"Some painters and sculptors approach our art with a kind of chauvinistic arrogance. Their use of film, however interesting as documentation, is fundamentally exploitative.
"Robert Huot has been one of the most inventive and rigorous of the younger generation of radical painters. He brings the same attributes to film, along with an inquisitiveness that is by no means cautious. He tries, not to exploit film, but to find out what film is.
"Huot's films will seem 'simple' to many. In fact, he is doing basic work that we film-makers ought to have done for ourselves decades ago, work that is both an addition and a reproach to film art." - Hollis Frampton
Note: All Huot silents are to be shown at 24fps unless otherwise noted.
Often we'd be hanging out having a beer and someone would shout, 'Let's go see a movie.' We'd jump on the subway and head up to 42nd Street to see a midnight triple feature for a buck. The prints were always bad (probably projected a thousand times) and the films were usually equally as poor. Often I found myself fixating on the light dancing in the scratches on the emulsion.
"LEADER and SCRATCH are extensions of Huot's early interest in minimalism. They are successful in reducing the number of filmic variables so completely that essential qualities and potentials of the materials of film can be felt. While SCRATCH is nothing more than eleven minutes of dark leader with a continuous handmade scratch, the resulting imagery varies a good deal, depending on how deeply Huot dug into the emulsion: when the scratch is shallow, for example, it seems to bead and move up through the image; when the scratch is deep, it seems to remain within the frame, vibrating horizontally." - Scott MacDonald, The Films of Robert Huot: 1967-1972, Quarterly Review of Film Studies, Summer 1980.
NOTE: There is no print of LEADER available at this time.
1967, 16mm, b&w/si, 11m, $35
"An extraordinary ebbing and flowing, dotting and pulsing 'abstract' field film. The filmmaker-painter Huot painted this film by spray painting a 12 minute length of clear film. When projected this single gesture contains a fascinating atomized space." - Michael Snow
1967, 16mm, b&w/si, 11.5m, $35
"By 1968, Huot had begun to use photographic imagery, fusing his continuing concern with minimalism and an interest in the erotic. RED STOCKINGS is a demonstration of the power of a single frame of photographic imagery. Except for one frame, the entire three-minute film is a continuous, uniform red which creates a variety of afterimages and other optical illusions. When the lone frame flashes by halfway through the film, the imagery is difficult to identify, but it has a somewhat erotic quality which, when I first saw the film, sent me to the rewind. I scanned the red until I located the frame and discovered an image of a naked female crotch. The title clarifies the erotic joke, which, however, exists only if the viewer is willing to examine the film closely enough to be sure of what is there." - Scott MacDonald, The Films of Robert Huot: 1967-1972, Quarterly Review of Film Studies, Summer 1980
1967-69, 16mm, color/si, 3m, $40
"In CROSS-CUT--A BLUE MOVIE, Huot presents a minimal passage of intercutting between found footage of a hoochy-coochy dancer and a blue leader, organized as a pair of inversely related geometric progressions. The resulting film is amusing (because of the pun in the title, the speed of the editing, and the funny fast-motion shimmy of the dancer); highly rhythmic (both because of the intercutting itself, and because of the rhythms added by the dancer's movements, the flutter of dust particles on the blue leader, and the waver of scratch marks on the footage of the dancer); and formally interesting because of Huot's creation of a montage which so energetically goes nowhere." - Scott MacDonald, The Films of Robert Huot: 1967-1972, Quarterly Review of Film Studies, Summer 1980
1968-69, 16mm, color/si, 1m, $40
"For BLACK AND WHITE FILM, Huot created his own photographic imagery for the first time. After a few moments of darkness, a young woman (Sheila Raj) lowers a covering of some kind, slowly revealing her naked body. She reaches outside the circle of light, which illuminates only her silvery form, scoops up dark paint, and, beginning with her feet, gradually paints her entire body. When she has become invisible except for the faint sheen of the paint, she drops her arms, looks straight ahead, and the film fades to total darkness. The serenity of the film, which is structurally reflected by Huot's presentation of the action from a single position in a single take, its sensuality, and the aura of ritual it creates (Raj always moves in a formal way and, except when she needs to look for the paint, looks modestly down) make BLACK AND WHITE FILM a quietly haunting work." - Scott MacDonald, The Films of Robert Huot: 1967-1972, Quarterly Review of Film Studies, Summer 1980
"A nude woman is revealed, and then obliterates herself entirely, in extreme slow-motion. This film is 'about' painting. Outside of painting itself, it is the only really intense criticism I have ever seen." - Hollis Frampton
1968-69, 16mm, b&w/si, 16fps, 12.5m, $50
