INCARNATION (BOY)

by Tony WU
2003 / 16mm / color / silent / 1S / 6' 00

“Tony Wu’s hand-made 16mm double projection employs positive and negative prints of the same snippet from an appropriated film to summon an eerie doppelganger of erotic obsession.”
– Images Festival, 2006

INCARNATION (BOY) evokes the ghosts from Stan Brakhage’s MOTHLIGHT. Boy images incarnate from found-footage film corpse. Boys and incarnation (boys) gaze at each other.

March 2003, I received emails from fellow filmmaker friends, telling me that the experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage just passed away. Brakhage, I can’t forget about him. I can’t forget about those youthful years when I started to view his films; I was so stunned and enlightened. His MOTHLIGHT is the one made without a camera, but with petals and leaves glued on clear leader, made by Brakhage’s own hands. Along his hands with petals and leaves through cinematic lights, the film creates beautiful and magic illusion.

June 2003, I stayed upstate in New York. I plucked petals on campus and glued them on the deserted found-footages that were collected from the trash cans in the editing room. On the found-footages there was an unknown boy, and his shadow, his in/out movements and his eyes stare. The plucked flowers then ghostly awoke the boy’s soul into a whole new incarnation. Natural and organic plant mingled with the illusion of the boy, passing through different cinematic space (surfaces of film strips, three-dimensional plants, negative and positive images, illusionary space of film).

INCARNATION (BOY) is optically printed and reprinted into negative and positive images. Two images, negative and positive will be double projected together. This form echoes the history of experimental filmmaking, and at the same time, pays the master Stan Brakhage homage.
— T.W.

1 PRINT IN DISTRIBUTION


distribution format Digital file on server (SD)
screen 1,37 - Standard (single screen)
speed 29,976 fps
sound silent
rental fee 37,00 €