While making this cut-up film I fell in love with the blonde - murdering her at the end. The murder was unintentional. Later I understood it as the metaphor for my own failed marriage.
The principal, a black woman I call Sylvia, was in a serious financial situation, and preparing to undergo a public cervical examination. Tension and humor in the film came from her willingness to participate.
I never learned their names, those gentle men on porch steps, the soft-spoken living through the civil rights struggle. Their eyes betray some pain from the assassination of Martin Luther King.
The hospital staff did its best, in mounting urgency, to save the blonde woman's life - the pacing of hand movement cutting quickens, becomes furious, in the end everything could be placed in a plain brown paper bag.
1997, 16mm, color/so, 8m, $25
A film once described as "haunting."
Motion, action, movement - wanting a film full of people rushing somewhere - humanity surging with technology.
Then this young blonde kid shows up. I didn't want the child in there. I'd cut him out and he'd return - throw him in the discard bag of footage and he'd jump out of another.
The cut-up method for this film was to become extremely familiar with the selected footage, mostly from educational and health films of the '60s - cut it into various lengths, usually determined by the scenes themselves, label it in shopping bags and draw from the bags as impulse guided.
Finally, in relenting to the return of the boy, the film became a metaphor for freedom, reminding me of my own 12-year birthday wish for freedom.
The middle, or "pure chaos" section of this film contains original footage - otherwise it is a cut-up found-footage film.
1997, 16mm, color/so, 8m, $25