Triumph of the Wild2008

This is a chronological film of American history beginning with the American Revolution...

"I filmed TRIUMPH OF THE WILD and made the artwork in my studio in Queens, NY. I shot it on 16mm and transferred it to a digital scan, and then printed to 35mm. This was much easier than with COSMETIC EMERGENCY, which is a film that I made in 2005 by hand printing every frame to 35mm on an 'experimental printing' configuration, which consisted of a camera and a lens and some tissue paper, projecting from the floor up underneath this table onto the tissue paper, and advancing the film frame by frame to re-photograph it. The advantage of scanning to digital first is that color correcting and cropping is possible. TRIUMPH OF THE WILD is an animation, so the focus should not be on the 'printing effect'. Cosmetic Emergency is so roughly printed that projectionists think their machine is breaking while it is projecting.

"At the time I made TRIUMPH OF THE WILD, 16mm was beginning to be phased out, so printing to 16mm was not an option. TRIUMPH OF THE WILD was created by animating artwork that was painted and assembled within a six month period and researched for a year prior. Blending themes of war, history and rebirth, there is a 'non-stop-breathless' quality to the film that is highly detailed. It is created to portray a complete pictorial universe that is then broken down, through violence and PTSD. This is why I chose to print to 35mm, as a way to retain this detail in the final projected image.

"I have shown TRIUMPH OF THE WILD several times with the soundtrack being performed live with the accompaniment of composer and pianist Thollem McDonas. Those are my most memorable screenings and we have done this in SF MOMA, the FotoFocus Biennial 2014, Site Sante Fe, the MAXXI Museum in Rome, Italy and many other venues and countries." -M.C.