A Study of Fly (Cherilyn Hsing-Hsin Liu, 2018)

One of the consistent joys of previewing the work included in the annual San Francisco Crossroads Festival is the inevitable discovery of new talent. But one thing I've realized over time is that, for the most part, significant new voices in experimental filmmaking don't just come from anywhere. One frequently finds that new filmmakers of note turn out to be the students of older, somewhat established film artists. While there is nothing particularly surprising about this, it's not often discussed. It strikes me that for the most part, experimental film and documentary are the modes most defined by this semi-academic model of tutelage, one that is far more common in other arts, such as music composition.

A case in point is this work by Cherilyn Hsing-Hsin Liu, A Study of Fly. Although in some ways it is an uneven and at times awkwardly composed film, there is no question that it is the work of someone who is on the right track, who knows what a good film is and will be making some of her own very soon. Starting out with a spinning-disc reflective white image against a dark field, one that eventually contains close-up, microscopic images of parts of a housefly, Liu's film eventually gives way to other, less expected motifs.

There is a passage that contains multiple exposures and differential color-timings of a gestural performance by a young woman in a halter-top. She strikes balletic poses in front of a railing that overlooks a landscape vista. Looking this way and then that, the performer evinces a combination of nervousness and control, almost as if she were not sure who she was performing for and under what circumstances her gestures would be seen. One might take her arm-waving to be a sort of analogue to the (still, disembodied) fly wings, but this is hard to discern.

In a third passage, a red-orange fluorescent figure emerges from the blackness, a sort of inverted arch that resembles a stooping person or a torso with drooping arms. This object pulsates like a flickering heart, without ever exactly asserting its own identity. What A Study of Fly seems to provide, as an overall impression, is a set of tests and elements that have a similar "hand" to them, in terms of craft and texture, but do not coalesce into a single conceptual or aesthetic statement. But there is a throbbing-zoom element to this portion of the film that calls to mind the work of Japanese experimentalists such as Toshio Matsumoto and Takashi Ito.

Before the final credits, Liu offers a fascinating glimpse at her process of assembling the film. Like a chalkboard diagram from Rudolf Steiner or Joseph Beuys, Liu's image provides a blueprint of her compositional thinking, the manner in which she, at least, understands all of these seemingly tangential image sets to be connected. There is something very 1960s about this kind of mind-map approach, calling to mind the intuitive organizational procedures of filmmakers like Bruce Baillie or James Broughton, as well as musicians like Pauline Oliveros and Meredith Monk.

In the end credits, Liu thanks Betzy Bromberg, Charlotte Pryce, and Nina Menkes. If we presume that these women are teachers or mentors, certain things come into focus about A Study of Fly, and we can perhaps get a hint of how Liu's own vision will develop over time. Bromberg is best known for feature-length abstract films, but her earlier work contained an intuitive, almost post-punk means of organizing live-action footage. Films like Petit Mal and Ciao Bella combined lyrical delicacy with an almost vulgar brusqueness. Likewise, Menkes' features reflect a combination of sensibilities drawn from Chantal Akerman and the No Wave scene, resulting in a gritty, attenuated form of filmmaking whose lack of polish implied a feminist politic, a rejection of conventional notions of beauty and propriety.

But Pryce's shadow perhaps looms longest over Fly, as she is best known for work that zeroes in on the delicate and the miniature, treating the cinema as a form of optical investigation. The first part of A Study of Fly feels like a Charlotte Pryce revision of Brakhage's Mothlight, in a way. And it's perhaps notable that this is the part of Liu's film that feels least idiosyncratic or expressive. Over its running time, A Study of Fly drifts from a well-trod lane within the avant-garde vernacular into something stranger and more intriguing. I am excited to see what comes next.