ADAGIO

Three picture-movements where myths of the past meet visions of the present. All three are live-image scenes and scenery worked to pre-chosen music. Dante and Virgil descended on the back of the monster Geryon into hell. I descended through levels of earthly sensuality and found - the winter season. Part 1, ADAGIO, is a nude study of a beautiful woman; I call her Psyche. And a nude man; I call him Eros.

Albinoni is one of my favorite baroque composers. I used a particularly mysterious and compelling composition of his to invoke reminiscences of the old world (gardens of Paris) welling up into the new (the arid, Mexican-like region of southern California), to combine in a personal rendition of the Psyche and Eros theme: first Psyche appears as a nude portrait study for camera, then Eros, the male erotic energy (embodied in the portrait of sculptor George Herms). It is a romantic fantasy, two portraits, and a journey between old and new. I think of the film as a way to destroy such distinctions, that is, the distinction between old and new, past and present, myth and reality.