Geographies of Light – Recent Films from the Avant-Garde –
Chicago Filmmakers
Luther Price’s Run (1994, 13 min., Super 8mm) is a strangely lyrical film ?portrait? of birds, buildings, fences, electrical lines, shadows, and glimpses of the filmmaker. It is a delicate work of small events which, constantly threatened by the quick edits, jittery camera and many splices, seems read to disintegrate at any moment.
Luther Price?s run (1994, 13 min., Super 8mm) is a strangely lyrical film ?portrait? of birds, buildings, fences, electrical lines, shadows, and glimpses of the filmmaker.
It is a delicate work of small events which, constantly threatened by the quick edits, jittery camera and many splices, seems ready to disintegrate at any moment.
What the Water Said (1997, 7 min.), by David Gatten, is the result of a camera-less collaboration between the filmmaker, the Atlantic Ocean and a crab cage. Unexposed, undeveloped film, placed in a crab cage, was tossed into the ocean from a South Carolina beach. Both the sound and the image are the result of the ensuing ?oceanic inscriptions? written directly into the emulsion of the film.
Sexual Saga (1996, 3 min.) by Stan Brakhage. A hand-painted gem. Scott Stark?s Back in the Saddle Again 91940?s/1997, 9 min.) is an amazing found footage film which will be shown in both positive and negative. ?An anonymous family sings along to its favorite country record, the music complimented by an appropriate woodsy setting.? (SS)
Legendary filmmaker Bruce Conner’s Looking for Mushrooms (Long Version ) (1959-96, 14 min.) is a reworking of the original 3 minute version. Conner has step-printed, and thus slowed down and stretched out, his early short giving this ?new? film a hallucinatory and dreamlike feel that is at once beautiful and somehow disturbing. ?There is in each image a reveling and a revelation in texture .. a hypnotic insistence of life at close range.? (Erika Mijlin)
Henry Hill’s Goa Lawah (1992, 4 min.) which will be shown in an unedited camera roll version, is an eerie journey into the famous holy bat cave of Eastern Bali.
A Depression in the Bay of Bengal (1996, 28 min.) by Mark LaPore, is a lushly photographed ?experimental ethnography? filmed in Sri Lanka. ? I have made a film about traveling and living in a distant place, which looks at aspects of daily life and where the war shadows the quotidian with a dark and rumbling step.? (ML)
All 16mm except where noted.