The Film Strip Tells All
Len Lye and Norman McLaren made such an impression with their abstract films painted and scratched directly onto film that when some other cameraless film begins to screen at a festival one often hears several disgruntled voices saying, "McLaren and Lye already did this"--as if nothing new could be done with the technique. Drawing or scratching directly onto film strips is just a technical means, and nobody would think of saying, "Painting on cels? That's already been done, so I won't watch this new film..." Several people like, the Italian brothers Arnaldo Ginna and Bruno Corra, the German Hans Stoltenberg and the Belgian Henri Storck, painted abstractions on film before Lye and McLaren, but these films do not survive for us to see or judge. Films like Lye's Colour Box and Free Radicals or McLaren and Evelyn Lambart's Begone Dull Care are superb masterpieces that one can see over and over, and remember fondly. Plus, the tradition of direct abstract film continues: the great Basque painter Jose Antonio Sistiaga made a feature-length direct abstract film, Ere Erera Baleibu Icik Subua Aruaren, released in 1970, while Lye and McLaren were still alive. Believe it or not, all 75 minutes of it are fascinating, with a cumulative satisfaction. Sistiaga's 1989 7-minute Impressions In The High Atmosphere is a breathtaking masterpiece. A central circle, stable except for its fluctuating enamel-like textures, is surrounded by restless, swirling currents. His 1991 14-minute Nocturne is again a deeply moving, and very beautiful, film.
Linear Dreams. © Richard Reeves.
Two Additions to the Tradition
Richard Reeves' Evocative Imagery
Two younger filmmakers have also devoted themselves to making abstract films directly on the filmstrip: Richard Reeves in Canada and Bärbel Neubauer in Austria and Germany. Their fine work demands special attention both for its excellent craftsmanship and its beauty. Richard Reeves had made five short works before the current Linear Dreams. The last of these, the 1994 one-minute Zig Zag, shows not only the fine sense of rhythm and design necessary for the composition of visual music, but also a nice sense of wit: an abstract figure is buffeted back and forth between the geometric swings.
Linear Dreams, at seven minutes, has an epic sweep. It begins with a pulsating sound like a heartbeat and images of a throbbing red circle with nervous, scratched lines touching it from the sides, as if they were electric or nervous impulses that were feeding it vital energy. In rhythmic bursts we see a rich variety of textures and mandala-like circular configurations turning in counterpoint to linear formations. Occasionally, we catch almost subliminal glimpses of strange creatures, perhaps the totem animals of a shaman's visions. Toward the end, the abstract mandalas begin to yield to images of mountains, single at first, then moving across a long range of peaks, again suggesting a shaman's flight. However, the "energy" mandala reappears at the very end for a neat closure.
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