The Secret Garden

The Secret Garden

1988 · 18 min · ★ 7.4

"No filmmaker of the 1980s knew as much as Phil Solomon of affirming the importance of multiple layers in the visual production of images. Solomon perpetuates the Brakhagian tradition of creating a succession of images whose logic comes from a large number of rhythmic sources, formal, associative, and whose coherence passes from one source to another. Here, as with Brakhage, one must be spoiled in the trance offered by Solomon, and be sufficiently assured to follow a structure that is based as well on the melody, the harmonics and the flashes of metaphors as on a narrative plot. The Secret Garden is one of Solomon's best films. Like Thornton and Klahr, there is the shadow of a story here, which has to do with the passage from innocence and experience to terror and ecstasy." – T. Gunning.

Directed by Phil Solomon

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The Secret Garden

Nocturne

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Nocturne

Nocturne · 1980

Nocturne evokes one of the most magnificent films of Brakhage: Fire of Waters. It takes place in a suburb populated by children playing and indistinct parental figures. The narrative plot might suggest that it was a boy's night-time plays; The flashes of a torch in a dark room evoke fights and aerial bombardments. An impression of hostility and a feeling of horror interferes in all the movements ... The fantasy is tinged with nightmare, a storm of repressed emotions hides behind the calm facade of this house. In Nocturne, found footage blends so well with the threat that its perception produces a discharge from the unconscious.

Psalm III: Night of the Meek

Psalm III: Night of the Meek · 2002

Psalm III: Night of the Meek

The film combines, through a variety of optical printing techniques, documentary archival footage, images from the The Golem (1920), and Solomon’s cinematography to evoke the legendary tale of Rabbi Löw’s monster in order to save the Jewish population of the 16th century Prague ghetto.

Psalm II: Walking Distance

Psalm II: Walking Distance · 2000

Psalm II: Walking Distance

Imagine a rusted, medieval film can having survived centuries, a long lost D. W. Griffith / Georges Méliès co-production, a film left to us from the Bronze Age, a time when images were smelted and boiled rather than merely taken, when they poured down like silver, not to be fixed and washed, but free to form and coagulate into unstable, temporary molds, mere holding patterns of faces, places, and things, shape-shifting according to whim.

By This River

By This River · 2018

Phil Solomon's unreleased GTA film. Made in Grand Theft Auto V.

Crossroad

Crossroad · 2005

In 2005, Phil Solomon collaborated with his best friend, the highly respected filmmaker Mark LaPore, on a short digital video entitled Crossroad, which they made as a get-well offering for a mutual friend [David Gatten].

The Snowman

The Snowman · 1995

“A meditation on memory, burial and decay – a belated kaddish for my father.” (Phil Solomon)

Rehearsals for Retirement

Rehearsals for Retirement · 2007

Rehearsals for Retirement

MovieAnimationMystery

Part of "In Memoriam", a body of work comprising several videos, shot entirely within the virtual world of the Grand Theft Auto video game. Solomon transformed Liberty City, the ersatz metropolis based on New York City in which the game is set, into a reflective space of stillness: devoid of players, full of melancholy, nostalgia, loss, grief, and instances of compelling poetic beauty. This work was created in response to the passing of Solomon's lifelong friend, Mark LaPore, at the age of 53, on September 11, 2005.

Remains to Be Seen

Remains to Be Seen · 1989

Remains to Be Seen

Solomon uses chemical and optical treatments to coat the film with a limpid membrane of swimming crystals, coagulating into silver recall, then dissolving.

Clepsydra

Clepsydra · 1992

Clepsydra is an ancient Greek water clock (literally, "to steal water"). This film envisions the strip of celluloid going vertically through a projector as a sprocketed waterfall (random events measured in discreet units of time), through which the silent dreams of a young girl can barely be heard under the din of an irresistible torrent, an irreversible torment.

Concrescence

Concrescence · 1996

"concrescence, principle of As a term from A.N. Whitehead's metaphysics refers to the drive things possess that impel them to actualization, the creative urge towards concrescence, for producing novel advances through the generation of greater interrelatedness. Many thinkers would deem this urge divine, so the principle of concrescence may be considered one of Whitehead's terms for God." - Bruce Elder

Last Days in a Lonely Place

Last Days in a Lonely Place · 2007

Last Days in a Lonely Place

The virtual landscapes of a video game are transformed into an existential tale of solemn beauty.

Sweetgrass

Sweetgrass · 2009

MovieDocumentary

An unsentimental elegy to the American West, Sweetgrass follows the last modern-day cowboys to lead their flocks of sheep up into Montana's breathtaking and often dangerous Absaroka-Beartooth mountains for summer pasture, revealing a world in which nature and culture, animals and humans, vulnerability and violence are all intimately meshed.

Seasons...

Seasons... · 2002

Brakhage's frame-by-frame hand carvings and etchings directly into the film emulsion, sometimes photographically combined with paint, are illuminated by Solomon's optical printing; this footage was then edited by Solomon into a four part 'seasonal cycle'. This film can be considered to be part of a larger, 'umbrella' work by Brakhage entitled «...» . Seasons... is inspired by the colors and textures found in the woodcuts of Hokusai and Hiroshige, and the playful sense of forms dancing in space from the film works of Robert Breer and Len Lye.

Sleep Has Her House

Sleep Has Her House · 2017

Sleep Has Her House

MovieMysteryHorror

The shadows of screams climb beyond the hills. It has happened before. But this will be the last time. The last few sense it, withdrawing deep into the forest. They cry out into the black, as the shadows pass away, into the ground.

Cannibal! The Musical

Cannibal! The Musical · 1996

Cannibal! The Musical

MovieComedyWestern

Heading through Colorado Territory in search of gold and women, Alferd Packer and his group of bemused companions find themselves lost, starving and musically inspired by the obstacles they confront along the way, including a die-hard Confederate cyclops, a trio of surly trappers, a tribe of Japanese-speaking "Indians," and ultimately, each other.

Elementary Phrases

Elementary Phrases · 1994

Elementary Phrases

Colleagues at the University of Colorado at Boulder, the two began with strips of film Brakhage had painted on by hand, photographing them frame by frame with Solomon’s optical printer. They often printed two strips of film together, some of them containing images taken by Solomon, then chose from the images what Brakhage says “seemed to us natural phrases,” which Brakhage arranged into the final form. The result is a 40-minute silent film in which occasional hints of photographic images sometimes seem to peek through largely abstract shapes.

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