Early last year, after almost two decades of making digital prints based
mostly on my own photographs, I began making short films. They are all
digital, but their aesthetic is closer to that of somewhat older cinema
than to most video art. They are all online, and I have recently posted
the two most recent ones, /Interactions 13: Oradour-sur-Glane/
<https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/936107913>, and /Interactions 14:
Bourges Cathedral/ <https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/936111649>. These
will be the last shot outside the US for a bit into the future, since I
have a backlog of US-shot work to edit. /Interactions 13/is quite a bit
different in some ways from earlier ones; it presents fragments of a
historical narrative and also suggests doubt about the limits of
possible knowledge of history; even if you know my earlier films, I hope
you will take a look at this one too. /14/was conceived as in some ways
an answer to /13./A page on my site
<https://www.fredcamper.com/A/Interactions/> links to all of them, and
includes an artist statement and a link to statements about these works
from five friends.
These 14 films run 78 minutes, are all silent, and I would very much
like to present them as a one-person program at venues that might be
interested. High quality 4K projection on a reasonably large screen is a
must, as they only fully breathe in that form, and what you see on Vimeo
I consider to be “reproductions.” If you have the time, I could
recommend viewing them all in order. Or to start, /5/
<https://vimeo.com/873805395>, /6 <https://vimeo.com/845144067> /, /10
<https://vimeo.com/904839260>/, and /13/
<https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/936107913>are favorites.
I would like to think these films repay repeating viewings, perhaps even
two or three times in a row. I am working with subtleties in movement,
rhythm, shot length, and what happens at the moments of cuts. Matches or
contrasts on movements, shapes, and colors evoke connectedness and
disconnectedness, perhaps even order and chaos, though my quest is a bit
more for order. I try to present objects without bias as to their value,
except that I unabashedly admit biases toward bicycles (only without
motors), nature, and images that do not have humans in them. One friend
finds the human presences in my films strange, and I see that as a good
sign! We haven’t been around on this planet for an infinitesimally short
portion of its existence, and certainly have not figured out how to live
on it without seeming anomalous to at least my eyes.
I would hope to be present for the program I am proposing, to introduce
it and answer questions and perhaps do an after-screening presentation,
which could be 20 or 30 minutes and include my own analysis of one or
two to then be rescreened. Other possibilities are a program of my first
five films, all in 16mm, made over fifty years ago and recently
preserved on physical film by the Chicago Film Society
<https://www.chicagofilmsociety.org/preservation/fred-camper/>; that has
been presented at Anthology Film Archives and the Museum of the Moving
Image in New York, the University of Chicago, and at Arkadin Cinema and
Bar in St. Louis. By odd coincidence, that program is also 78 minutes. I
have also done several presentations of my selections of films by Stan
Brakhage, in connection with a book collecting my writings on his work
<https://fredcamper.com/Brakhage/SeekingBrakhage.html> over more than
fifty years that was published last year, and would love to do more,
partly just as a way of getting his work shown on film.
Do write me with any questions.
Fred Camper
Chicago
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