In his feature debut, experimental short filmmaker Blake Williams transforms images of the aftermath of the catastrophic 1900 Galveston Hurricane into a sci-fi landscape.
Time and technology are looped and wound back in this programme, which proposes stratified and wondrous audio-visual abstraction through ever-shifting perspectival prisms.
Blake Williams continues the lines of aesthetic and philosophical inquiry he explored in his experimental shorts with his first feature-length work, the polymorphous 3D fiction film PROTOTYPE. Beginning with stereoscopic images from the aftermath of the catastrophic Galveston hurricane of 1900 and shooting in his grandmother's ancestral home in Fairchilds, Texas, Williams creates a sci-fi landscape that begets a new kind of origin myth. Loosely and cryptically evoking the story of Orpheus, PROTOTYPE explores a range of proto- and meta-cinematic devices, experiments with Williams' own inventive hybrid methods (such as re-photographing 3D footage off a vintage Philco screen), and also makes technological and stylistic allusions to the multi-screen narrative design of Godard's Numéro deux and the sculptural arrangement of monitors in the installations of video pioneer Nam June Paik.
From the rodeo to the tidal sea (a "river of no return" filmed at the San Francisco Camera Obscura) to cosmic rays, PROTOYPE is an immersive trip that consistently upends the adage "once upon a time...".
ANDRÉA PICARD
Screenings
Bell Lightbox 4
Scotiabank 6
Bell Lightbox 4