Much like last year, I have been neglectful in my duties to attend New York’s repertory cinemas throughout August. I’ll chalk most of this up to the fact that I was out of town, but I also believe there’s something about the month of August that demands a break from chronic moviegoing. For me, it has to do with the fact that I’ll soon be strapped in at the Walter Reade for multiple hours on end for the New York Festival, and I’d rather not tire myself early. But there’s also something undoubtedly vague about the retreating summer weather that pulls me in the direction of the outside world, asking me to enjoy those last blasts of heat before they’re replaced with chilly airs and shorter days. (That’s one of the reasons the Rockaway Film Festival is so terrific: it combines the magic of this late summer month with some truly audacious film programming.) I can’t speak to the Luc Moullet retrospective at Film at Lincoln Center, because I was not in attendance—I’m sure it was great—or the EZTV celebration that took place between Anthology Film Archives and Spectacle—here’s to hoping it comes back in one form or another—but there are two films I managed to catch early in the month that have stuck with me since.
On August 2, I watched three films. One, I do not need to discuss because it’s a friend’s work, but the other two, Seth Price’s Redistribution (2007-ongoing, pictured at top) and Amiel Courtin-Wilson’s The Silent Eye (2016), impressed me. Both of these works, which another writer might label “art films” or “gallery works,” pitched a perfect balance between visual experimentation and tenacious storytelling. Each of these, entirely distinct in their own right, represent a mode of filmmaking that demands more attention, that art of the craftsperson who ponders over a subject for years, tinkering with their thoughts to produce intimate and expansive works.
The Silent Eye screened as part of This Long Century’s recurring series at Metrograph, which presents films from the online archive’s past contributors. A short feature-length documentary of sorts, Courtin-Wilson’s film captures a series of collaborations between jazz pianist Cecil Taylor and Japanese Butoh dancer Min Tanaka. Courtin-Wilson lived with Taylor for two years before making the film and while this is not ever mentioned in the film, it informs the comfort and closeness with which Courtin-Wilson moves around the Brooklyn apartment in which the film is set. It’s this familiarity, alongside Taylor and Tanaka’s improvised back-and-forth, that impedes The Silent Eye from ever feeling repetitive in spite of its structured form. While Courtin-Wilson treats us to one performance after another, his roving camera always finds new gestures to emphasize, building upon the chain of improvisations happening on screen. Above all, Courtin-Wilson’s camerawork makes evident his understanding of both artists’ playfulness, expanding upon their game of improvisation by riffing with his own instrument, the camera, and bending light to produce images as rich and strange as the music and movements of his subjects. Courtin-Wilson’s observations are not limited to the broad scene before him, but instead focused on its players’ most minute actions—the bend of an elbow, the sweat of a brow, the shifting silhouette of a shadow. His filmmaking denotes a deep familiarity, a clever eye and even sharper understanding of light, that feels especially scarce in today’s cinema.
Soon after watching The Silent Eye, I walked over to 15 Orient to watch Price’s aforementioned Redistribution, an ever-evolving video that, in its most recent iteration, blends autobiography with insightful comments on the evolution of art and technology. My previous encounter with Price’s work occurred at Light Industry, when they screened his Zork-like adventure film Romance (2003) alongside Robert Bresson’s Lancelot du Lac (1974). For all its formalism, Romance already gestured at a playfulness that Price delights in throughout Redistribution. In addition to mixing and matching images from Price’s life, as well as remixing videos and images to create an appropriately choppy mirror of life in the 21st century, Redistribution also sees Price manipulate his voice multiple times throughout the piece. The actual lecture on art that he delivers at the center of the video becomes almost impossible to understand, though its contents become increasingly clear in Price’s manipulation of its slides and his voice. In fact, Redistribution itself works as a lecture in Price-isms, as well as a memoir and a sort of manifesto on the broken relationship between artists and authorship in this day and age. In spite of its brief runtime, 45 minutes or so, Price’s Redistribution tackles more than most contemporary films, reflecting the tenacity of an artist who remains insistent on tiring out his medium’s possibilities by testing its and his limits in the process.
I have seen other films this month, but none as wonderfully puzzling as these two. That such work accompanies more conventionally narrative cinema at repertory theaters—I should mention Redistribution also screened at Metrograph in 2019—is refreshing, and I’d hope more programmers find ways to work such ineffable works into their calendars. Though these kinds of films have been around forever, it strikes me that questions persist about how or where to show video art and its kindred. Watching The Silent Eye at Metrograph reminded how important it is that theaters open their doors to films severed from the expectations attached to most repertory cinema, a great deal of which remains tethered to the traditions of mid-century auteurism. This balance, between more-or-less classic forms and truly out-there experiments, is what makes Anthology Film Archives’ programming so dynamic, but to see this mix pop up elsewhere bodes well for a film culture living in fear that their favorite medium is in decline when so much of its potential remains untapped.
Feedback Loop is a column by Nicolas Pedrero-Setzer reflecting on each month of repertory filmgoing in New York City.
See Also
