The 10 shorts in this compilation are all, in one way or another, meditations on the rural or urban environment, and with the exception of
Hell Roaring Creek (more about this film in a minute) they all say as much about the means of observation as about the object observed. A variety of complex effects amplify the subjective tone of the work so that the act of seeing/feeling what is seen/cognizing/interpreting is consistently foregrounded and, as we know generally, there are as many ways of seeing the world as there people to see it. Some pieces, like Louise Bourque's overtly expressionist 10-minute
a little prayer (H.E.L.P) were very powerful - its distressed images of a bound, gagged, and inverted Houdini, accompanied by layers of frightening aural effects, were actively nightmarish; others, like T. Marie's 6-minute
Slave Ship, a silent, painterly manipulation of Turner's 1840 masterpiece (dedicated to recently-departed poet Leslie Scalapino) were haunting and beautiful. The visual fantasia of Katherin McInnis' 2-minute
last resort, a collage of layered close-up stills shot inside an abandoned and decaying hotel pool was utterly exquisite, saturating the eye in image after image of proliferating colors and forms; and Vincent Grenier's 9-minute
Burning Bush was a positively hallucinogenic digital trip organized around one or two static takes of euonymus leaves on a garden wall.
But most remarkable to my mind was Lucien Castaign-Taylor's transparently shot, unmanipulated pastoral
Hell Roaring Creek, which records in two or three long takes the passage of a flock of sheep across a creek at dawn. The simplicity of this film is absolute; it is perfect. Its pristine, untouched images have the distilled quality of something essential, and together with its lush sounds (of water on rocks and the calling of lambs) it adds up to an experience both ravishing and complete. The longest piece at 20 minutes, it comes last on the program and balances the other more process-oriented and expressionist segments perfectly - an inspired bit of curating, I think, from Kathy Geritz and Vanessa O'Neill. Their sensitive work on this project is a credit to them as well as to the artists they have chosen to present.
The 10 shorts in this compilation are all, in one way or another, meditations on the rural or urban environment, and with the exception of Hell Roaring Creek (more about this film in a minute) they all say as much about the means of observation as about the object observed. A variety of complex effects amplify the subjective tone of the work so that the act of seeing/feeling what is seen/cognizing/interpreting is consistently foregrounded and, as we know generally, there are as many ways of seeing the world as there people to see it. Some pieces, like Louise Bourque's overtly expressionist 10-minute a little prayer (H.E.L.P) were very powerful - its distressed images of a bound, gagged, and inverted Houdini, accompanied by layers of frightening aural effects, were actively nightmarish; others, like T. Marie's 6-minute Slave Ship, a silent, painterly manipulation of Turner's 1840 masterpiece (dedicated to recently-departed poet Leslie Scalapino) were haunting and beautiful. The visual fantasia of Katherin McInnis' 2-minute last resort, a collage of layered close-up stills shot inside an abandoned and decaying hotel pool was utterly exquisite, saturating the eye in image after image of proliferating colors and forms; and Vincent Grenier's 9-minute Burning Bush was a positively hallucinogenic digital trip organized around one or two static takes of euonymus leaves on a garden wall. 
But most remarkable to my mind was Lucien Castaign-Taylor's transparently shot, unmanipulated pastoral Hell Roaring Creek, which records in two or three long takes the passage of a flock of sheep across a creek at dawn. The simplicity of this film is absolute; it is perfect. Its pristine, untouched images have the distilled quality of something essential, and together with its lush sounds (of water on rocks and the calling of lambs) it adds up to an experience both ravishing and complete. The longest piece at 20 minutes, it comes last on the program and balances the other more process-oriented and expressionist segments perfectly - an inspired bit of curating, I think, from Kathy Geritz and Vanessa O'Neill. Their sensitive work on this project is a credit to them as well as to the artists they have chosen to present.
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