Stuart Croft: Eternal Return

Stuart Croft (1970-2015), a talented artist-filmmaker from Leeds, imaginatively collapsed the boundaries between the art gallery and cinema. His journey took him from Lawnswood School in Leeds to exhibitions in New York, Venice, and Beijing.

Croft’s work subverts genre conventions and narrative expectations in a playful and thought-provoking way. LIFF presents a spotlight on films that inspired Croft’s unique vision, paired with his own looping moving image works. His film set murder mystery Century City screens with Luis Buñuel’s classic confined narrative The Exterminating Angel.

 His shapeshifting noir revenger Hit pairs with Jean Pierre Melville’s ice cool thriller Le Samouraï, and his neverending ghost story The Death Waltz accompanies William Greaves’s reflexive cinema landmark Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One. Croft’s other influences range from classic Hollywood genre films like Singin’ in the Rain to the nested narratives of Wojciech Has’s The Saragossa Manuscript.

Presented in partnership with Leeds Art Gallery and the Stuart Croft Foundation, this spotlight is designed to complement the immersive exhibition Stuart Croft: Eternal Return at Leeds Art Gallery (8 November – 6 April).