A series of psychedelic, otherworldly visuals of all different colors and designs.A series of psychedelic, otherworldly visuals of all different colors and designs.A series of psychedelic, otherworldly visuals of all different colors and designs.
- Director
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThe images in this film were not created with a camera, but simply by chemical reactions on the waste of the ends of photographic film rolls.
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Rhythmic Abstractions
In 1969, experimental filmmaker Hollis Frampton made a remarkable discovery at a photo laboratory, resulting in one of the most visually abstract movies of his career: that the waste on the ends of the rolls of photographic film produced chemical reactions on the strip, creating abstract imagery resembling surrealist paintings. Collecting these images, he made "Palindrome", a self-reflective title which I have interpreted to be referencing the process used to create the short itself. (Simply put, if you look at the way the film was created, you see the same thing that is the movie). Unlike earlier efforts such as "States" and "Heterodyne", the film in this case relies almost entirely on the imagery itself, while the way it is displayed contributes to a certain extent to the abstraction but not enough to make it exceptionally better. The way the images consistently go through the pattern of long-flashes-long causes the audience to almost immediately feel the rhythmic pattern, while the second-long pauses between the pattern give the eyes a break from the successions preceding each.
The visuals of "Palindrome" were made entirely from playing with the developing chemicals, yet it should not be underestimated as being entirely just a collection of these images. Using his remarkable editing skills, Frampton also takes the images and overlays them on top of one another--or superimposes them if you will. The amount of work taken to do all this physically was obviously a lot. Furthermore, the images are often repeated--admittedly overly so sometimes although this keeps the interest of the viewer--through not only being reused but also through having their exact photographic negative appearing as well as being presented upside down. In case one had not read the history, Frampton also hints at the film's title by the ending text, which reads "et consvmimvr igni"--a Latin palindrome which translates to "and are consumed by fire".
The other reviewer of this short fails to see that to "Palindrome", there was no symbolical, nor analytical, intent behind the imagery. The presentation of the visuals and the psychedelic quality of them was meant to create an interesting abstraction, and not to be analyzed as having a certain meaning. With Frampton, symbolism in film was not so much his main interest, just visual look and nothing more. He set out to create interesting images and that is what this movie does; they are not meant to be anything except abstract dream visuals as they were not made with a photographic camera. Accept that that was the intent and do not frantically attempt an analysis, just enjoy the interesting imagery for what it is.
The visuals of "Palindrome" were made entirely from playing with the developing chemicals, yet it should not be underestimated as being entirely just a collection of these images. Using his remarkable editing skills, Frampton also takes the images and overlays them on top of one another--or superimposes them if you will. The amount of work taken to do all this physically was obviously a lot. Furthermore, the images are often repeated--admittedly overly so sometimes although this keeps the interest of the viewer--through not only being reused but also through having their exact photographic negative appearing as well as being presented upside down. In case one had not read the history, Frampton also hints at the film's title by the ending text, which reads "et consvmimvr igni"--a Latin palindrome which translates to "and are consumed by fire".
The other reviewer of this short fails to see that to "Palindrome", there was no symbolical, nor analytical, intent behind the imagery. The presentation of the visuals and the psychedelic quality of them was meant to create an interesting abstraction, and not to be analyzed as having a certain meaning. With Frampton, symbolism in film was not so much his main interest, just visual look and nothing more. He set out to create interesting images and that is what this movie does; they are not meant to be anything except abstract dream visuals as they were not made with a photographic camera. Accept that that was the intent and do not frantically attempt an analysis, just enjoy the interesting imagery for what it is.
helpful•10
- Tornado_Sam
- Jul 18, 2019
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- Runtime22 minutes
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