Description

1974, B&W, 16mm double screen, 37 mins.

Description is shown on two screens. Shot using two cameras simultaneously filming the same subject, it explores the way we extract meaning from the process of describing, visually and aurally, using a minimal and highly structured framework. Two characters, a man and a woman in a single room, move around each frame, looking at photographs and maps on the wall. Their voices describe not what we can directly see, but other external landscapes and events taken from texts; texts with which we may already be familiar. Nothing is known about the two characters except what is shown through our looking at their dress, age, expression, and way of speaking. Repeating and refilming the sequences, the film is gradually drained of connotations until it becomes only a spatial relationship in time.

Starring: Jane Bowden, Jonathan Collinson.