Hie thee to the National Gallery tomorrow at 1 p.m. for what sounds like an amazing program at the cinetrix's favorite price: FREE. Your tax dollars at work!
Over a three-decade career, filmmaker Phil Solomon has established himself as one of the great visionary artists of American experimental cinema. Transforming original and found footage into scenes of melancholic beauty, Solomon employs both photochemical manipulation and re-photography of the filmstrip to make haunting, expressionistic films. More recently he has expanded his horizons into machinima, digital art derived from videogame software. "The concept of the filmmaker as auteur has rarely been more appropriate or defensible"—Manohla Dargis. This survey in three parts, each consisting of multiple films, is presented in conjunction with the artist's new site-specific video installation for the Corcoran Gallery of Art, American Falls. The Gallery wishes to thank Paul Roth.
NocturnesJuly 17 at 1:00PM
Remains to Be Seen (1989 / 1994) and The Exquisite Hour (1989 / 1994), Solomon's melancholic masterpieces of distressed found footage, envision the passage from life to death. Nocturne (1980 / 1989) and What's Out Tonight Is Lost (1983) are silent imaginings of suburban disquiet. Solomon's haunting Twilight Psalm III: Night of the Meek (2002) appears like an excavation of buried collective memory: an incantation in molten silver, it conjures the Golem on Hitler's Kristallnacht. The program concludes with Solomon's joyful Yes, I Said Yes, I Will, Yes (1999). (Total running time 76 minutes)
