Still from “Critical Mass” by Hollis Frampton 
Still from “Rear Window” by Ernie Gehr 
Still from “Passage a L’acte” by Martin Arnold
Films In The Round
Curated by Astria Suparak
For Pratt Film Series
@ Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY
February 17, 1999
(full-figured films)
Elliptical narratives, repetition, and other round things. mostly.
PROGRAM
1. Deutschland Spiegel, Sharon Couzin, 1980, 16mm, 12 min.
Translating to “German Mirror” and named after the newspaper, this film combines old German newsreels with Couzin’s personal footage of her son.
2. Noctiluca: Magellan’s Toys: #1, Hollis Frampton, 1974, 16mm, silent, 3.5 min.
The title (nox/luceo) means something that shines at night, like the moon. It suggests the nocturnal navigation Magellan had to rely on during his first trip around the world.
3. Critical Mass, Hollis Frampton, 1971, 16mm, b/w, 26 min.
4. Rear Window, Ernie Gehr, 1986/91, 10 min.
The view from a Brooklyn apartment “sublimates Hitchcock’s voyeurism into a frenzied engagement with the visible… linking the film to his father’s death and calling it a ‘hopeless attempt’ to render the ephemeral tangible.” – J. Hoberman, The Village Voice
5. Shift, Ernie Gehr, 1972-74, 16mm, 9 min.
Gehr’s first film to use extensive montage.
6. Passage a L’Acte, Martin Arnold, 1993, 16mm, b/w, 12 min.
“Four people at the breakfast table, an American family, locked in the beat of the cutting table. The short, pulsating sequence at the family table shows, in its original state, a classic, deceptive harmony. Arnold deconstructs this scenario of normality by destroying its original continuity. It catches on the tinny sounds and bizarre body movements of the subjects, which, in reaction, become snagged on the continuity. The message, which lies deep under the surface of the family idyll, suppressed or lost, is exposed — that message is war.” – FMC catalogue.
Footage from To Kill a Mockingbird.
Total running time: 72 min.
Astria Suparak 