RPM Fest and the Brattle Theatre will host “Brittany Gravely: Vignettes of Time” tomorrow, August 21, at 2pm. The program includes seven 16mm films by Gravely, two of which are co-directed with Ken Linehan as Magical Approach. In the notes for tomorrow’s show, RPM Fest adds that
Brittany Gravely employs experimental hand-processing techniques to transform the educational and found footage, also, uses the time-consuming optical printer to over-layer the images to create stunning superimpositions. Vignettes of Time is a portal to connect with the long-lasting experimental film history. Her work has a wide range of genre bending and creative output, from mid-longform psych-horror in her earlier career to expanded cinema performance, where she collaborates with artist and musician Ken Linehan.”
The screenings will be followed by an in-person Q&A with Gravely, Linehan, and DigBoston film critic Jake Mulligan—who reviewed one of the program’s films, Gravely’s Story of the Dreaming Water – Chapter One (2018), when it showed at RPM Fest in 2020.
When combined with the scratches and sparkles of the film material itself, [the] aquatic images become eerie, shadowy, and almost nightmarish in their motion. And in that Story of the Dreaming Water brings to mind early cinema experiments, or at least the current state of extent ones—more specifically, Gravely’s film reminds me of Monkeyshines No. 1 and No. 2 (1890), a pair of camera tests that similarly depict jittery movement within damaged, rattling frames. For their uncanny, nightmarish motion, for the random, unrepeatable nature of their creation, and for so many other, more personal reasons, those Edison pictures are for me among the scariest films ever made. And even just in Chapter One, Story of the Dreaming Water captures something of their indelible energy.”
For tickets, full program list, and more, see the event page at brattlefilm.org. For more information on RPM Fest, see revolutionsperminutefest.org.
Dig Staff means this article was a collaborative effort. Teamwork, as we like to call it.
