Ed Emshwiller
Lifelines
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Add rightsFormat DVD Interzone
Original format 16mm
Year 1959-1970
Language(s) English
Artist(s) Ed Emshwiller
Author(s) R. Bruce Elder, Susan Emshwiller
Booklet 44 pages (French, English)
Subtitles French
Running time 109 min
Films
DANCE CHROMATIC (1959) 7'
TRANSFORMATION (1959) 5'
LIFELINES (1960) 7'
THANATOPSIS (1962) 5'
TOTEM (1963) 16'
GEORGE DUMPSON'S PLACE (1964) 8'
RELATIVITY (1966) 36'
CAROL (1970) 6'
FILM WITH THREE DANCERS (1970) 19'
Description
"[Relativity] is a complex, metaphoric statement of man's place in the universe, from a modernist perspective. Significantly, it engages both science and metaphysics. The most accomplished craftsman of the American avant-garde, Emshwiller uses his hand-held camera as an extension of a dancer's body, for sensuous tracking shots and tortuous movements. Combined with his total mastery of tools and technique, this creates a visually dense and mysterious work that comments on man's evolution, the relativity of his efforts, his slightly ridiculous perseverance, his sexual drives, and his potentially hopeful future."
— Amos Vogel
"What Emshwiller really wants is to become a camera himself! Strange images, strange thoughts must pass through the head (the body) of this man. He knows the camera is blind. All cameras are blind. It is Emshwiller who makes the camera see the world this way, it is he who needs to see the world this way, it is he who twists and turns it and leads it down all these strange and invisible paths, it is Emshwiller's body that vomits out its existential memories and suspicions."
— Jonas Mekas