16mm Flower Films

Whether though haptic landscapes in Summer and Glimpse of the Garden or botanical collages like In the Conservatory and The Garden of Earthly Delights, plants and flowers are established as more than embellishment; they are pulled to the foreground as active participants. These filmmakers sometimes use flora as personal metaphor, but ultimately surrender to nature’s complete other-ness.

Supported by Allied Productions and hosted at Le Petit Versailles Garden. Programmed By Courtney Muller.

Bouquets 1-10 (1994-1995) by Rose Lowder. 12 min.
Structured in the camera during "filming", according to modalities worked out progressively in my previous films, these researches develop to compose a film bunch of pictures picked every time in the same site, at various times. These bunches of pictures chosen and weaved in alternated order also include some accidental photogrammes which, such of the herbs "poor", can be harmful or useful, depending on circumstances.

In Springtime (2012) by Joel Schlemowitz. 3 min.
The change of seasons in Prospect Park, Brooklyn.

In the Conservatory (2010) by Caryn Cline. 5 min.
On a gray winter day in Seattle, the Volunteer Park Conservatory offers a trip to a different climate: lush, wildly colorful, strange, and beautiful. In the Conservatory experimentally captures the essence of the place, through the use of direct animation, ambient sound, and music. Plants from the conservatory's winter collection were gleaned and pasted onto clear, 16mm film leader, then re-photographed on an optical printer while they were still fresh, resulting in a chance animation. The soundtrack combines ambient sound recorded in the Conservatory with a performance of a Samuel Barber composition, featuring Lucy Goeres on flute and Eliza Garth on piano.

Summer (1970) by Rudolph Burckhardt. 15 min.
"A few acres of Maine, a small lake in the woods, wild flowers, clouds, mosses, and mushrooms after the rain. The visual richness is fantastic, the objective eye is absorbing. Burckhardt often cuts by glimpses, the second time you see the film you see twice as much, and each time the power and depth of feeling are new." — Edwin Denby

The Gardener of Eden (1981) by James Broughton. 8 min.
Filmed on the paradise island of Sri Lanka, this intense poetic work celebrates the eternal dance of nature's sexuality, and sings of the lost Eden we all search for but do not expect to find. In the midst of his fertile garden, while he awaits Adam's return, God tries to keep his eye on all the flowering exuberance he has seeded. The film is written and narrated by James Broughton, and photographed by Joel Singer. The music is performed on twin conch shells, and the central actor is in real life the most famous horticulturalist in Ceylon.

The Garden of Earthly Delights (1981) by Stan Brakhage. 2 min.
Made with the assistance of the National Endowment of the Arts. This film (related to Mothlight) is a collage entirely made of mountain zone vegetation. As the title suggests it is an homage to (but also an argument with) Hieronymus Bosch. It pays tribute as well, and more naturally, to The Tangled Garden of J. E. H. MacDonald and the flower paintings of Emil Nolde.

Glimpse of the Garden (1957) by Marie Menken. 5 min.
Filmed in a garden through a powerful magnifying glass, filmmaker Marie Menken's Glimpse of the Garden is a simple visual poem accompanied by the sound of birdsongs. When Glimpse of the Garden was shown at the Cinemathèque Française in 1963, Jonas Mekas reported that the French audience laughed at it, embarrassed by the film's benign simplicity. Suffice it to say that Glimpse of the Garden represents Menken's interest in pure visuals and essentially feminine point-of-view.