Ann Arbor Film Festival 2009

From film to film I often use the same images, to refer back to the universe I have created, to show that my work constitutes one oeuvre. I also often push farther a technique that I used earlier. In UN FILM BRÛLÉ (1984) I had ripped a film down the middle and shifted the two sides, creating a big gap and rendering the film unprintable; all that was left of the film was a soundtrack. Here I have made holes and ellipses in every way possible, then sewed the film back together following an aesthetic mode, in a celebratory end-of-century apocalypse of positive, negative, super-8, regular-8, black and white, color, saturated and faded found footage. Pictures sewed onto other pictures so as not to fall through the gaps between them, this is only a pretext to rejoice that cinema is not dead, that many things are still possible. One only has to join together these images that could have easily otherwise disappeared. Gluing color to color, frames or even fragments of frames become cuts of their own, in every sense of the term.

Join us for a screening of new work and Q&A with the Academy Award-nominated animator of Rejected on this exclusive visit to Ann Arbor. Co-Presented by: Shadow Art Fair Sponsored by: Ann Arbor's 107.1 FM Films in screening order: The Meaning of Life Rejected Billy's Balloon Everything will be OK Intermission in the Third Dimension I am so proud of you

"In 'The Girl Chewing Gum' a commanding voice over appears to direct the action in a busy London street. As the instructions become more absurd and fantasized, we realize that the supposed director (not the shot) is fictional; he only describes - not prescribes - the events that take place before him. Smith embraced the 'spectra of narrative' (suppressed by structural film), to play word against picture and chance against order. Sharp and direct, the film anticipates the more elaborate scenarios to come; witty, many-layered, punning, but also seriously and poetically haunted by drama's ineradicable ghost." -A.L. Rees, A Directory of British Film & Video Artists

The mystery of the crystals under closer examination. What is it that makes them possess magic powers as claimed by mystics thorough the ages? By growing crystals directly on film their mystical qualities shine straight to the screen. Unfiltered, only aided by light which gracefully breaks its rays into rich visual textures.

This is the same film footage as edited in the earlier short version of LOOKING FOR MUSHROOMS released in 1968 with a Beatles soundtrack. It is made longer with five frames for each original frame but still remains the same edit (but with a new soundtrack by Terry Riley) and nothing added, nothing lost, always the same, never ending .... Music by Terry Riley: "Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band," 1968 - BMA - Publisher: Ancient Word Music.

The image, or Anima, of Marilyn Monroe was not owned by Norma Jean any more than it was owned by Arline Hunter. Images can sometimes have more power than the person they represent. Some cultures consider that an image steals the soul or spirit of the person depicted. They will dwindle and die. MX5 is an equation not intended to be completed by the film alone. The viewer completes the equation.