New
prints preserved by the Donnell Media Center –
NY Public Library awarded The Avant-Garde Masters
grant funded by the Film Foundation and administered
by the National Film Preservation Foundation.
“A bowl
of blueberries in milk, changing light radiant on
the berries and on the glazed bowl, the ever more
radiant orb of milk transforming into glowing light
itself, with a brief shadow coda answering the complex
play of shadows. The regular pulses of light framing
the looser rhythmus of the spoon, itself a frame.
A charging of each of the frame’s edges with
its own particular energy.
Within and without, whites and blues, lines and curves.
The pulses of vision, the simple natural processes,
lift the spirit.”—Larry Gottheim
“It
is a small but perfect film.”—Jonas Mekas
“One stares, one stares, and the fog begins
to lift, the exquisite image reveals itself. The three
patchy trees, the landscape lines, the tension lines,
the moving ghost animals, the moving emulsion swirls,
all impress themselves on consciousness, are
consciousness. Still, rigid lines attempt to contain
the amorphous elusive moving fog. Line nature competes
with fog nature, but all is harmony, bathed in gorgeous
paleness.”—Larry Gottheim
“The metaphor in Fog Line is so delicately
positioned that I find myself receding in many directions
to discover its source: The Raw and the Cooked?
Analytic vs. Synthetic? Town & Country? Ridiculous
and Sublime? One line is scarcely adequate to the
bounty which hangs from fog & line conjoined.”—Tony
Conrad
“Fog Line is a wonderful piece of conceptual
art, a stroke along that careful line between wit
and wisdom—a melody in which literally every
frame is different from every preceding frame (since
the fog is always lifting) and the various elements
of the composition—trees, animals, vegetation,
sky, and, quite importantly, the emulsion, the grain
of the film itself—continue to play off one
another as do notes in a musical composition. The
quality of the light—the tonality of the image
itself—adds immeasurably to the mystery and
excitement as the work unfolds, the fog lifting, the
film running through the gate, the composition static
yet the frame itself fluid, dynamic, magnificently
kinetic.”—Raymond Foery
“A serene
winterscape glides, as in a dream, across the screen,
from darkness to darkness...Vision shivers, hesitates
ever so slightly to savor, to hold still, but inevitably
everything passes. Far becomes near, near far. Shadows
seed their counterparts in the depths of the viewers
heart.”—L.G.
“Perfect works have a way of appearing unobtrusive
or simple, the complexities seeming to be so correct
that they flow—mesmerize one through their form—a
form that bespeaks of harmony between many aesthetic
concerns. ... Larry Gottheim’s Doorway
is such a film. His concern for working with edges,
isolating details, the prominence of the frame as
a shape and revealer of edges, love of photographic
texture, are all dealt with lucidly in this film.
... One is drawn into these beautiful images through
Gottheim’s poetic feel for photographic qualities—i.e.,
light, movement, texture—his ability to transform
a landscape through his rigorous use of the frame
to isolate in order to call attention to a heretofore
hidden beauty revealed through a highly selective
eye.”—Barry Gerson, Film Culture
“A series
of structurally similar intermittent glides past a
simple upper-New York State barn. The barn, gently,
bobbing on the screen, demurely reveals its changing
silhouette. Each subsection, separated from the others
by the light struck film ends into which the illusion
descends (and from which it emerges), records a different
day/time/light situation. A radiant serenity resolves
the oppositions explored in the film: between background
movement, transparent/opaque, sky/earth, figure/ground,
flat/solid, and others. One gets to know the tragic
beauty of the barn. The eye is pleased, the mind keeps
on transcending.”–L.G.
“It was the barn itself, the slats, the barn
as a light-imagemaker that set me going. Each technical
problem (what filming speed, what lens?) called forth
a solution that led me into the form of the film.
It was the camera itself howling for a rewind of its
spring after each sizzling rush of image grabbing
(producing, in negative, that serene bobbing movement)
that pushed me out of single-shot films (but not into
montage editing). Once having decided to give each
spring-run its distinct territory on the camera roll,
I found I had, in microcosm, a structure for the whole
film, each roll linking on to the next in a straightforward
linear form. The eight selections are not quite arranged
in chronological order but are put together (selected
from a larger collection of material) so that each
makes a particular contribution to the overall experience.
Certain possibilities are amply presented in the first
four sections; the fifth and sixth are crucial to
be worked through for the final sections to offer
something ecstatically new.”—L.G.
“Barn Rushes is one of those seldom
films which surprises one over and over. I remember
the surprise I had when I used it first in a class;
Barn Rushes is so ecstatic and visionary
that I thought a didactic setting might smother it.
However, the film instead emerged not only unscathed,
but (phoenix-like) improved! For aside from the compositional/retinal
joy of the film, it is also a tour-de-force in sequential
organization of thematic material, the closest possible
approach to a textbook of atmosphere, camera vision,
and lighting, as they relate personal concept to purely
visual relationships.
“One of the most elusive dreams which may beset
a filmmaker is the wish to spin the finest thread
of meaning and sensation out of the roughest fiber
of raw day-to-day vision. The drama of hope which
this dream animates is played out against a stage
setting shaded in the direction of narrative signification
on the other. And here stage center is Barn Rushes,
elegant yet rustic in its simplicity of execution;
tugged gently toward different sides of the set by
hints of color and motion interactions, positive and
negative spaces, etc., and the unyielding delivery
on one of the great apotheoses of poetic cinema at
fade-out time.”—Tony Conrad
“This is
the first section to be released from a large work
constructed from material made in Haiti, mostly on
Hi-8 video. Hand is my son. He’s now 12. The
initial production was partially supported by a grant
from the Jerome Foundation. My venture in Haiti was
to some extent inspired by Maya Deren. I was searching
for traditional forms that related to the structures
of my previous films. And something else.”—L.G.
“The
history of space, the place of mystery, the mystery
of trace, the space of history.”—L.G.
Total running time: 91m plus
discussion
Program 1: STRAUB-HUILLET’S
A TRIP TO THE LOUVRE
Program 2: THE DAILY PLANET (Unearthed)
Program 3: DAVID GATTEN’S
SECRET HISTORY OF THE DIVIDING LINE: A TRUE ACCOUNT
IN NINE PARTS
Program 4: THE TERRESTRIAL OBSERVATORY
Program 5: BLUE MOVIE with special
guest VIVA
Program 6: ALLEN ROSS’S
GRANDFATHER TRILOGY
Program 7: LARRY GOTTHEIM
Program 8: MANUAL OVERRIDE (“Slip
Inside this House”)
Program 9: SHADOWHUNGER
Program 10: HEINZ EMIGHOLZ
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