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ever filmed has objected to the way in which it was done, and certainly no one has ever demanded changes.
The reworking of
and
is a matter of reorchestration: expanding the films in some ways and condensing them in others. There's also a large amount of material from that time that I want to include if I can.
Unfortunately, the time available to me to do this work is very limited. Don't forget that I work for a living [Noren works at Sherman Grinberg Film Libraries, Inc. in New York City], with punishing expenditures of energy. Also, I'm working on a new film, shooting and editing almost simultaneously, and I'm working on several other projects as well, so it would be hard to say when the reworking of those films will be completed.
puts the viewerI assume by designin an unusual situation: the film is full of visual pleasure. I'm 'oooohing' and 'wowing' all the time as I watch it. And yet, because of the way you use single framing, there's battering of the eye that reminds me of Tony Conrad's
. It causes the viewer to continually fight exhaustion.
By 'viewer,' you mean yourself in this case because not everyone has had that problem. The film presents an energy field of a particular intensity. It's possible to enter into it and be energized by it up to that intensity, if you want to. The pulsation of light and shadow, single framing plus sixteen to eighteen fps projection, exerts a hypnosis of a certain kind which tempts you to surrender conscious control of the proceedings. Loss of control is scary to that part of the mind responsible for it, so that part resists and fights to maintain control, and since the film is long, grows fatigued. But, of course, nothing bad will happen to you, in this case at least, if you lose control. The worst thing that can happen is that for an hour or so you'll see the way I see, rather than how you normally see. Also, since the energy level of that film is high, attempts to analyze it while it is in progress are frustrated, and that can produce fatigue. Various people have told me that the film is 'too short,' 'too long,' and exactly the 'right' length. Who am I to say?
I never consciously think of viewers' reactions. It's something you can never predict or anticipate, and I'm certainly not trying to manipulate reactions. What I'm interested in is strong and clear transmission of the energies at hand.
It's interesting that many people see color in
since it's the blackest of blacks and whitest of whites. I remember speaking to someone after a screening who was convinced that the entire film was in color with a few black and white insertions, and wanted to know why I had included the black-and-white.
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is, as I remember, a physics term, referring to particles of matter so small that they can be said to exist half way between matter and energy. I assume your use of the title here has to do with this film's hovering between being a record of the everyday, of what surrounds you in your daily life, and abstract, mysterious fields of visual energy. Often you begin with a recognizable scene, then 'riff' into a wildly energetic set of abstractions. Is that the primary sense of the title for you?
It is a physics term, and what attracted me to it as a title is that it describes the point at which energy becomes matter, intangible 'nothing' becoming somehow 'something.' What lies at the heart of each atom is nothing, the beast at the heart of the labyrinth, and from that nothing, the great black hole, comes the something we call the world. Being emanates from nothing and vice versa.
Also, the film is particles being 'charmed' into form, the grains conjured into images.
You seem less interested in overall conceptualizationeither before you shoot, in the structuring of your films, or after you shoot, in terms of editing what you've captured/discoveredthan in 'being in the
' in 'playing' the camera as a musician plays a musical instrument.
That's certainly true of
which was totally improvised, starting with the very first image that appears in the finished film and continuing on from there. It was shot over a period of several years and the operating rule was that I would shoot every day, if at all possible and if the light was good, working with light and shadow and whatever was around me, not knowing in advance what I would be shooting, trusting that in the end, everything would cohere and come to meaning, which it did. Rise [Rise Hall-Noren] and I were living at that time in a tiny apartment on West Tenth Street, so small it was like living in a camera, although it got splendid light, and I took the basic elements of our life there and worked to see what improvisation and variations were possible, to see if I could charm the disparate elements into form. Being able to invent and improvise and consciously shape material in a given moment has always been important to me, and I've always felt that, given good light, even the commonest, most mundane things are wonderfully rich in possibilities, if you have the eyes for it. It's the old story of working to reveal the 'ordinary' as being extraordinary, which in fact it is. I was very interested at the time in improvisational music of all kinds. Jazz, particularly Cecil Taylor and Charlie Parker, and Tibetan Buddhist musicbone trumpets and skull- drumsthe Mazatec mushroom songs and Morrocan Sufi music. Also, animal songs: wolves, whales, birds, cricketsthis was a special inter-
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