Raban started making films (around 1970), having studied painting.
His concerns with the relationships between
nature and the filmic process, that would become inscribed into some of
his early film work, could be found in his earlier approach to painting.
In his series 'Wave Prints' he spilled oil paint onto the sea and traced
the waves onto sheets of paper. He wrapped canvas around a tree trunk and
re-visited it, adding washes of coloured dye until finally removing it,
finding the effects of the weather and natural decay had produced
"...self-formed marks on the canvas... the product of direct organic time
process". This interest in process and 'duration' (what Peter Gidal calls
"a material piece of time") would bring him into contact with like-minded
artists who were engaging with film.
In the early 1970s, as a
member of the London Filmmakers' Co-Operative, Raban would combine the
co-op ethos of hard line politics, rigorous intellectualism and formal
experimentation to produce some of the most enduring work of the period.
As part of the 'Filmaktion' group he would experiment in the realm of
'expanded cinema', a film form that would later become aligned with
'installation' art. In these pieces, the relationship between audience,
theatre, projector and light beam were all engaged in deconstructing the
conventional apparatus of cinema - a project that was in keeping with the
radical politics of the time.
In Take Measure (1973) he physically
unwound the film through the audience from projector to screen; Diagonal
(1973) used three projector beams extending beyond the screen into the
theatre space and centred on the workings of the projector gate. 2'45"
(1973) recorded and repeatedly re-filmed the event of projection and
interaction with the audience, screen and filmmaker. These pieces are some
of the most resonant (and characteristically witty) of the period whilst
also providing clues for themes that he would continue to develop.
