ROLLS (1971)

by Robert HUOT
1972 / 16mm / color-b&w / silent / 1S / 97' 00




From A Critical Cinema, by Scott MacDonald:
"The year 1971 was particularly intense for Huot: he was struggling to learn how to manage [his] farm, his marriage with choreographer Twyla Tharp was coming to an end, and he and Tharp were adjusting to the birth of a child. As a result, Rolls (1971) is at times very beautiful and at other times quite shocking: sex is not romanticized as it usually is in commercial film,we see it bluntly and in close, and unlike other male diarists, Huot even has the courage to reveal his own masturbation. Huot's willingness to reveal himself at least as fully as he reveals women gives his films a point of contact with Carolee Schneemann's."

MacDonald: For Rolls (1971) you used a very unusual structure, a combination of two radically different ways of treating the same imagery. You jump back and forth between sections made up of 252 successive one-second images and roll-long, unedited, often single-shot material. What led you to choose that organization?

Huot: ...Part of the reason for wanting to do that came from a feeling that all these experiences are in our minds simultaneously. You bring to any moment all these other experiences you?ve had. I wanted to show certain of the full rolls because I thought they were good or interesting as they were, and I wanted also to do this total juxtaposition. I wanted to use everything I shot, 100 percent, at least once. I wanted to show real time and also a state of mind. I thought that alternating between slow, very detailed presentations, where you would really look at all of the information, and rhythmic, one-second passages with the juxtapositions of everything would be real in a way only film could be.

1 PRINT IN DISTRIBUTION


distribution format Digital file on server (PAL)
screen 4/3 (single screen)
speed 29,976 fps
sound silent
rental fee 252,00 €