Among Maxwell's favorite films was Autarkeia Aggregatum. © 2005 Bret Battey.

I mentioned earlier the fact that VMM was a labor of love, and that it was the brainchild of Miller. Those of us who had films in that festival can testify to the immense care with which Dennis treated us and our work. To give an example of his commitment, let it suffice to say that he sat at his computer for the full 12 hours (and a bit) of the Marathon, manning the controls and showing each and every film himself.

I most definitely believe that the Visual Music Marathon has to become an annual event, a feast "for the rest of us" (the "Refusés"), but I do hope Dennis will receive the help (manpower and financial support) his magnificent festival deserves. The last thing we need is to see him become ill over such a huge task, visual music needs champions like him, very much so.

Kudos as well to Northeastern University for supporting this venture!

The first and last films screened during that event were by Stephanie Maxwell. Her Time Streams (Allan Schindler, music, 2003) opened the festival, and All that Remains (Michaela Eremiasova, music, 2006) closed it. This was a fitting choice given Stephanie's formidable presence in the field of visual music.

I have since seen her very latest, Runa's Spell. Her work is getting deeper and deeper into a world of absolutely gorgeous color. There is an increasing warmth, a "mellowing" as well (in the best sense of the word), beautiful work. Stephanie might just be the only artist capable of bridging the gap between the two "schools" of visual music, the "dry" and the "moist," and to do so successfully.

If I called her a "master-liar" in Ottawa a few years ago ("If Art is the lie that is truer than reality, Stephanie Maxwell is a master-liar... "), I could now, given the strategic position of her two films at VMM, first and last, call her "Stephanie 'bookends' Maxwell!")

I asked her to send me her written comments about VMM, including a list of films she particularly responded to. Her comments and excerpts of films she mentions will be posted later in this article.

Maxwell also singled out Keum-Taek Jung’s O (Circle of Life) (music: Christopher Brakel, 2004). © Keum-Taek Jung.

There are many films whose excerpts I would like to show, like the beautiful Kyoto Bells (Wilfried Jentzsch, 2006) in which a simple square is progressively modified by the evolving processed sound of a bell (the whole thing being a lot less "mechanical" than this description would suggest) And the amazing 1.618 (Scott Pagano, music by BT, 2006) in which the mathematical process giving it birth does not interfere with its sheer beauty.

In regard to 1.618, I feel that there is potential damage done to the film by some of the "generic" look of its 3D images, but all that is more than compensated for by the sheer talent and intelligence of its creator, the connections between visual changes and the music are magnificent (an editing tour de force, superb "montage"), even if some of the images are less than remarkable at times (Maxwell speaks well of that problem in her comments below).

Miller's White Noise is so poetically charged, it makes me seriously consider trying my hand at its 3D process which, when "used" that way, is so obviously not limited to plumbing (people who are aware of my relationship with 3D will take this as a sure sign of genuine admiration for that film).

The number of issues that came up during the Marathon was so vast, we were faced with a real dilemma -- either we walked out of the theater in order to be able to share opinions about what we had just seen and thus did not see what was showing at that time, or we stayed in and watched the films, putting away all that had been bubbling up previously, at the risk of forgetting what that was.

This points to the only thing I may want to see done differently in the (hoped for) next editions. Stretch the event to maybe two days -- one day of screenings, one day of meetings or a mixture of both. This marathon was, and could be even more, a privileged meeting point for the creators of visual music to share views with each other. The readers who sat on my "non-narrative panel" in Ottawa a few years ago, with Maxwell, Steven Woloshen and Richard Reeves will be interested to know that the Marathon reached a point well beyond what had been touched on that day, there really is an appetite for the kind of work visual music makes po