1 / STILL LIFES (Stillleben) (2021)
With a montage of static images of commonplace locations and a fugue of indistinct voices, natural sounds, and music, Still Lifes reflects upon the empty spaces where people had at one time lived, laughed, and worked. The images and sounds increasingly play out like dimmer and dimmer past events, as though the sites themselves have the memories of the people who once gave these now vacant places life.
2 / In vollen Zügen (In full trains) 2019
'In vollen Zügen' ('In full trains' or, colloquially 'enjoy to the fullest') is, above all, a tone poem about commuters on Berlin subways (using only sounds in post-production, as the film was shot silent). It explores, through overheard conversations, music both live and added, the often indecipherable train-station P.A. announcements, and even the harmonic sounds of the trains themselves, the cadence and weave of these intersecting lives that converge but rarely meet.
3 / Pandemic Rag 2021
PANDEMIC RAG is about how people around the world are dealing with the confinement this virus has inflicted upon us. It is a tribute not only to the lasting beauty of Scott Joplin’s music, but also my admiration for these wonderful performers who, out of their love for this wistful music, played and shared it with the world on YouTube. I have posted it here, hoping that the various performers can take a look and give permission to use their brief snippets. If you are one of the performers, and don’t want your video used, please let me know, and I will replace it with someone else.May this solitude end soon….
4 / Impermanence 2021
A single key on a piano, struck once. Then again. And again. 14 times. Then the note next to it. Those two notes bounce back and forth… Then, as more notes are added that drift away from the original tone, the music slowly expands and thickens finally into an agitated, frenetic keyboard-spanning thicket of music. It is a sign of our times: the direct and simple overwhelmed by discordant, overlapping sounds (and, in this film, images), where attention has been whittled down to seconds on hectic, ever-changing screens.
IMPERMANENCE is a eulogy for an era when people could take their time….
5 / Blatherskite 2025
If I need to add an artist's statement for this work, then this film is a failure.
6 / Still Lifes (original version) 2016
This is the original version of Stillleben above, which is 15 minutes longer, and requires a little more patience, but is the version I still prefer.
7 / In the Course of Time 1977
Dan Andries and I made this movie with Gary Sinise in 1978. It won the Chicago International Film Festival award for best student film.
It was a long time ago, and, clearly made by two punks who had seen Taxi Driver WAY too many times!
But it is an artifact fro my beginnings as a film maker, so I am happy to have it preserved.
This is an MP4 from a 16mm print that has been sitting in a film case for 40 years. I'm surprised it didn't completely disintegrate! I could have fixed a few things (like the sound); but I decided to leave it as it is: a blast from the past...now preserved in digital.
8 / Buster Keaton tells a joke 1980
This is the only scene from a film that I made in 1980 that is worth sharing. The rest of the film, luckily, is not available for viewing. Ha!