Deep Red

One always worries about silent films, even these little experiments in form and colour. Does film about film, film as texture, sit comfortably in the cinema? The ambient hum of an air conditioner, the sussurus of an audience, do they add, detract, distract?

Nonetheless, Deep Red, colour in search of meaning. A whirl, a whorl, a world of colours. A forest, then a sea, of blue. Veins of yellow and branches of red. The inevitable simulacrum of flickering, that stroboscopic signal 'E-X-P-E-R-I-M-E-N-T-A-L', at times as cliched as turning ones back to an explosion.

Watching still, the eye seeks shapes in a thicket of visual noise, otherwise silence. Ultraviolet footage of a cornfield at sunset; handmade, this film; additive colour mixing the medium, watching and waiting, the brain clawing at shapes in search of recognition. Ur-text without context, subtext that meaning is transient - perhaps, that the search for meaning is futile?

What informed the choices herein made? One that Deep Red calls for is to wonder how it would look projected upon a dance floor - silently, it creates the expectation of rhythm, the desire for meter, for measure. As often within EIFF's Black Box strand we have only outputs; questions unasked, unanswered. Upon its projection the mind seeks to hang meaning, projecting itself - in that there is some wonder, some pleasure, but Deep Red adds little else. It is in places red, but it is nowhere deep.