Cavalcade (Johann Lurf, 2019)

Going through the files to catch up with 2019 experimental films that have somehow escaped me, I found this treat from the always-interesting Johann Lurf. More often than not, films that involve some degree of self-reflexivity or structural examination of the apparatus will find some subject out in the wild -- a train, a landscape, a room, or a hallway -- and then subject the filmed material to various permutations and manipulations. Or, they will manipulate the camera in various ways in order to draw attention to the functioning of the apparatus. 

Films that entail some form of structural performance element are somewhat rare, but they certainly exist. Hollis Frampton's (nostalgia) comes immediately to mind, and there are of course Owen Land's uncategorizable cinematic contributions. But Lurf has gone a few steps further. He has build a tricked out waterwheel in the middle of a lake whose lights flicker at the precise tempo of the shutter of the 35mm camera used to shoot the film. In fact, Lurf has shot the film using two cameras set at positions that approximate binocular vision. Cavalcade exists in both 2D and 3D versions. (Below is a still from an anaglyph mock-up that gives you a rough idea of what the 3D positioning might look like.)

So, as the landscape itself assumes a three-dimensional aspect, and the wheel kicks up more and more water as it spins faster and faster, the designs inside the wheel seem to hold still, or spin in opposite directions. That's because they are flickering against the timing of the camera shutter. One can only presume that this effect is more pronounced when Cavalcade is projected on 35mm film rather than screened digitally, since the projector's own shutter action, the film image alternating with the darkened closure of the Maltese cross, would redouble the illusion that Lurf has created, or even introduce a possible micro-second time lag.

All this to say, Cavalcade is a performance of certain fundamental aspects of the perceptual process of film viewing. But it's also more than that. In a darkened lake, Lurf has build a whirlygig that has the rough aspect of a carnival attraction, some kinetic object that resembles a Ferris wheel but is actually a tool for generating power. As it accelerates, it sputters a liquid path behind it, like the cartoonish running-in-place dust kicked up by Scooby-Doo or Wile E. Coyote. Connected to nothing, it's a dynamo that powers only itself. It generates illusion, and that is all.