William Wees

Winter Epitaph for Michael Furey

William Wees

Inspired by the final paragraph of Joyce’s story ‘The Dead’ – but in no sense a recreation of that paragraph, or even an interpretation of it – this film was shot at various times of day and in various climatic conditions in a graveyard in Maine. The shooting took two winters and the editing one spring. All superimposition was done in the camera. The blue quality of the middle passage was achieved by using ‘indoor’ film out of doors. During the editing, the film evolved from a more-or-less realistic evoking of a graveyard in winter, into something more abstract – the sort of thing that might be called ‘Fugue in Orange and Blue’. The film is very silent. —William Wees