A series of five hand-painted, step-printed films, each of which is a textured, thus tangible, “nothing.” A series of “nots,” then, in pun, or knots of otherwise invisible energies. 1) The first begins with a semblance of fog clouds rising vertically, an upward lifting waterfall likeness which screens an ephemera of painted shapes that come, at end, to a rhythmic and formal hardness. 2) A progression of blue surreal shapes vanishing in forward movements. 3) A gathering of crystalline forms in primary colors emitting upward-moving flares of multicolored lights, all gradually suggesting an outward momentum. 4) An orange rock-beseeming wall of lights and upward flares suddenly frozen and fading. 5) A mixture of crystal and cellular shapes interacting like layers of a fire of decomposition, fogged, and finally like a palimpsest of melding illuminations.
Filter Films
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A film in the form of a riddle is a special kind of entertainment film, whereby the film’s content must be deduced from the film’s formal structure. “Long seemed invalid the Prophet’s word, – But honored it was, – By the outcome at last: – How odd the madness, how strange a death!”(Ovid, Metamorphoses).
Narziss und Echo
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Starting with a boat swaying on its anchor at the head of an inlet, a landscape of pilings, shore, and forest is slowly revealed by time-lapse photography as the morning fog lifts. While the deep space of the landscape evolves out of the fog-enshrouded flatness of early morning, the camera skips from fixed point to fixed point – suggesting the motion of the human eye while reading.
Narrows Inlet
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An aesthetic study of gymnastic movement, emphasizing its visual and lyrical elements, and creating the “feeling” of movement through the use of slow motion, repetition of movement, dissolves, etc. The movement proceeds sequentially through preparation, strength movements, airborne movements and so on to resolution.
Naosaki
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A dumb jerk (Karl) – who happens to be the author of the most wildly successful underground comic book ever – receives an urgent telephone call from his old skirt (Gretchen). Innocently believing she plans to beg for a reconciliation, he consents to a meeting at her apartment, only to discover she’s hanging out with a trendy group of intellectuals and balling them too. The shock proves too much for Karl for, despite his burgeoning popularity – bolstered by numerous talk-show appearances – Gretchen couldn’t give a rat’s ass about him. He’s still a lousy lay and she’s just now hitting her stride.
Nancy Boy Versus Manly Woman
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A nasty little movie about violation and contamination – physical, geographical and ideological. The sound, built and mixed on a 4-track cassette recorder, was culled from shortwave radio, Italian B-movies, and a perfume advertisement. Chernobyl, AIDS, and sexual assault in a lament for our times.
Name Your Poison It’s a Scream Channel No. 5
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Barbara Martineau became Sara Halprin and made this film to mark the change.
Name Change: A California Film
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In the language of collage, this experimental animation film is a visual interpretation of a story by Albert Camus. It concentrates on that moment when Sisyphus watches his rock fall. “At that subtle moment when man glances backward over his life, Sisyphus returning to his rock, in that slight pivoting, he contemplates that the series of unrelated actions which becomes his fate, created by him, combined under the memory’s eye and soon sealed by his death. Thus, convinced of the wholly human origin of all that is human, a blind man eager to see who knows that the night has no end, he is still on the go. The rock is still rolling.” – Albert Camus
Myth of Sisyphus, The
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“My Withered Tomato Friend” is a haunting, experimental narrative that merges the roaming voice of a battered wife with popular images of women to question the conventional ideology of representation and the denial of domestic violence. Alternating between provocative poetry and submissive prose, the voice echoes terrifying thoughts of the abused woman while gradually deconstructing – and reconstructing- manipulated found footage. “Absolutely exhilarating to watch, this is the hard edge of feminist experimental cinema.” – Piers Handling, Director, Toronto International Film Festival One Star Award, Canadian International Amateur Film Festival, 1992
My Withered Tomato Friend
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“My Summer Vacation” is an elegiac, poignant contemplation of the brevity of youth and the ephemeral nature of love. Along the way we see the contrast betwen middle-class life and the sexual/drug underground. Joe, a young man in his early twenties, is on the “edge” of his youth. He has been given a film camera by his older lover (who is leaving town for the summer) and Joe decides to utilize the camera in order to find himself “the perfect summer boyfriend.” The first part of the film is a joyous, comic summer exploration of Church Street, Toronto and the gay ghetto, where young Joe searches cheerily for a boyfriend. He finally discovers Chris. During their first sexual encounter, Chris admits he is sexually turned on by buildings under construction. The two fall in love. Next, during a party scene in which we meet Joe’s friends, Joe talks about his problems with his new lover Chris and we meet typical members of the sexual and drug underground in Toronto – such as a stripper Ima Chicken, hooker Dick Large, and heroin addict Marvette. Joe meets Chris’s mother, Miriam, and a kind of Chekhovian scene ensues. Miriam fears she is dying of AIDS (but is actually just addicted to diuretics). In the final scenes of the film, Joe invites Chris to have dinner with his lesbian sextrade worker friends Lotta Dish and Ima Chicken, but Chris leaves Joe. The summer is over.
My Summer Vacation
