All Films

Railway tracks seen from a speeding train are converted into optical sounds.

One of a series of films that uses soundtracks generated directly from their own imagery. I shot the images of a staircase specifically for the range of sounds they would produce. I used a fixed lens to film from a fixed position at the bottom of the stairs. Tilting the camera up increases the number of steps that are included in the frame. The more steps that are included the higher the pitch of sound. A simple procedure gave rise to a musical scale (in eleven steps which is based on the laws of visual perspective. A range of volume is introduced by varying the exposure. The darker the image the louder the sound (it can be the other way round, but Musical Stairs uses a soundtrack made from the negative of the image.) The fact that the staircase is neither a synthetic image, nor a particularly clean one (there happened to be leaves on the stairs when I shot the film) means that the sound is not pure, but dense with strange harmonics. – G.S.

Densité Optique I (Optical Density I) mark a chromatic decomposition of the image. The choice to show a scrolling film movie as an extreme slow motion, frame by frame voluntarily directs the gaze on the work of the image. This aesthetic can remember those photographs retouched by painting. However, this type of image is obtained by a chemical decomposition of the film emulsion. Indeed, it is composed of three colored layers deposited on a transparent plastic substrate. Light passing through these layers is tinged with the colors and optical density, recreates the images and colors of the frames. Certain mixtures of chemistries acids attack these layers in the decolorizer, diluting in different aspects.

A Creator of the Imaginary: Patrick Bokanowski

The artist speaks a word, which is quickly echoed in French, so that the words are only barely comprehended. Simple images — a bowl, a photograph of the ocean — appear and disappear.

I had the sudden urge to run through the forest while watching ATARAXIE I. Upon returning home, I went straight to my dictionary to look up the meaning of the title: “Tranquility of the soul. For the Stoics, a state of mind that nothing can disrupt: the ideal of the sage.” (Bernard WEIDMANN - RHIZOME HERETIQUE - March 3rd, 1980.)

The bloom of wild roses connects an aging soldier from a large country with a youthful soldier from a small country, but the two are soon parted as one of them becomes a casualty of war.

Abstract animation by Krzysztof Kiwerski, in which what appears to be some sort of maze-like mechanism produces sentient orb-beings that fall into a lattice of cells. Sometimes these orbs encounter one another, producing unforeseen consequences.

Primary Stimulus is an integrated sound-image structure which explores the intrinsic qualities of cinematic light. The abstract patterns which are seen on the screen when Primary Stimulus is projected are the same patterns which create the film’s accompanying soundtrack. My aim in Primary Stimulus, however, was not merely to create the effect of "seeing sound." but rather, in a larger sense, to further develop the cinematic potential of non-objective light as a free and viable tool for audio-visual action. By using the film frame as a consolidated unit, sound and image issue from a single center and interpenetrate in a way which is not limited by the structural conventions of music or pictorial form. It was, therefore, my intention in Primary Stimulus to exploit the freedom of this holistic cinematic concept, and to create an expressive animated work based on the frame-by-frame articulation of sight and sound relationships. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2015.

From Four Seasons is a four screen time-lapse film made as comparative study of changing light and movement in a garden shot in four seasons. The camera was positioned to frame a garden space by dividing it into four quarter sections one shot in the Summer and the other 3 in the Autumn, Winter and Spring. Each section of the film was shot ‘in camera’ as a time-lapse over a 24 hour period, including the night, at 1 frame every 25 seconds, creating a distinctive filmic register and viewing ‘rhythm’. Each film section was first projected on its own as a separate quarter, each moving sequentially in a clockwise direction within the projection area. In the last part of the film the four seasons are projected together to make up a whole image of the garden space.

"The direction of Western Culture's advance has been WXN, and now no further planetary geography remains into which to penetrate. Today there is talk of heading to Mars - a benighted concept. The geography that remains lies within, but our extroverted society seems largely determined not to explore it. So in a dream I heard the words, 'Flying low, out of creation, they met some rough spots in the mountains.' The film, in five short sections, explores and expands upon this statement. Beyond that, I would need to write pages. Better to just say, 'Take a look.'" —Abbott Meader

"This is the fifth and final section of the 1977 film WEST BY NORTH. I feel it can stand by itself as a complete, if enigmatic statement. A casual browser is therefore afforded a look at a component of WXN, and may become interested in viewing the complete 25 minute film [...] The title is the conclusion of a dreamed phrase: "Flying low, out of creation, they met some rough spots in the mountains" -Abbott Meader

A ritual, a silent and painful game for a moving sphinx and two servile martyrs. A three-headed and tormented monster loving itself confusedly through gaze, contemplation and firm observation. One single monster within three distinct and simultaneous incarnations.

This documentary is the first film ever made by Bruno Monsaingeon. It was shot in the 1960s and early 1970s in grainy black and white and only average sound, when Boulanger was in her late 80s and still fearsomely in command of her abilities. Monsaingeon re-cut the film in 1977. This film remains one of the most important documents concerning this fabled teacher. She is seen at one of her fabled 'Wednesdays', a composition lesson held weekly in her apartment for almost six decades and attended by anyone who would come. In this particular session she talks illuminatingly with students about a small portion of Schumann's 'Davidsbündertanze'.

An experimental short where the filmmaker considers her personal relationship with intimacy, sexuality and the male gaze.

About the Rocinha favela, the largest in Rio de Janeiro. A camera tour reveals their paths and intimacies, while the speech of their residents points to the solution of the urbanization of the favelas, in contrast to the removal proposal, a threat that hangs over everyone.

A puppet animation film by the legendary Arnolds Burovs.

[The] Insinuation of accidentally spilled ink that would be running across the paper in random, aleatory oozes displaces the graceful liquidity of the careful animated choreography. - William Moritz

The film “Documentary Experience N ° 3 - Juan L. Ortiz” (Endless Weathering) constitutes an investigative work on one of the greatest Argentine poets.

『A QUIET DAY』1977/15min

Based on María Vesterinen's drawings, it tells the story of the kidnapping of men and women in Chile and the search for their missing relatives.