"I didn't want to make films that were narrative. I found the whole traditional narrative approach was really non-visual." - George Landow
This film starts with an image of a Kodak test strip with two photos of a woman, sprocket holes in the middle, dirty film. The sound is perhaps that of a projector running?
After about four minutes of watching, the image is still the same. The sound is also the same, with the exception of a few instances where the ticking sound slows and changes pitch briefly.
This film is really interesting to be because initially, the sound and image remain seemingly stagnant- yet when experienced for several minutes, patterns and nuances from within the one sound and one image begin to emerge.
I had an interesting experience about halfway through the film. If you let your senses of sight and sound merge together, your eyes begin matching the little jumps and ticks in the sound to the flickering of the dirt on the screen. They begin to play off of one another and start feeling like one "thing." Not something just visual, not something just auditory, but an experience of combined senses.
After seeing the film, I noted to myself that I would have appreciated if the film was longer. The rhythm of it, with the sound and image meshing, was just getting started for me when the film ended. I would love to see it for an hour or more. I find this kind of viewing experience to be very powerful- it would be very intense as a durational piece.
Then I read a bit about it and realized that it is intended to be shown in this way, in a loop. I was pleased to read that.
Landow studied painting and was quoted in saying, "I think the films I make are much more related to painting than to film as commonly taught."
I am excited to watch more of his films.
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