RED LIGHT

by Pierre ROVERE
1975 / 16mm / color / sound / 1S / 7' 00




Cameraless film
Like BLACK & LIGHT, this films is also made without a camera. The image is perforated directly by a computer into two opaque 16mm strips. But this time, an additional step has been taken at the printing stage: the two strips (printed in A&B rolls) are each filtered with a different color.

A mathematical film
This is a mathematical film, whose protagonists are light and color and whose subjects are serial structure and breaks in the series. What is to be seen in the film is its "pattern", its combinatorics:
X=constructed movement, B=pseudo-random movement, C=B shifted, D=C shifted, Y=constructed movement. The series is X→B→C→D→Y→B→C→D→, which then starts over with X, etc.
What is meant by "movement" is the succession of immobile components which give the illusion of movement, since, as everyone knows, nothing moves in a film besides the film print. This loop is broken by the appearance of red dots (or blue ones in the second part of the film), which are synchronized to a sound event. If T is the duration separating two breaks in the series, this break's frequency is equal to T-N, where N is equal to N-1.

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NB. This second version, made soon after the first one, differs from the latter in two ways: in the first version, the film consisted only of the first part (with a length of about 4'), and the appearance of the red dots was preceded by one blue dot of a larger diameter.

1 PRINT IN DISTRIBUTION


distribution format Digital file on server (FHD)
version restored version
screen 16/9 (single screen)
speed 24 fps
sound sound
rental fee 42,00 €