The Birth of Magellan

Date: 11 November 2007 | Season: Hollis Frampton Magellan | Tags: ,

THE BIRTH OF MAGELLAN
Sunday 11 November 2007, at 12pm
London National Maritime Museum

CADENZA I AND XIV
Hollis Frampton, USA, 1977-80, 16mm, colour, sound, 11 min
A prelude to Magellan’s universe, rife with allusions to Creation and Duchampian sexual puns: “The film about the bride in which two gentlemen, who we may presume to be bachelors, strip more or less bare a putative bride of some sort.” (HF)

MINDFALL I
Hollis Frampton, USA, 1977-80, 16mm, colour, sound, 10 min
Emerges out of HF’s experiments with sound and Eisenstein’s ‘vertical montage’: “If you start responding to every stimulus, then you end up as a nerve gas case, quite literally. All the neurons fire at once.” (HF)

MATRIX [FIRST DREAM]
Hollis Frampton, USA, 1977-79, 16mm, colour, silent, 28 min
A film of multiple superimpositions, utilizing the images of SOLARIUMAGELANI (a film shown later in the cycle) and the hexagonal images that recur throughout Magellan.

PALINDROME [SECOND DREAM]
Hollis Frampton, USA, 1969, 16mm, colour, silent, 22 min
An early film of HF’s which was later incorporated into Magellan: “The menacing Latin palindrome IN GIRVM IMVS NOCTE ET CONSVMIMVR IGNI (By night we go (down) into a gyre / and we are burned in fire) serves as an epigraph to this animated film.” (HF)

MINDFALL VII
Hollis Frampton, USA, 1977-80, 16mm, colour, sound, 10 min
See above

NOCTILUCA [MAGELLAN’S TOYS #1]
Hollis Frampton, USA, 1974, 16mm, colour, silent, 4 min
“Designed to be shown on the second day of the Magellan cycle. The title (nox / luceo) means something that shines at night, i.e. the moon […] The second day of the cycle seems to be an inventory of the knowledge, machines, and arms that Magellan – and latter-day voyagers like HF – had at the outset of his journey.” (Brian Henderson)