EXperimental PROGRAM #1
from Scott Stark's Traces/Legacy
20 Little Films 35MM
Since 1995 The Viennale has asked filmmakers from all over the world to create a one to two minute film. For the first time in the U.S.A. these works, by the filmmakers below, will be presented in 35MM.
20 Little Films
Chris Marker
Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Agnès Varda
Peter Tscherkassky
Matthias Müller
Jonas Mekas
David Lynch
Ken Jacobs
Jean-Luc Godard
Ernie Gehr
Gustav Deutsch
Jem Cohen
Leos Carax
Stan Brakhage
James Benning
Bruce Baillie
Martin Arnold
Exquisite CorpUS 35MM
The Exquisite Corpus begins with a search of a seashore. We glimpse a few actors from the prow of a small boat. Gradually what we are seeking is found, a sleeping beauty lies on the beach, right before our eyes. Suddenly and quite unexpectedly, we are drawn into her dream. It´s a highly ambiguous dream – sensuous, humorous, gruesome, and ecstatic – a broadly defined seduction lusting after a tangible, perceptible, exquisite physicality – including the body of the film.
In addition to the aforementioned found footage, many indexical signs and images are imprinted upon the film: photograms of natural origin, like leaves and flower buds, as well as cultural products like meshes and crochet samples. This network of indexical signs (also known as “rayographs”, from Man Ray´s darkroom experiments) not only reveal a very specific way of shaping and sculpting analog film, they also create an organic flair on screen, into which the photographic, iconic signs (which also constantly switch between a constructed cultural interior and nature scenes) are embedded.
Written words and letters pop up in the midst of these pictures, referencing printed as well as hand writing – and echoing “iconic” (printed) and “indexical” (imprinted) systems.
These diverse sources serve as a basis for The Exquisite Corpus, giving rise to heterogeneities I willingly accepted in the spirit of the surrealist technique of the “cadavre exquis”. At the same time the title of the film refers to the “exquisite corpse” which analog cinema nowadays represents: an exquisite corpus but stamped with an expiration date. The exact date remains unknown, but it is foreseeable. (Peter Tscherkassky)
Traces/Legacy 35MM
A follow-up to my 2012 film Traces, Traces/Legacy uses a device called a film recorder to print a series of digital still images onto 35mm film. Discarded Christmas trees, colorfully arranged flea market finds, a museum of animal kills, microscopic views of kitchenware, and other overlooked cultural artifacts are interwoven with flickering journeys through mysterious, shadowy realms.
As with Traces, the 35mm projector can only show a portion of the image at a time, so the viewer sees alterations between the top and bottom half of each frame. The images also overlap onto the optical sound area of the film, generating their own unique sounds.-Scott Stark
Interpolation 1-5 35MM
"The full 35-millimeter frame allows for more detail and diversity than Brakhage's customary narrower gauges. In the first section, multicolored blobs contrast with fuzzy photographed lights; in the third, flickering specks become hundreds of tiny rods and later cracks in paint. Rhythmic complexity has long been a characteristic of Brakhage's work, but the series takes polyphony to new heights by creating different movements in different portions of the frame; there's a sense of shapes being generated and reabsorbed in a cosmic vision of eternal change." -- Fred Camper, Chicago Reader
Brouillard
BROUILLARD – passage #14 is the result of in-camera temporal layers shot on the path that extends from the filmmaker's family cottage to a lake.
“In his ongoing BROUILLARD – passages series, Alexandre Larose creates long-take sequences by superimposing first-person, Hamish Fulton-esque walking trajectories shot along a man-made path leading to a lake. Using a lens wide enough to condense the human eye’s field of vision into the frame’s 1.33 aspect ratio, Larose creates spectral superimpositions infused with a meteorological mix and the intense lusciousness of the Quebec landscape.” -- Andréa Picard
THE FLICKER-TONY CONRAD
16MM 30MIN
This is a notorious film; it moves audiences into some space and time in which they may look around and find the movie happening in the room there with them. Much has been written about THE FLICKER. It is a library of peculiar visual materials, referenced to the frame-pulse at 24 frames per second. All flickering light is potentially hazardous for photogenic epileptics or photogenic migraine sufferers.