Fred Worden
2021
Possessed
Fred Worden
Joan Crawford
I had a strong, slightly illicit, urge to commandeer the original train sequence from the 1931 film Possessed and make it move in such a way as to give the girl (Joan Crawford) what she thought she wanted: a position on the inside. To do that, I had to create my own (all encompassing) vehicle. By my count, the original sequence provides three orders of motion: the motion (and stillness) of the passengers on the train, the motion of the train itself, and finally the motion of the girl (Joan) outside of the train.
Possessed
Amongst the Persuaded
Fred Worden
The human susceptibility to delusional thinking has, at least, this defining characteristic: easy to spot in others, hard to see in oneself. The filmmaker, racked by the inescapable observation that it is delusional thinking that is the common denominator driver of so many contemporary man-made disasters gins up a vehicle meant to ruthlessly uncover and expose his own particular brand of pathological believing. This film is about us. I believe its true. See the iron jaws of the mechanism at work as the filmmaker falls into the biggest and most obvious delusion of all: the belief that he can master his own delusions by making a film about them.
Amongst the Persuaded
Introduction to the Secret Society
Fred Worden
A half-baked, but tenderized world view offered up for the new arrivals. An abstracted experimental narrative based on three images: face, figure, and crowd. A collage film of representational images of the human figure without being portraiture or performance.
Introduction to the Secret Society
When Worlds Collude
Fred Worden
“An experimental film structured as a kind of specialized playground in which highly representational images are freed from their duties to refer to things outside of themselves. The images run free in their new lightness making unforeseeable, promiscuous connections with each other and developing an inexplicable, non-parsable plot line that runs along with all the urgency of any good thriller. When worlds collude, something outside of description is always just about to happen.” (FW)
When Worlds Collude
The After Life
Fred Worden
“I made The After Life using images out of a tiny mini-camcorder called a Flip that I bought on amazon.com for $98.00. All I did with the material was work with arrangements of frames along a timeline to setup what Eisenstein called “collisions” (for him a colliding of shots, for me, a colliding of frames). On rare occasions, Eisenstein substituted the word “copulation” for the word “collision” in describing the dynamics of his montage theory. In The After Life, it’s all copulation all the time. Bodies attract, bodies intersect and new creatures stream forth. In The After Life uninhibited promiscuity is what makes the world go round. It can’t be all bad.” (FW)
The After Life
Blue Pole(s)
Fred Worden
"Blue Poles (2005), a wholly abstract piece which fills the screen with what appear to be white sparks, variously suggesting scraps of burning paper floating away from a fire, frost crystals on a window, or the visual phenomena which appear when holding one’s eyes shut tightly – a beautiful, haunting effect..."
Blue Pole(s)
