Surprise Attack

Serra’s film about the production of his sculpture Berlin Block (for Charlie Chaplin) (1977) at the Henrichshütte Hattingen steelworks in the Ruhr Valley, begun roughly one year before the first major wave of strikes in the German steel industry since the war, combines conventions from documentary film, agitprop, black-and-white photographic studies and architectural film.

Like the three "Hands" films by Richard Serra (1968), the subject of "Color Aid" are fingers as actors of real time activity. Monochrome colour cards lying on top of each other and filling the whole screen are being pulled away individually with a swishing sound by a single finger, each time bringing a new colour into view.

A subject struggles to break free from a cord restraint

A two-part tape of a video performance done on January 22, 1974, at 112 Greene Street (as part of the Video Performance Exhibition), structured on a problem in game theory, a non-zero-sum game, in which both players can win or lose at the same time, one can win more than the other, and one can win at the others expense. Serra and Bell have used game theory as a way of dealing with genres of commercial TV: cops and robbers in the first part, and a quiz program in the second.

In Frame (1969), Richard Serra emphasizes the disconnect bewteen the real space of the cinema and the illusory space of the screen. We first see Serra's hands methodically measuring and marking the boundaries of the film frame, followed by the projected image of a blank surface whose perimeter is similarly marked. The surface is then moved aside to reveal a window which looks out upon a bustling city street. The In the final stage, Serra interacts with the projected image of the window, remeasuring and remarking its borders.

In "Hands Scraping" we see two male pairs of hands, those of Serra and Phil Glass, sweeping up steel filings strewn on the wooden floor with their bare hands, and carrying the gathered heap in their hands out of the picture.

The protagonists’ astounding verbal gymnastics and often incomprehensible interactions tend to descend into nonsense, and with the syncopated rhythm of its action and dialogue, this film is reminiscent of the playful and parodying elements of the Beat fantasy Pull My Daisy. The interweaving of documentary and fiction with the syncopated rhythm of its action and dialogue presents an absurd buzz of activity reminiscent of Beckett’s abstract comic grotesque.

“…Railroad Turnbridge is about the meeting of machine and machine [camera and bridge] and how they and their movements, sometimes parallel, sometimes in opposition, frame the landscape which surrounds them. A shot of the landscape seen through the rectangles of the bridge’s opening, the bridge [becomes], in movement, a giant extension of the camera viewfinder…” Amy Taubin, Soho News

Echoing the vertical movement of the film through the projector, pieces of sheet lead fall into the image field. Serra’s hand opens and closes as it tries to catch them, and when it succeeds, immediately lets them go again.

CREMASTER 3 is set in New York City and narrates the construction of the Chrysler Building, which is in itself a character - host to inner, antagonistic forces at play for access to the process of (spiritual) transcendence. These factions find form in the struggle between Hiram Abiff or the Architect...

The Making of Amarillo Ramp documents the construction of Robert Smithson's earthwork Amarillo Ramp. At age thirty-five, while photographing the site of the earthwork in progress, Smithson died in a small airplane accident, along with pilot Gale Ray Rogers and photographer Robert E. Curtin. After Smithson's passing, Nancy Holt, Richard Serra, and Tony Shafrazi completed Amarillo Ramp according to Smithson's specifications. This film documents the sounds and actions of the powerful machinery necessary to create an earthwork of this scale, while underscoring the human skill and personal relationships that were integral to the completion of the work.

Originally broadcast on public television in Amarillo, TX, Richard Serra’s BOOMERANG features Nancy Holt framed in a medium shot with a pair of headphones on her ears. We observe her as she speaks and then hears her words relayed back to her through a delayed transmission. Remarkably eloquent for one caught in such a feedback loop, Holt provides a monologue on experiencing time, thought, and oneself through technology. She remarks, “I have a double take on myself. I am once removed from myself … we are hearing and seeing a world of double reflections and double refractions.”

The film is an adaptation from two sources: Kinesics and Context by Ray L. Birdwhistell, and Choreomania, a performance by Joan Jonas

Soundtrack by Philip Glass

A short film by Richard Serra

Home movies shot on Super 8mm by W+B Hein over 10 years.