Blackbird Descending (Tense Alignment)1977

"Malcolm Le Grice, one of the leading avant-garde filmmakers in Britain, has made a feature length work which is (...) one of the most accessible films to come out of the experimental area of cinematic exploration in recent years. The secret of its appeal is that ot engages the viewer's curiosity and then challanges him to remember, really remember, exactly what he has seen and heard. It assumes that peoplec an have fun at the same time as they are absorbing an analysis of how time and space are constructed in the cinema. What we see is a simple domestic scene: A woman typing. Through the window a man prunes a tree and a woman hangs out different colored sheets. A phone rings. This scene is repeated again and again from different viewpoints and timepoints but always slightly altered. The film is not about Pirandelloesque but film reality, so Le Grice finally shows us the camera filming some of the scenes we have seen, even utilising split screens to unmask the unreality (and of course thereby creating yet another). Like poet Wallace Stevens, Le Grice gives us thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird with fresh eyes." –Ken Wlaschin, London Film Festival, 77.