The Emblazoned Apparitions

This mix of analogue and digital works spans the arc of Phil Solomon’s career. He intended THE EXQUISITE HOUR “partly as a lullaby for the dying, partly as a lament at the dusk of cinema”—a masterpiece originally produced on Super 8, just like REMAINS TO BE SEEN from the same year. Referencing Wallace Stevens’s poem, THE SNOWMAN conjures a “mind of winter,” harnessing decayed emulsion to abstract home-movie figures from their summer ground, in icy contemplation of childhood and loss, “a meditation on memory, burial and decay—a belated Kaddish for my father” (PS). TWILIGHT PSALM III: NIGHT OF THE MEEK is a dark, cinematically symbolic night of the world’s soul in memory of Anne Frank, aptly Solomon’s one and only black and white photochemical meditation. THE SUMMIT is an early work Solomon never officially released, a doomsday drive of cracking emulsion, spooked by shreds of historical speeches, ominous war and cataclysm. (Eve Heller)

In the presence of Eve Heller (co-curator).
This film will be shown as part of the screening THE ORCHARD OF SILHOUETTES.