October
20, Thursday, 7:30PM,
2005
History
of American Avante-Garde:
Larry Gottheim
"Gottheim's
Cinema is a quest of origins. The films elaborate
a response to the fictions of our world, the
construction of images and sounds, the repeating
cycles of life and nature. The profoundness
of Gottheim's act is to elaborate a body of
work outside of fashion and within a search
for an authentic language of cinematic discourse."
- John Handhardt, on the occasion of the presentation
of the full "Elective Affinities"
cycle at the Whitney Museum, 1981
"I
have been moving away from the formal structures
that were the compositional framework of much
of my work, having more recently been attracted
by, for example, areas of Caribbean ritual and
history which contain their own patterns. My
interest in exploring sound/image relationships
is a continuing one - stretching the possibilities
of what one can "experience" through
these channels. I have become uncomfortable
with being characterized in terms of superficial
aspects of content (e.g., landscape) or form
(e.g., "structural") Hopefully new
viewers will see the films in a fuller, more
appropriate context, as well as just enjoy them."
–L.G.
Machette
Gillette...Mama 16mm,
45min, 1989
"Rapid,
disjunctive images and sounds from aspects of
life in the Dominican Republic -- a film dealing
with representation itself, within ritual, within
cinema, within history, within narrating. The
title is a Dominican song, based on a Haitian
song, meaning a razor-sharp machete; it is,
of course, a complex metaphor within the cultures
from which it comes, but also within the film,
extending my longstanding interest in edges,
borders, horizons, into material of documentary
interest." - Canyon Cinema
Exhibition: Havana Film Festival; Cine San Juan
Festival; Oberhausen Film Festival.
Fog
Line 11min, 16mm, 1970 (silent, color)
"It
is a small but perfect film." -- Jonas
Mekas
"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
Doorway
7.5min, 16mm, 1971 (bw,
silent)
"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
Blues
7.5min, 16mm, 1970 (bw,
color)
"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."--L.G.
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