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Severely underrated this (as a 25-year-old, 15 years ago, lol). I've thought about it a lot in years since and recommended it to others, but hadn't actually revisited since the initial release.

Masterpiece.

Open doors, open windows. Full of possibility. Nothing closed, until death comes, and even then, it is the living who have something to close.

Utmost respect for lives lived and the dream of existing in some form beyond the limitations of your body.

Watched on Wednesday May 21, 2025.

Watched on Tuesday May 20, 2025.

Watched on Wednesday May 21, 2025.

Watched on Sunday May 4, 2025.

Watched on Sunday May 4, 2025.

Watched on Sunday May 4, 2025.

Watched on Sunday May 4, 2025.

Watched on Sunday May 4, 2025.

Watched on Sunday May 4, 2025.

Watched on Sunday May 4, 2025.

Watched on Sunday May 4, 2025.

Watched on Sunday May 4, 2025.

Watched on Sunday May 4, 2025.

Watched on Sunday May 4, 2025.

Watched on Sunday May 4, 2025.

Watched on Sunday May 4, 2025.

Watched on Sunday May 4, 2025.

Watched on Sunday May 4, 2025.

This played extremely well in the LM traveling program, I have to say.

Watched on Sunday May 4, 2025.

Watched on Sunday May 4, 2025.

Watched on Sunday May 4, 2025.

Watched on Sunday May 4, 2025.

Watched on Sunday May 4, 2025.

Watched on Sunday May 4, 2025.

Watched on Saturday May 3, 2025.

Watched on Wednesday April 23, 2025.

Usually, S/H are working through texts and thinking about how they can be adapted/translated for a present moment. How does history continue to live for a person in a different present? So, of course, works of art make a lot of sense, in a modified way, as open works of history and historical thinking. Whether museums are the venue to open the level of engagement Huillet illustrates in her dissection of (mostly) painting is perhaps a different question, but this very clearly outlines S/H's interests in nature, politics, aesthetics, etc. and is a terrific lesson in how alive works of art remain, if you remain open to them.

But also, don't be fooled! This is still very much a S/H film, quietly delineating (static) works of the plastic arts from cinema / moving images. After discussing Tintoretto, there is a long, silent shot from the back of the Louvre (I think) onto the Seine with ing boats and leaves blowing through the trees, as usual. The absence of sound is startling. If this offers a moment where the removal of sound allows the viewer to focus on color, movement, light, etc. as the previous scene suggests (and thereby aligning this more with painting), the lack of not hearing what you see is still actively there. Yet another divide between one text and another. No wonder, then, that the film ends with a complete with a 360-degree pan in a tighter area of woods complete with the direct sounds of birds and the chortling whisper of a babbling brook.

So, sure, this is a companion to CEZANNE, but it feels more like Huillet's response to Straub's cinematic ruminations in WHERE DOES YOUR HIDDEN SMILE LIE? Thought is just as important as editing.

Can you see thought? S/H answers: definitely yes. Here's how!

Watched on Friday April 18, 2025.

Watched on Wednesday April 16, 2025.

Watched on Wednesday April 9, 2025.

Watched on Tuesday April 1, 2025.

Watched on Wednesday March 26, 2025.

This is excellent. Watch it on YouTube!

Watched on Wednesday March 26, 2025.

Watched on Wednesday March 26, 2025.

Watched on Wednesday March 26, 2025.

Watched on Wednesday March 26, 2025.

Watched on Tuesday March 25, 2025.

Stop looking at me, swan.

Or:

Modern/Contemporary Art has many examples of "repetition is difference," and this is the latest Straub entry into that canon.

Same shit, different day?

Sure. But the day is different. Open your eyes.

Whether this is revolutionary or Sisyphean is, I suppose, an open possibility.

Watched on Monday March 24, 2025.

Watched on Monday March 24, 2025.

Watched on Monday March 24, 2025.

Watched on Monday March 24, 2025.

Watched on Monday March 24, 2025.

Watched on Monday March 24, 2025.

Watched on Monday March 24, 2025.

Clicked “I’ve watched this film before” with self-righteous, nostalgic indignation.

Watched on Saturday March 22, 2025.

Preliminary list of Light Matter 2024 titles. All films from shorts program are here. Need to films shown in Snodgrass and Immersive galleries.

