Darius Khondji's lovingly composed
photography at least makes the
film a serviceable travelogue, although its digital crispness is no match for how Zhao Fei captured the dusty
magic of the»20s in «Sweet and Lowdown.»
The immersive feature - length
film inspired by Oursler's own archive
of ephemera relating to stage
magic, spirit
photography, pseudoscience, telekinesis, and other manifestations
of the paranormal.
Brandenburg's practice reflects her training in set design and the visual arts and is inspired by a wide range
of historical elements, many reverting back to the late 19th - centruy, sourced from literature, the visual arts, expressionist theatre, Hollywood
films,
photography, chess and
magic, as well as pre-Freudian psychoanalysis.
PART 2: LIGHT AND SHADOW The ESSAY «Light and Shadow» discusses... flicker
films, Plato's allegory
of the cave, H.P. Robinson's allegorical images, working with the absence
of light, Tony Conrad's slow emulsions,
photography as fairy
magic and sun drawings, Adam Fuss's photograms, Hiroshi Sugimoto's feature - length exposures, Cai Guo - Qiang's explosions, light as cancerous radiation, light and shadow in city planning, contrast and lighting in works by Rineke Dijkstra, Jacob Riis, Weegee, Adrienne Salinger, and others, O. Winston Link's environmental light, darkness and light as metaphors for knowledge, morality, and power, pools
of light in Expressionism,
film noir, and works by Hans Bellmer, Esther Bubley, and Anna Gaskell, Group f / 64, available light in the work
of Roy DeCarava, Yinka Shonibare's interpretation
of Dorian Gray, public projected images, Indonesian shadow play, Gregory Barsamian's kinetic sculptures, flickering portraits by Christian Boltanski, Kara Walker's silhouettes, and more...