Prismatic Ground -- the rest, part two

NYC RGB (Viktoria Schmid, 2023)

Sometimes all you need is a simple idea expertly executed. Schmid's film is a lyrical symphony-film depicting a few days in New York -- skylines, rooftops, people moving on the sidewalks. In tone and mood, it's a lot like a Jim Jennings film, so Schmid has a firm foundation for her formal operations. Essentially she re-prints her color stock three times, with color filters isolating and removing red, green, and blue. Then the prints the strips together, allowing the mis-registrations of the images to create intersecting color fields. It's a bit like stained glass in motion. NYC RGB doesn't invent a new way of seeing. In fact, I think Tomonari Nishikawa may have already made a film a bit like this. But Schmid's control of her materials allows her to achieve a modest but affecting cine-poetry.

To Write From Memory (Emory Chao Johnson, 2023)

A lyrical self-portrait in which the filmmaker grapples with his traditional mother and her lack of understanding about his trans-masc identity, To Write From Memory is personal and direct but also not without welcome bits of self-deprecating humor. In a repeated formal motif, Chao Johnson spells out various Chinese characters from his vials of T. This has a nostalgic feel, in that it recalls certain approaches seen in video art from the 80s and 90s, particular the work of Richard Fung. Worth seeking out.

II. (Alexandre Larose, 2023)

Much like Takashi Makino, Alexandre Larose has gained attention for working in a very particular style, and as a result, his works are often treated as if they were interchangeable. This is partly due to the filmmaker's return to certain subjects and tendency to work in series. The middle section in a three-part series called "household scenes," II is far and away the strongest of the bunch, mostly because it displays the clearest overall organization. It is the most legible film of the three, since it allows the viewer to gain a sense of both the interior and exterior spaces under investigation, as well as the overall form of its human subject.

Larose's method involves shooting multiple passes of the same basic spaces and events, producing a layered, ghostlike quality. For instance, the figure above repeatedly stands up from his chair, and Larose's composition generates what we might call an arithmetic mean of the given action. That's to say, most of the passes will coalesce in the middle of the action-time, producing a greater solidity. But a few instances will be earlier, and others later. This gives the impression of any given movement being preceded by a spiritual kind of will. And, upon completion of the act, a kind of temporal residue remains, struggling to catch up. It would be fairly easy to produce a phenomenological reading of Larose's films, as they imply intention, action, and memory. But again, like with Makino, Larose's technique is not applied with equal success in each iteration, and II is a cut above because of its sturdier compositional undercarriage.

The Apocalyptic is the Mother of All Christian Theology (Jim Finn, 2023)

It's telling: for years Jim Finn made films that teasingly detailed the now-discredited ideologies of the Soviet Bloc, most notably the East German space program (2006's Interkosmos) and the cult of Kim Jong-il (2008's The Juche Idea). Now, he is turning to evangelical Christianity, since it is the most obvious fount of present-day totalitarian dreams. Like his last film about the American Civil War, The Apocalyptic explores how its subject -- the Epistles of Paul -- are the basis for ideological board games, working to inculcate young Christians into the doctrine through strategic thinking. And, like the Civil War film, this is a mistake, because it distracts from the larger ideas Finn is working with.

While it's understandable that the filmmaker would want to display his collection of Christian kitsch, it's largely beside the point. The rest of the film alternates between critical interpretations of the Gospel of Paul, historical context for his journey and his work, and a selection of right-wing religious media that enforces the most conservative readings of the Gospels. But Finn is trying to braid too many strands here, and the result is an inability to ever make its case convincingly. I will say, however, that The Apocalyptic made me realize how strange it is that Finn hasn't ever collaborated with Negativland.

Exterior Turbulence (Sofia Theodore-Pierce, 2023)

Although I don't think Exterior Turbulence completely works, it is very strong overall, and communicates a distinctive sensibility. Structured like a fragmentary diary, with bits of declarative text appearing throughout, the film never exactly permits us to know whether we're reading Theodore-Pierce's own words or one of the quotations from her various sources (Eva Hesse, Violette Leduc, Monique Wittig, and others). The tone is deeply personal yet oblique in a way that recalls Nazli Dinçel's films, but the ambiance -- evocative of narrative space but too diffuse to coalesce into firm character or action -- reminds me of Zachary Epcar. If you know me, you know those comparisons are highly complimentary. A really great find.