MNEMOSYNE MOTHER OF MUSES

by Larry GOTTHEIM
1986 / 16mm / color / sound / 1S / 16' 00




There is a double retrograde motion. A flow of images goes forward, linked to a sound track that is going backward. Then the directions are reversed. This relates to the complex canon forms and retrograde motions that were beloved of some Western Renaissance composers as well as Schoenberg and Webern. I was influenced by a passage in Heidegger where he calls attention to the ancient Greeks conceiving Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory, as the mother of the muses. Memory is both a subject of the film and an essential part of its structure. The material evokes many other emotional and philosophical ideas. Images include those from a wedding, the Red Robin Diner at night, my father after his stroke, the place in Sunnyside where I grew up, a ruined factory on the shore in Eastport Maine. Sound elements include the conductor Arturo Toscanini rehearsing a passage from Wagner, something from the sound track of the film noir THE KILLERS. There is a sense of loss and recovery-- the need to go back and its impossibility except in art. — L.G.

2 PRINTS IN DISTRIBUTION


distribution format Digital file on server (FHD)
screen 1,37 - Standard (single screen)
speed 24 fps
sound sound
rental fee 68,00 €

distribution format DCP on server (SMPTE 2K)
screen 1,37 - Standard (single screen)
speed 24 fps
sound sound
rental fee 68,00 €