SOPHIE'S PLACE
EUTERPE
•
1h 18m
Fully hand-painted cut-out animation and the culmination of five years' work. Totally unplanned, unrehearsed development of scenes under the camera (yet with more "continuity" than any of the previous Lawrence Jordan films) this "alchemical autobiography" meditates on a few phase of the life of the filmmaker. The film begins in a paradisiacal garden and then proceeds to the interior of the Mosque of St. Sophia. More and more, SOPHIE'S PLACE develops into episodes centering around one form or another of Sophia, an early Greek and Gnostic embodiment of spiritual wisdom. She is seen emanating light waves and symbolic objects.
[The filmmaker emphasizes that he does not know the exact significance of any of the symbols in the film any more than he knows the meaning of his dreams nor does he know the meanings of any of the episodes. He hopes that the symbols and the episodes set-off poetic associations in the viewer. He intends them to be entirely open to the interpretations of the viewers.]
Up Next in EUTERPE
-
SPECTRE MYSTAGOGIC
"Human qualities migrate through light and shadow... Like flames and waves, the dead and the living course through this world... without weight through space and time." Michael McClure and Joanna McClure along with the poet Kenneth Rexroth's daughter Mary make their way through SPECTRE MYSTAGOGIC.
-
SPIRITS IN SEASON
Lily Dale is a spiritualist community in Chautauqua County, New York. Pilgrims and tourists swarm the hamlet in summer but, in the autumn, Lily Dale becomes a more intimate setting for spectral communions. SPIRITS IN SEASON explores the town's Leolyn Woods, pet cemetery, Inspiration Stump and Fai...
-
SPOOK SPORT
Animated by Norman McLaren, using his adroit ink-on-film technique, Mary Ellen Bute's film visualizes Camille Saint-Saƫns' DANSE MACABRE. It features colored globes, ellipses and triangles that move ghost-like over monochromatic backgrounds, communicating the notion of spirits rising from a grave...