Bill Brand

Moment

Bill Brand

In a 2.5 minute sequence, a simple series of ordinary gas station events is seen intermittently through the opening display. This sequence is then divided and rearranged 7 times in reverse order. Each time the divisions are greater in number (smaller in size) until finally the film appears to move smoothly backwards, divided by a single frame. The inspiration for the film as well as the title is derived from information theory where a 'moment' is defined as the shortest duration at which no distinction can be made between units of information. This work is a demonstration and exploration of the line between human information and machine information. It dynamically reveals film's basic unit, the frame.

Acts of Light

Bill Brand

This film has no literal subject, no frames, only slow continuously shifting colours, cycling around the perimeter of the spectrum. The changes are so slow as to be unseen, yet they alter our perception of colour. Part of a trilogy (Acts of Light), which develops a study of pure colour, based on the notion that film is essentially change and not motion.

Zip-Tone-Cat-Tune

Bill Brand

A simple home movie of a cat is reprocessed through a 'Zip-a-tone' dot pattern making a complex of layers. In combination with freeze frames, positive and negative, and color motion, this work attempts to visually construct a system of overlays like those in Baroque musical composition.

Before the Fact

Bill Brand

Saul Levine

Made at S.U.N.Y. at Binghamton as a class exercise, filmmaker Saul Levine performs with students who each try to mimic his previously recorded phrase and then try to imitate each other imitating the recording.

Chuck's Will's Widow

Bill Brand

Chuck's Will's Widow is a eulogy for my father and mother whose ashes are spread in the Adirondack mountain woods where the film is shot. Visualized through a field of swirling shapes, the fragmented landscapes weave an emotional fabric containing inexplicable personifications and associations.

Coalfields

Bill Brand

West Virginia industrial landscapes are collaged on an optical printer through a series of jagged shapes that transform the photographed scenes into a semi-abstract kinetic field. The technique developed by Brand in his earlier films, extends the already complex visual idiom by inlaying social, sexual, personal and political subject matter. Woven into the fabric of the film is the story of Fred Carter, a retired coal miner and black lung activist who was framed by the Federal Government in its effort to undercut the black lung movement and to stop his bid for president of the United Mine Workers Association. His story is told through fragments of documentary interviews and by a poet whose narrative forms a counter theme within the film. The film’s thematic content and formal visualizations sit in precarious balance.

CARTOONS: STILL AT WORK

Bill Brand

Still at Work, a self-portrait of the artist in his places of work: the studio in Lower Manhattan and Sarah Lawrence College, the school where he taught. The film animates a still photograph through a grid of random dots.

Always Open Never Closed

Bill Brand

A woman wakes up, gets dressed, makes breakfast and walks down the street. This daily ritual becomes extraordinary seen in a trance-like structure of continuous lap dissolves and continuous spectral color shifts.

Masstransiscope

Bill Brand

Consisting of a 300-foot-long painting made on reflective material, Masstransiscope is a public artwork visible from the subway tunnels of the Manhattan-bound B and Q lines. It is in a special enclosure with 228 narrow slits and fluorescent lights. To someone passing by, it looks like an animated movie.

Huevos a la mexicana

Bill Brand

This is my digital/analog contribution to “Xochimilco Treasure Hunting” in Mexico City on the final day of "HAZLO TU MISMO," Do-it-Yourself Independent Analog Film Laboratory Encounter, Sept. 9, 2018.

New York State Primaries

Bill Brand

New York State Primaries shows stenciled lettering that dissolve between the words, “red,” “blue,” and “green” but don’t create secondary colors. The film is a response to Saul Levine’s 1972 NOTE: CHICAGO REDS AND BLUES.

Demolition of a Wall

Bill Brand

DEMOLITION OF A WALL takes six frames of the falling wall from the 1896 Lumiere film and reorders these six frames in all their permutations. With a score for piano that follows a similar pattern the film resembles change ringing, a musical form developed in England in the 17th century where the tuned bells of a church tower are rung in a series of mathematical patterns called "changes". Here, we see 718 additional variations on the original "theme".