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Details (DVD)

Robert Barry - Details (DVD)
A succession of scenes filmed in static shots, appearing behind words letters cut on a black screen, giving the word the function of the frame and therefore rephrasing the link between language and image.
Details shows a succession of scenes filmed in static shots, sometimes in black and white and sometimes in color. The spectator has to guess their subject through a black mask. A word, different for each scene, is cut out within the mask : INSTEAD, BECOMING, CONTINUE, ALONE, UNKNOWN, ECSTATIC, FORGOTTEN, EXPECT.
The drawing of letters seems to dig a hole in the black screen and then let us catch a glimpse of the scene shot by the artist. The camera may be set in a car parallel to the road, perpendicular to the traffic in a New York street, in front of a museum wall while artist's exhibition is installed, etc. There is a word corresponding to each suggested scene. If the relationship between the word's signification and the corresponding pattern is like an idea association, it is purely arbitrary and fortuitous.
The rhythm of appearances is marked with a black and mute screen. This «blackness » gives a break before the opening of the next scene, whose sound seems to be thus liberated. In a way, this very system goes back to the silent movies era, the intertitle principle coming on the top of the filmed image itself. But here, the «carton», that is to say the word, does not give an indication neither on the action nor on what is coming next. It is simply superimposed on the moving picture.
By giving the word the function of the frame and therefore rephrasing the link between language and image, Robert Barry seems to take the opposite view of FW Murnau according to whom « The ideal film does not need text ».
Directed by Robert Barry.
Technical assistant: Pascale Alibert.

Produced and published by IMPORT (michèle didier & Les presses du réel).
 
published in 2006
DVD O-Zone
31', colour, sound
 
25.00
 
ISBN : 978-2-84066-179-5
EAN : 9782840661795
 
in stock
(last copies available!)
 
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