The Experiment
/Examining the common ground between documentary and experimental/avant-garde modes of cinema. Curated by Lorenzo Gattorna & Peter Buntaine.
American Falls
Philip Solomon, 2010, 55 min.
“American Falls is a single-channel triptych adaptation of a 55-minute, six-channel, 5.1-surround installation commissioned by the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. It was inspired by a trip that I took to the capital at the invitation of the Corcoran in 1999, where I first encountered Frederick Church's great painting Niagara; took note of a multichannel video installation being projected onto the walls of the Corcoran rotunda; and went on walking tours of various monuments to the "fallen" throughout the DC area. The architecture of the rotunda in the vicinity of Niagara invited me to muse on creating an all-enveloping, manmade "falls", re-imagined as a WPA/Diego Rivera cine-mural, where the mediated images of the American Dream that I had been absorbing since childhood would flow together into the river with the roaring turbulence of America's failures to sustain the myths and ideals so deeply embedded in the received iconography.” - Philip Solomon
Hosted by Jessica Betz, former assistant of Philip Solomon who performed a great deal of the chemical, optical and installation work on American Falls. Jessica will also be present for a Q&A following the screening.
Reviews of American Falls:
ttp://artforum.com/film/id=26500
http://www.movingimagesource.us/articles/view-from-the-falls-20100713
American Falls Preview:
