Tri-Alogue #2

A subtle movement of dancer’s arms invites three panels of film into one frame in this micro-symphony of sound and image in which the changing light evokes the passing of time. Human and non-human, interior and exterior co-exist in this highly improvisational yet serendipitous portrait of the forever-changing city of Seattle. Collaborating to subdivide a 16mm film frame into thirds, Caryn Cline, Linda Fenstermaker and Reed O’Beirne present their separately shot segments simultaneously within one spatial plane. From the interplay of these three points of view emerges a cinematic conversation based on a horizontal compositional logic within the shared frame. This combined connotative relationship between the subframes evokes a spectacle of fractured spatial and temporal perspective.

Narrative breaks down into a searching and tentative score, while optically printed flowers pass greens and reds and dirt against a scratchy white sky, then sometimes purples and blues and pink.

Cline coined the term “botanicollage” to describe the technique pioneered by Stan Brakhage (Mothlight, Garden of Earthly Delights) in which flowers, leaves, and other organic matter are fused directly onto celluloid.By placing plants in an unfamiliar context, the filmmaker aims to transform reality.

Inspired by a newspaper article about the plight of monarch butterflies, using found footage from four different sources, I edited, optically-printed, superimposed, scratched on, bleached and otherwise altered the film to highlight, lament and challenge the monarch butterflies’ dilemma. –Caryn Cline

In "Horse Fare" two equine-obsessed filmmakers interact with three horses and their owner. While grooming, saddling and riding, they ponder the connection between the animals and themselves and find a contemporary resonance for this relationship as they discover how and why the owner acquired them as foals.

Garden Glimpses, inspired by Marie Menken’s “Glimpse of the Garden,” is the second in a series of films about artists of the everyday. In this film, I’ve used in-camera double exposures to capture the colors and textures of landscape architect Keith Geller’s Seattle garden on an early summer day. Music by Lori Goldston.

A collaborative film produced in a botanicollage workshop hosted by filmmaker Caryn Cline at Experiments in Cinema, Albuquerque, NM, on April 18, 2014. Susan Caffrey, Megan Tucker, Bill Basquin, Mary Broemel, Bart Hood, Leslie Chamberlin, Antoni Pinent, River Quane, and Shawn White.

A recycled film that addresses our culture of waste. According to a Cornell University research report, eleven thousand tons of trash a day are discarded in New York City, and 15 to 40% is food scraps that could be composted. In COMPOST CONFIDENTIAL, handmade botanicollage film frames, saved from unrealized projects, were put in a compost bin, left for several weeks, then retrieved and optically-printed. In the printing process, the sprocket holes themselves, usually outside of the frame, were intentionally revealed as an element inside the frame. The soundtrack, recycled from an audio project, features interviews with urban composters at the Union Square Greenmarket in New York City.

A collaborative botanicollage film poem by participants in the festival workshop, Dreaming Ecosystems, led by poet Mita Mahato and filmmaker Caryn Cline.

A 16mm camera roll photographed in my front yard one day in autumn.

On a gray winter day in Seattle, the Volunteer Park Conservatory offers a trip to a different climate: lush, wildly colorful, strange, and beautiful. IN THE CONSERVATORY experimentally captures the essence of the place, through the use of direct animation, ambient sound, and music. Plants from the conservatory’s winter collection were gleaned and pasted onto clear, 16mm film leader, then re-photographed on an optical printer while they were still fresh, resulting in a second, chance animation. The soundtrack combines ambient sound recorded in the Conservatory with a performance of a Samuel Barber composition, featuring Lucy Goeres on flute and Eliza Garth on piano.

“All Flesh is Grass” experimentally documents a prairie restoration project in northeast Missouri, combining source footage and handmade “botanicollage” film frames, using in-camera and optical effects.

"I did this collaboration with filmmaker Caryn Cline. Two filmmakers, two direct animation technics, two optical printers one roll of 16mm film."

The origin story of my mother's struggle with manic-depression (aka bipolar disorder): the rural prairie in the 1950s, an old boys’ club of “deciders,” a puzzling disease about which little was known. I interviewed my mother in 2000, using a DV camera, but never managed to complete a piece I was satisfied with. After her death, I rephotographed a singular gesture from that video interview onto high-con film (Kodak 3378), then developed cyanotypes from and optically printed (including direct bi-packing with leaves) those sequences onto Kodak 50D.

I shot and hand-processed “live action” scenes on the farm, using organic materials (trees, flowers, plants) as “mattes” for my post-residency work in the optical printer, where I combined these mattes and scenes with handmade “botanicollage” film that I created from plants gathered at the farm.