance (UK), Bárbara Lago (Argentina), Sofia Theodore-Pierce (USA), Lisa Freeman (Ireland) and Holly Márie Parnell (Ireland). Read Ruairí's text in full on the aemi website.
SCREENINGS
International Film Festival Rotterdam, 2025
Included in Súitú, the aemi 2023 Touring Programme:
Irish Film Institute, Dublin, IE
The Model, Sligo, IE
Black Hole Studio, Roscommon, IE
WORM, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Filmhuis Cavia, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Galleri Format, Malmö, Sweden
Filmform, Stockholm, Sweden
South Tipperary Arts Centre, Clonmel, IE
Mermaid Arts Centre, Bray, IE
Belfast Film Festival, Northern Ireland
Cork International Film Festival, IE
