My Films

Two things got me started. One was seeing some of Brakhage's Songs on Standard 8 mm one Saturday morning in May 1968; the other was an alleged dictum of  Jean-Luc Godard's, current at the same time - "The only way to make better films is to make more films." In July of 1968 I acquired a standard 8 mm Bolex and got started, shooting many reels in the following years. In 1975 I bought a 16 mm camera and used it to make the following films:

Sforzinda   1977   13 mins [link to 3-page pdf]
Personal Triumphs   1977   6 mins
Inside the Museum   1978   4 mins
Ring of Endless Fire   1978   3 mins
The Art of Prophecy   1979   13 mins
Six Short Pieces   1979   12 mins
Coast View with Aeneas and Cumaean Sibyl   1981   30 mins
Fish Variations   1982   9 mins
Basic Principles   1982   3 mins
Carn Ingli Common   1983   4 mins
Diverse Motions   1984   7 mins
Parables   1986   15 mins
also Anti-blues   1969   5 mins

Around 1984, I made the following statement as part of a promotional document for experimental film-makers in the UK:

"Animation and film are usually put in separate compartments; I am interested in removing the walls. In exploring with the camera a film language that uses shots measured in frames rather than feet, I was led to work directly on the film itself -- frame by frame -- with paints, chemicals and pens. I still use a camera and seek in many of the films to combine 'animated reality' with 'photographed reality'. I am attracted to uncomplicated forms (silhouetted landscapes, abstract pattern, schematic drawing), the use of texts in juxtaposition with images, the relation of film to music, poetry and painting. My cinema is a visionary one: the films seek to express those moments when the charged image rises to the surface from historical, cultural and religious layers of consciouseness."

I also contributed an article to 'Undercut', the magazine of the London Film-makers' Co-operative, entitled 'Beyond the camera barrier', issue no. 13 (Autumn 1984), which has been collected in the 'Undercut Reader', ed. Michael Mazere and Nina Danino, published in 2002.

I stopped film-making in 1987.