Skating

An experimental documentary that looks at its subject John Cage through the eyes of contemporary Avante-Garde artists as well as those who play his music.

The filmmaker intersects the flow of traffic on narrow streets and on the canals of a European city.

A naked man jumps off the deep end from a diving board into a surrealist watery world of fish and cellar stairs.

Cultural and perceptual contrasts are evoked in this non-linear mythic episode in which a hammer, a paintbrush, a bucket, a pile of clothes, a window full of globes and a couple are manipulated via the filmmaker/demi-urge.

Using the accoutrements of baseball, Sherman analyzes the magic of tv/film representation and offers a pun on the word "catch." "The camera catches the image, just as a baseball player catches the ball."

Through "solipsistic, demiurgic actions," Sherman leaves his imprint on the theater world. He sits in a seat in the audience, occupies a chair onstage and stands at the door of the theater. Becoming transparent, he leaves his trace everywhere.

The filmmaker's waving hand, its wooden facsimile, a steamship, a rowboat, the ocean and a bowl of water are the main elements in this visual pun that is also a study of scale.

Sherman creates an elegant, graphically precise choreographed dance from the rhythmic, symmetrical movements of two elevators, two escalators and their two riders (a man and a woman) tethered to the aural image of an imposing jukebox.

Sherman underscores the oppositional component of the board game with split screen techniques and evocative black and white graphics.