"The motif of having people slowly approach the camera first appears in Nude Descending the Stairs, an interesting minimalist work made up of three single-take, single-angle black and white silent rolls during each of which one person - in one instance, Huot dressed in a white painter's jumpsuit; in the others, a naked woman (Marie Antoinette) - slowly descends a four storey staircase toward the camera. Because of the camera's upward angle, the descents are translated into level forward motions during which the two people grow larger with each step they take. The film's concern with the manipulation of space and with the details of human motion through it, accounts for both the title and the inscription 'for Duchamp and Muybridge.'" - Scott MacDonald, The Films of Robert Huot: 1967-1972, Quarterly Review of Film Studies, Summer 1980
1970, 16mm, b&w/si, 16fps, 14.5m, $40
A section from ROLLS: 1971, which I feel stands well on its own. The continuous field of falling snow appears to break into three planes or zones of different density and speed. I think of Snow in some sense as nature's answer to SPRAY. - Robert Huot
1971, 16mm, b&w/si, 3m, $25
"...(a) serialist comparison-contrast of the variations in nine naked male and female torsos. The film is divided into three sections. During the first, the torsos slowly make complete clockwise turns (except for three instances when the torso of a young boy turns counter-clockwise), each of which lasts approximately twenty-five seconds. At the end of each turn, a two-second dissolve acts as a transition to the next turn. During the second section, Huot presents a six frame review (the film is run at 16fps) of the torsos, this time standing still, in the same order. And, in the final section, Huot presents a second complete six-frame review, this time with six frames of blue leader regularly in the position of '4'. The finished film creates both formal and thematic investigations. While the variations among the bodies are interesting, the relative similarity of some of the bodies forces us to ask ourselves, 'Now, is this the same body I saw a minute ago, or is the lighting or texture or positioning fooling me?' We become so aware of tiny variations in these elements that when we see the young boy's body, obviously filmed differently and turning in a different direction, the change is startling. Drawdown, incidentally, refers to a process Huot used when he worked as a paint chemist; the process involves spreading samples of paint on a flat surface so that one can make the most numerous comparisons of different samples within a particular space." - Scott MacDonald, The Films of Robert Huot: 1967-1972, Quarterly Review of Film Studies, Summer 1980
1971, 16mm, b&w/color/si, 16fps, 16m, $50
"...is a filmic cameo during which a passage of blue film leader and clear film painted red introduces a lovely image of a woman, naked from the waist up, sutting on a brass bed, combing her hair. When we first see the woman, she is well out of focus, but during the following minute or so she slowly becomes clear. As soon as the image is completely clear, however, Huot dissolves to an image of himself sitting in a similar position, combing his own hair. This image quickly goes out of focus, and the viewer sees the original passage of leader and painted film, this time in reverse, forming the other half of a filmic frame. BEAUTIFUL MOVIE is a quietly feminist work; Huot revised the traditional tendency to worship female beauty by suggesting that, yes women are lovely, but there is no physical reason why men cannot be lovely in the same way." - Scott MacDonald, The Films of Robert Huot: 1967-1972, Quarterly Review of Film Studies, Summer 1980
1973-74, 16mm, color/si, 16fps, 4.5m, $35
"...was shot in black and white Super 8mm and is accompanied by a soundtrack of drumming and deep breathing. The camera fades in and out on a symmetrical series of lovely, grainy close-ups of the naked, apparently sleeping forms of a male and a female (Huot himself and Carol Kinne). The film is closely related to, and would be especially interesting screened with Willard Maas' GEOGRAPHY OF THE BODY, Taka Iimura's LOVE, and Yoko Ono's FLY." - Scott MacDonald, The Films of Robert Huot: 1967-1972, Quarterly Review of Film Studies, Summer 1980
1978, S8mm, b&w/mag 24fps, 8m, $30
"Costumed Capers...Fetish and Fantasy...Punk Pleasure...a must for those who enjoy erotic humor." - H. Alexander Roberts
"...is the humorous erotic episodes from the SUPER 8 DIARY: 1979 with music by Meco, The Pointer Sisters, and Ian Dury." - Robert Huot
1979-80, S8mm, co/b&w/mag, 24fps, 13.25m, $30
"Lush color...rich black and white...fascinating negative dream sequence...gorgeous titles...all combined with the antics of alluring-aloof Ama Zeena and muscular Dick Darth...make for mystery, mayhem, and magic. Don't miss Cum Foo!" - H. Alexander Roberts
"A punk spoof with music by Georg Deitl, lyrics by Robert Huot, performed by George A and The Super Connie featuring Bobby Beethoven. Plus electronic music by Brendt Conrad. Starring the beautiful Ama Zeena and sinister Dick Darth." - Robert Huot
1980-81, S8mm, co/b&w/mag, 24fps, 11.5m, $45