The Straits of Magellan II

Date: 18 November 2007 | Season: Hollis Frampton Magellan | Tags: ,

Frampton-AutumnalEquinox

THE STRAITS OF MAGELLAN II
Sunday 18 November 2007, at 12pm
London National Maritime Museum

AUTUMNAL EQUINOX [SOLARIUMAGELANI 3]
Hollis Frampton, USA, 1974, 16mm, colour, silent, 27 min
The cows of Summer Solstice reappear, here filmed in a slaughterhouse, animated by HF’s revelation that animals are as beautiful on the inside as they are on the outside.

WINTER SOLSTICE [SOLARIUMAGELANI 4]
Hollis Frampton, USA, 1974, 16mm, colour, silent, 33 min
Shot in a steel mill, “a pre-textual locus dearly beloved by our Soviet predecessors” (HF), this film’s rhythmic and compositional textures pay tribute not only to Eisenstein and Vertov, but also to Abstract Expressionists like Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, and Clyfford Still.

STRAITS OF MAGELLAN: DRAFTS AND FRAGMENTS [PANOPTICONS]
Hollis Frampton, USA, 1974, 16mm, silent, 51 min (4 min excerpt)
“A sampling of 49 fragments from Frampton’s catalogue of ‘actualities,’ the films from Straits Of Magellan: Drafts & Fragments are all silent and unedited. Several invoke directly the work of the Lumières, as in Frampton’s reworking of Démolition d’un mur (1895), in which a dilapidated farm silo is demolished in place of the Lumières’ wall. He makes reference to his own work … and pays homage to the work of contemporaries. A complex range of formal issues are raised in other fragments. Finally, Frampton offers a number of analogues for the act of filming and cinematic seeing that include a series of appropriated ‘lenses’ (a stone portal, a wooden silo) and a set of ‘screens’ (a pool of water, curtains, a dusty window).” (Bruce Jenkins)

THE RED GATE [MAGELLAN AT THE GATES OF DEATH: PART I]
Hollis Frampton, USA, 1976, 16mm, colour, silent, 52 min (9 min excerpt)
In The Red Gate and The Green Gate the primary imagery comes from a human anatomy laboratory in tribute to and (in contestation with, Stan Brakhage’s The Act Of Seeing With One’s Own Eyes (1971). The films were to be divided into 24 sections, each section to be projected, right side up and forwards, and upside down and backwards according to the Magellan Calendar.

THE GREEN GATE [MAGELLAN AT THE GATES OF DEATH: PART II]
Hollis Frampton, USA, 1976, 16mm, colour, silent, 53 min (9 min excerpt)
See above

STRAITS OF MAGELLAN: DRAFTS AND FRAGMENTS 1 [PANOPTICONS]
Hollis Frampton, USA, 1974, 16mm, colour, silent, 51 min (1 min excerpt)
See above

THE RED GATE [MAGELLAN AT THE GATES OF DEATH: PART I]
Hollis Frampton, USA, 1976, 16mm, colour, silent, 52 min (9 min excerpt)
See above

THE GREEN GATE [MAGELLAN AT THE GATES OF DEATH: PART II]
Hollis Frampton, USA, 1976, 16mm, colour, silent, 53 min (9 min excerpt)
See above

STRAITS OF MAGELLAN: DRAFTS AND FRAGMENTS 1 [PANOPTICONS]
Hollis Frampton, USA, 1974, 16mm, colour, silent, 51 min (4 min excerpt)
See above