USA,
1989, 30 min
Shown in 1990
CREDITS
- dir
-
Gunvor Nelson
- source
-
Canyon Cinema, 145 Ninth Street, Suite 260, San Francisco, CA 94103. FAX: 415-626-2255. EMAIL: films@canyoncinema.com
- premiere
-
U.S. Premiere
-
COMMENTS
Shown in the Enraptured Images: New Films by Gunvor Nelson and Warren Sonbert program. Gunvor Nelson and Warren Sonbert were both in attendance.
OTHER
Gunvor Nelson and Warren Sonbert are renowned for their distinctive approaches to creating tapestries of moving images which deny familiar cinematic ingredients, such as character and plot, yet are profoundly evocative and visually stunning experiences. The Festival and the San Franciso Cinematheque are pleased to present a program of elegant new works by two of the Bay Area's most esteemed independent and personal filmmakers. In Natural Features, Swedish-born Nelson mingles hundreds of still images with 3-D objects and "real" (though distorted) images photographed through glass layerings into a free-associative and playfully bizarre form of animation. Perhaps no film has more successfully blended an evident passion for painting with a sensitivity to filmmaking as lush pigments alter with and punctuate the different photographic layerings. Friendly Witness moves out into the world for the source of its constantly weaving imagery, locations ranging from Sonbert's own backyard to some of the most remote places on earth. The hundreds of shots are connected through symbolic gestures, glances, rhythmic motions and dramatic actions which echo and rhyme, sometimes returning with a haunting or witty new twist. The binery soundtrack—the first half familiar pop tunes, the second somber orchestral music—serves as a curious counterpoint to the images, pullling us forcefully in and then driving us back to contemplate.
—Steve Anker
FACTOID #147
The Coppola clan (Francis, Eleanor, Sofia and Roman) is the family with the most filmmakers represented at the Festival. Films screened include Apocalypse Now (1990); One from the Heart (1990); Lick the Star (1998); The Virgin Suicides (2000); CQ (2002); and On the Set of CQ (2002). (And that’s not even counting onscreen appearances by cousins Nic Cage and Jason Schwartzman.)
