Jeff Keen

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.

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.

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.

This early quick-fire cut-up animation melds machine gunfire with scratched film. The soundtrack was made by Keen in 2007 with a wasp synthesizer and a shortwave radio.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This early quick-fire cut-up animation melds machine gunfire with scratched film. The soundtrack was made by Keen in 2007 with a wasp synthesizer and a shortwave radio.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Experimental animation created using a video pen.

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

Four minutes of heavily cut-up sound and vision with collage, animation and multiple exposures throughout.

Four minutes of heavily cut-up sound and vision with collage, animation and multiple exposures throughout.

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

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.

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

Produced by Jeff Keen for looping in an exhibition context.

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

A deliberately non-synchronous film, shot in 8mm with the sound on tape. Piero Heliczer reads his poem "The Autumn Feast," and the visuals interact with, but does not literally represent, what is read.

Treating apocalyptic and aggressive imagery with silence and slow washes of colour, Jeff Keen exhibits and works against his usual tropes.

From spinning paper guns to pulsing television screens, from zooms, crosscutting and painted film surfaces to burning paper, Jeff Keen uses all the effects at his disposal to make a series of extraordinary animations where movement is never allowed to stop.

Named after the horror film White Zombie and the rom-com Red Dust (both 1932), White Dust follows the friends and family of Keen while they explore archetypal characters of Hollywood and myth. These unresolved episodes look back to American film serials.

This version of Artwar builds from performances with paper masks and implements and various sequences of gunfire.

Jeff Keen dons paper masks and his knitted Artwar jacket, after avoiding bombs and pacing a moonlike landscape.

White Lite is something of a mystical film, evoking the feeling of going 'through the looking glass' to another world, despite the fact it was largely shot in the flat of its director, Jeff Keen. The film greets us with the invitation "meet anti-matter and the bride of the monster", pointing to Keen's love of B-movies (and a reference to Ed Wood's The Bride of the Atom, aka The Bride of the Monster [1955] as it was later known).

White Lite is something of a mystical film, evoking the feeling of going 'through the looking glass' to another world, despite the fact it was largely shot in the flat of its director, Jeff Keen. The film greets us with the invitation "meet anti-matter and the bride of the monster", pointing to Keen's love of B-movies (and a reference to Ed Wood's The Bride of the Atom, aka The Bride of the Monster [1955] as it was later known).

Various different holiday locations ar joined together through the pleasures of ice cream in The Mutt & Jeff Icecream Sundae, while in Mothman the strange title character crawls through roof-top windows and we see footage of a funfair. These two films have many similarities with the other Keen diary movies but have always been shown in this pairing, and under this title.

Comics, monsters and a zombified Keen are gently desecrated in this paint-flecked film that also features a picture of Jackie Keen crying heart-shaped tears.

Includes: Stolen Moments (1972), Lone Star (1975), Godzilla – Last of the Creatures (1976) and Rosa Canina (1970s).

The Artwar loops were made for non-cinematic exhibition and go from harsh film surface noise to colour bars and other video effects filmed from the TV. These can be watched as individual films or as loops.

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.

Silent 8mm film.

Action and animation are pushed to the extreme in this frenetic film. Keen makes references to the God-like status of the director, the framed world of the cinema and the history of popular entertainment.

The Pink Auto, screened using two projectors, is one of the very first examples of expanded cinema. Jeff Keen walks as a zombie and carry his dead bride through brown English fields.