Le Citron (after Manet)

Terry Ellis was a little known filmmaker from London, apparently deceased, who created a number of independent/experimental works throughout his life, mainly during the 21st century. Although little has been written about him online, one can still find his channel on YouTube, where he posted a number of these films; it is also apparent that he was a member of the Filmmaker's Cooperative, as some of his films have also been listed there. It is mostly I who has thought to add some of his work to IMDb's database - not that anyone will see it, but he seems to be existent enough to be considered worth adding.

"Le Citron (after Manet)" reminded me of Hollis Frampton's 1969 short "Lemon" when I saw it, although conceptually the two are quite different. Frampton's film was focused on lighting as a tool and how effective it can be, by featuring a lemon coming out of shadow, before being enveloped back up by the dark. "Le Citron (after Manet)" (Citron being lemon in French, meaning he titled it with this so as not to copy the other title) is on the other hand more of a play on words, as it references the type of painting featuring inanimate objects known as a 'still life' (which the painter Manet painted). The subject of the film is a lemon, the sort of thing one might see painted in a still life, but the gag is how the camera angle keeps shifting constantly throughout the three-minute short, while different filters appear over the shots. Thus, it is not a still life anymore, since the subject is stationary and the camera is not. A clever idea which works well enough for a film this short, one just needs to not expect it will be anything like the Frampton film. Both use the same subject to serve different functions, which makes a comparison of them quite limited.