My 16mm films span a series of moves, from Chicago to Budapest, London, and San Francisco. The early works are collage, the others portraits. Some are formal, some personal. Beyond geography, each comes from a different state of mind. Collectively they form an aesthetic and psychological travelogue that draws a map for much of my later 35mm and video work.
Optically printed collage of found and archival footage, with audio collage by John Shaw. (Chicago)
"You are never alone, because you are full of all the memories, all the conditioning, all the mutterings of yesterday; your mind is never clear of all the rubbish it has accumulated. To be alone you must die to the past. When you are alone, totally alone, not belonging to any family, any nation, any culture, any particular continent, there is that sense of being an outsider. The man who is completely alone in this way is innocent, and it is this innocence that frees the mind from sorrow." -- Krishnamurti
1989, 16mm, color/so, 11m, $30
A cinematic self-portrait in two parts. In the first half, a half-silvered mirror was placed between myself and the camera. In the second, the mirror was removed.
"Know that the complete secret of prophecy for the prophet is that he suddenly sees the form of his self standing before him, and his self forgets and becomes transported from him, and he sees the form of himself before him speaking with him and proclaiming the future.” – Rabbi Nathan, as related by Moses ben Jacob of Kiev in the Shushan Sodot, 1509.
(Produced by the Balázs Béla Studio, Budapest)
1991, 16mm, b&w/si, 9m, $25
"The square is the sign of a new humanity. It is something like the cross of the early Christians." -- Theo van Doesburg, upon greeting Hans Richter and Viking Eggeling in Klein Kolzig, 1920
Today's visual imagery is split body from soul, images employed expressly for their representational value in a linguistic manner; form an afterthought. RHYTHM 92 reverses this, intermingling camera images with light, flare and color in an orchestration of pure form, foregoing meaning. (San Francisco)
1992-1993, 16mm, color/si, 2m, $20
A Pre-Raphaelite portrait of the visionary state as arising from nervous breakdown. Filmed in bitter winter in England’s bleak post-Thatcher years, using only natural light, the camera’s focus and exposure shift continually in a subversive riff on classical cinematic match-cutting. Perhaps something occurs, but what?
With performer Carolyn Roy. (London)
Winner, Director’s Choice, Black Maria Film Festival 1994.
1993-1994, 16mm, color/si, 9m, $25
Two women meet at a crossroads…
My one fiction film to date comes from a genre even more rare in the US than experimental work: adult drama. Printed in muted tones that conjure silent film handpainting, and merging theater-based naturalism with an elliptical psychological encounter, The Interview at once utilizes and destroys mainstream narrative expectations.
Featuring Lisa Black and Julie Queen. Cinematography by Babette Mangolte. (San Francisco/Los Angeles)
Official selection, Oberhausen International Film Festival Touring Program, 2004, Sammlung Goetz collection Munich.
2004, 35mm, color/so (1.37; Dolby SR), 32m, $100
Part of the Urban Ruins series. Filmed in a decaying housing estate in east London, Rhythm 06 renders the outer trappings of internal collapse, a choreography of layers of the real. This new reworking of Rhythm 93 transposes Michael Whitmore’s ethereal score for 10-string guitar and overtones on Carolyn Roy’s original riveting hypernaturalist performance.
2008/1994, 35mm, color/so, (1.37; Dolby SR), 9m, $45