The Great Art of Knowing

Directed by David Gatten

"This chapter of my ongoing exploration of the Byrd library finds its name and shape within a single volume from that collection: Athanasius Kircher's 17th century encyclopedia, THE GREAT ART OF KNOWING. Herein find tangled texts and crossed destinies, filled with figures at once buried deep and tossed high by History, lined with traces of a hidden romance. Love finds purchase between tightly shelved volumes. In the spaces between the letters. In the lines themselves. An antinomian cinema seems possible. A gentle iconoclasm? The image is always backwards in a mirror. The story unfolds slowly. The fourth film from the Byrd project." - David Gatten