Rounds

USA 2001, 16mm, col, silent, 11:00 min

realized by:

Stan Brakhage

available copies:

London Filmmakers Coop:

available for rent

synopsis: The Film-Makers' Cooperative On-Line Catalog 2004

This film is a hand painted film composed of a series of film loops printed in such a fashion (bi-packed and combined with careful irregularity) that while there is a feeling of repetitive familiarity, no actual example of specific repetition is easily seeable. The colored abstract forms seem as if figures at a carnival and/or sometimes as if 'on stage': thus their actions are, then, particularly theatrical. When they most appear recognizable as the shapes of paint, which they are, these events seem the dramatics of the Abstract Expressionist movement - i.e. dramatically gestural. The film begins with blues and reds, played off against clear white spaces or stark blacks. Gradually they balance of the four key tones midst darks and lights, eventually overwhelmed by a film-flare of yellows at end.

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