• Cloud Film
• Consider
• Poem for Three Voices
• Echo Camp Needle Point
• Silence IV
• A Sense of Nothing
• Two Sides of the Tortoise
• Untitled (A Study in Refraction)
• Moth Glitch
• OilMoonNight

...plus 58 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

A list of films screened at the 2023 Light Matter Film Festival. Curated by me. Arranged in program(s) order.
www.lightmatterfilmfestival.com

Not all titles are on Lboxd, so there are some missing. I hope this is a useful resource for folks looking for some underseen, international titles in the world of experimental film, video art, media art, digital art, etc.

"Now in its third consecutive year, the Light Matter Festival has become a major East Coast showcase for experimental film and video, presenting a diversity of styles and approaches rivaled only by San Francisco’s Crossroads Festival. Based in the south-central New York town of Alfred, Light Matter was founded and is curated by Alfred University professor James Hansen. He is part of the newer generation of programmers and scholars for whom the importance, even the centrality, of experimental media is taken for granted, rather than a political position that must be defended over and over again.

The sheer variety of Hansen’s programming suggests that he, like many of us, believes that the rapid obsolescence of cinema as a mass entertainment represents less of a crisis than an opportunity. With narrative film losing ground to tentpole spectacles, gaming and interactivity, and web-based media keyed to the malleable attention spans of ever-younger audiences, the rules are constantly being rewritten. Hierarchies are coming unstuck, and the long-assumed marginality of avant-garde media may soon be a thing of the past. After all, data networks have no margins, strictly speaking — only coterminous nodes.

The expansive nature of Light Matter’s programming is inspiring, and even a bit daunting. I have only scratched the surface of this year’s program, and the lineup features an impressive roster of newer artists with whose work I am completely unfamiliar. This is always an exciting turn of events, since I do try to keep tabs on this field, and the fact there is so much more activity than I’m aware of is reason for optimism."
-Michael Sicinski, In Review Online

• ipsa (I watched the Moon around the House)
• Bec0m1ng
• The Enlightenment
• Ertrunken
• Clear Ice Fern
• TODAY IS A VERY SPECIAL DAY, some-times
• Perpetual Conjunction
• Spoils
• It Follows It es On
• Patient

...plus 58 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Doesn’t include experimental short films, which I feel conflicted about rating on a public website.

The festival is maybe my annual "statement" at this point... I'll work on a separate list...

I don't watch many new feature-film releases, do I....

1. The Beast
2. Rewind & Play
3. Oppenheimer
4. Skinamarink
5. Knock at the Cabin
6. Matter Out of Place
7. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning
8. Ferrari
9. Killers of the Flower Moon
10. Anyone But You

...plus 11 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

List of films screened at Light Matter 2022. Arranged by programs. Programs curated by myself and Eric Souther.

www.lightmatterfilmfestival.com/2022program

As of 3.25.2022, the list is incomplete. I will try to add titles to the database and then add them here eventually.

• Liquid Traits of an Image Apparatus
• Moire / Écume
• How to microwave a cauliflower (in 3 easy steps)
• Black Palms
• Color Noises
• Circumstantial Pleasures
• Tenjinsan Textiles
• M*U*S*H
• Of Wood
• ROTOЯ | Sonic Body

...plus 47 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Favorite features of 2022. List is subject to change, as I haven't really seen that much. But maybe some of you are interested in a list.

Added Avatar: TWoW; removed Ambulance (Dec 2022).
Added Babylon; removed RMN (Dec 2022).

Update: why am I making a top 10 list and not just listing all the films I've seen in relatively ranked order?

So, a longer list, ranked.

1. EO
2. Crimes of the Future
3. Coma
4. The Plains
5. Jackass Forever
6. Avatar: The Way of Water
7. We Had the Day Bonsoir
8. Babylon
9. The Banshees of Inisherin
10. Answering the Sun

...plus 11 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

I gave myself 30 seconds to come up with a S&S list. I timed myself and everything! No thought or strategy has been put into this. Pretty good list, though.

The 10th film was "Zapruder Film" (1963), which is not on Letterboxd... for perhaps obvious reasons?

• Céline and Julie Go Boating
• City Lights
• Do the Right Thing
• Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
• Meshes of the Afternoon
• Mulholland Drive
• Spring in a Small Town
• Syndromes and a Century
• Wavelength

Since I contributed to Kevin Lee's Bestof the Decade Twitter poll, I thought I'd put the list I submitted up here. The order could easily change depending on rewatch, time, mood, etc. So, you know, don't hold me to this later.

1. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
2. House of Tolerance
3. Margaret
4. Leviathan
5. The Pettifogger
6. Goodbye to Language
7. Let Your Light Shine
8. Hard to Be a God
9. Li'l Quinquin
10. Cosmopolis