At Black Range

Directed by Arthur Cantrill

At Black Range (1984) was shot near the Grampians in Western Victoria, and features monumental monochrome rocks with rainbow shadows and “fringing” in the moving eucalypts, which create coloured vibrations like the filmic analogue of Impressionism. The skin of the film and the rock itself are both living surfaces of mobile textures: lichen becomes electric, pointilist, as the camera fades in and out of focus. The shadows of skinny tree trunks dart like electric blue lightning, veins or eels. Shivering leaves morph into undersea anemones, caressing the rocks in a teasing, sexual way. Somehow, the loosening of Taussig’s “straightjacket of the spectrum” allows for a loosening of the straightjacket of taxonomy as well; classes, phyla, and even kingdoms drop away, revealing an undifferentiated field of vibrant matter in which entities shapeshift. (Tessa Laird)