Aspect

Directed by Emily Richardson

Across the surface of the forest, light, colour, shadow shift; rhythmic, kaleidoscopic. Matter and the immaterial in constant counteraction. The screen becomes a painting in animation. Ordinarily, light describes the motif. Here, the forest is almost – almost – occluded as the light that delineates the world becomes autonomous, visible; describes itself as subject. There are some very strange effects: light and shadow grow, die back; bark shimmers; branches tremble, or clouds pass above; trees shiver in the cold, or shake in threatening gesture; sunlight flickers, on and off, like an electric bulb. The portrait lives. These films are not the index of space and objects, but a cinema of time, movement, light; flickering lashes of mesmerised eyes in the click of an aperture.