Exception and the Rule, The: Mirza/Butler

The Exception and the Rule, Karen Mirza and Brad Butler, Digi Beta/DVcam, Colour/B&W, Sound, 37 minutes, UK/India/Pakistan, 2009 Mirza/Butler’s The Exception and the Rule, filmed in Pakistan and India, is a complex bricolage of formal experiments, overlapping narratives, fictional collaborators and performative quotations that explore Bertolt Brecht’s concept of Lehrstücke so as to ask the simple but urgent question, ‘what is it to make a political film?’. The Exception and the Rule supplements Mirza/Butler's ongoing agitprop project The Museum of Non Participation, which provides a place for workshops, community publishing, street interventions, language classes and public seminars through its various manifestations in Karachi and London. Mirza/Butler recently exhibited work at the Arnolfini, Bristol, Monika Sprüth Philomene Magers, London, the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, Kunsthaus, Zurich, the Architecture and Film Biennale, Graz, the Serpentine Pavilion and at the Thomas Dane Gallery, London. Mirza/Butler also founded the artists’ film production space, no.w.here and currently live and work in London. DVD 2 includes the featurette 'Shot from both Sides' with Karen Mirza and Brad Butler, directed by Mirza/Butler and Gordon Shrigley.