ON HOLLIS FRAMPTON

On April 3, I saw Zorns Lemma, a new film by Hollis Frampton (sixty-one minutes, color). It’s his most important work to date, and the most original new work of cinema I have seen since Brakhage’s Scenes from Under Childhood, Part Four. Frampton’s film is an exercise in mathematical logic in cinema. Or is it a mechanical logic? Three viewings do not help me to explain to you what the film is all about. It’s about alphabet.…

ON SCENES FROM UNDER CHILDHOOD

I just looked at Stan Brakhage’s Scenes from Under Childhood, Part Four. Fifty minutes long. In color. Silent (available for renting from the Film-Makers’ Cooperative). Brakhage has been feeling very low lately. He is in a “giving-up” mood. He thinks he has fought his artist’s battle for the noncommercial film and he has lost it. Commerce is taking over, he feels. I don’t feel that way at all, and I have been at the cannons…

ON BRESSON AND UNE FEMME DOUCE

Here is what I thought, walking home from Une Femme Douce.
Une Femme Douce is a film about diagonals. Diagonal angles, diagonal glances. About eyes that never really meet. A film without a single frontal shot. A film about three-quarter spaces. About the sound of closing doors. About the sound of footsteps. About the sound of things. About the sound of water. About shy glances. About unfinished glances. About the sound of glass. About…

ON THE SUPREME MASTERY OF PETER KUBELKA

Unsere Afrikareise (which you can see at the Cinematheque, together with Kubelka’s earlier work, this Friday) is about the richest, most articulate, and most compressed film I have ever seen. I have seen it four times, and I am going to see it many, many times more, and the more I see it the more I see in it. Kubelka’s film is one of cinema’s few masterpieces and a work of such great…