CINQUE ONDE (James Macgillivray, Italy/Canada, 2003, 16mm)
Description: Cinque Onde means “five waves”. It was filmed at “five earths” in Italy. The wave, known as lamella is depicted here.
LAKE OF THE SPIRITS (Timoleon Wilkins, USA, 1998, 16mm)
Description: The scene is a visit to Pyramid Lake, western Nevada, early summer, with a good friend. Somewhat less concerned with myths of the old west than its predecessor, BLUE SUN WESTERN, this film paints a portrait of a mystic and beautiful landscape - itself a living character of the pre-historic west. In this locale the sun's light is both emitted from, and reflected by blue-black depths: coral-like rock formations provide the backdrop for a shadow-play of vibrations extending beyond the lake's ancient basin. Outside of time, these ripples echo through neon boulevards of present day, an 1800s-era cemetery, and back again - always in the formidable presence of the pyramid. On the soundtrack, a ghostly chorus rises and gives way to a ballad for a cowboy bandit - an extension of shared romantic hope.
"The most successful metaphoric envisionment of the desert that I've seen in many years." - Stan Brakhage
MEDITATION #1. LOST DOG (Jamie Hull, USA, 1993, 16mm)
Artist Statement: "The essential will of film is kinetic and temporal, the last of an erotic science, convulsive in its most primal nature. It comes to us in the blink of the eye, the eruption of the flare, the fracturing of light into form. All culminating with the dissolution of the moment the artifact of breath where time and memory intersects with the excitation of the eye to look to see to search out, always aware that the succession of stills that we shape, that we are cutting, splicing, and letting go are at the same time the utterances of our own annihilation and self discovery." J
FILM DIARY (David Borengasser, USA, 2006, 16mm)
Artist Statement: Because celluloid exists independently of its creator by way of its stubborn serendipity and physical tangibility. Filmmakers in the age of video who choose to work with this “living” film do so for a reason. I use celluloid because its mortality resembles my own. I am not particularly interested in sharing my perception of the world, but rather I want to perceive the world through the eyes of another and then share that experience with an audience. When we realize that film itself views the world subjectively through the eyes of its film stock, then perhaps we can better understand our limited ability to know the world outside of body and mind.
ELSEWHERE (Luke Sieczek, USA, 2005, 16mm)
TIE Review: Through a superb union of form and content, Sieczek haunts the viewer with his ethereal images extracted from daily life. Views of vacant domestic spaces pervade in this quiet hand-processed film. There is a dated quality to the interiors Sieczek includes, evident in the ornate fixtures and the greasy floral wallpaper. The film presents some indefinable thing that lives in the cracks of these unoccupied rooms, something phantasmal or supernatural. The setting of the film is not confined behind walls. Exterior views are frequent, but they provide no escape from the film’s haunted world. This same white noise is captured in the semi-audible soundscape that the artist pairs with his images.
The effects of the processing seem very well designed. The ghost of film perforation passes back and forth over the image, limiting our already murky vision of Sieczek’s fey Elsewhere. -Noah Manos, TIE
AUGUST LIGHT (FOR EMILY) (Madison Brookshire, USA, 2006, 16mm)
Artist Statement: Now matter how far I am from a thing, I feel close to it by looking at it. Distance is deceptive that way. Because we’re really right next to everything we look at. Vision brings us up beside things, so close to everything that we can’t see it. But that distance is also infinite. Worlds of space and depth just from my finger to my thumb. And film is like that, too. It’s looking at the world with your nose pressed up to the glass. And, for me, my breath starts to fog the view, but that’s another kind of seeing, too. It’s very thin, the light. Barely there at all. But there’s nothing else. So, for me, film opens up these spaces. Each cut can be an opening in the film instead of a stitch. So much editing is involved in suturing, really slamming things into one another. And it can be amazing. But there’s another kind of editing, one that uses cuts to actually increase the distance between things. Each cut a chasm. The film a field on which different entities live. Not a line, but a constellation. Each thing for itself. Always from zero. Openning the distance. Los Angeles 2006