Audio transcription

For more interviews and talks, visit the Harvard Film Archive Visiting Artists Collection page.

John Quackenbush  0:00  

In 2015, the Harvard Film Archive hosted The World Made Flesh and Freed by Song and Sadness, three evenings of screenings and conversations with Luther Price. This is the audio recording of the introduction of Program Three, on February 2 2015. Participating are film curator Ed Halter and HFA Programmer David Pendleton,

David Pendleton  0:26  

[AUDIO MISSING]...Harvard Film Archive to introduce the third and final evening in this weekend devoted to the work of Luther Price—the inimitable Luther Price—timed to coincide with an exposition of his slides up in the lobby, that's already been taken down, as you will have noticed, to make room for the next show up there. Luther sends his love to all of you. He lives in Revere, and is more or less snowed in. He was attempting to clear his driveway when the snow plow came and sort of undid all the work that he'd done. So we all decided... We went back and forth all day long, we decided to go ahead with the show without Luther, the plan being to bring him back, maybe we'll repeat this program or else show some of his other works. There are many other many other films of Luther’s. We were talking last time about the fact that the film called A, which Luther calls his first feature film, is being restored currently by Anthology Film Archives. So maybe in a few months, we will show that. In any case, keep your eyes peeled, we hope to do more with Luther, as does Jim of the Carpenter Center. 

That's about all I have to say other than to remind you to turn off your devices that might make noise or shed light. And also to say that we do have a special guest with us tonight, somebody who has much more to say about Luther's work than I do. We're very fortunate to have visiting us from New York this weekend for this program Ed Halter, the esteemed critic and curator who does a lot of great work at Light Industry in Brooklyn. If you're ever in New York looking for something to do cinematically, check it out and see if they've got a show on. So now I will turn it over to Ed who will say a few words of introduction. Thanks.

Ed Halter  2:26  

Thank you, David, and thanks, everyone for coming in this wonderfully dramatic weather, which is kind of appropriate for the sometimes catastrophically emotional films of Luther Price, I think. This program has really been excellent, the three nights that the Archive has put on, and it's been wonderful to see a mix of Super 8 and 16 work. This show tonight is predominantly 16 work, 16mm work. For those of you who've been to the other nights, you may remember that Luther mentioned that, you know, he began pretty much exclusively as a filmmaker making work on Super 8, but in the last decade, he has turned to 16mm instead. He's also made a shift from shooting his own films—like performing in them, shooting around the world he lives in—to actually using pre-made footage, found footage. So the 16mm works you'll see tonight are all unique copies. I mean, to use the word “copy” isn't really right. They're all unique objects that are made on 16mm by various means. And you'll see a great variety of means that he uses to collage these prints together. For example, the first one Patch of Green is actually made by inserting 8mm film inside 16mm leader. So you're seeing an actual physical piece of 8mm film coming through the projector when you watch it. Burgin and Tonic and Kittens Grow Up are re-edited from previous footage from other films. Burgin and Tonic, I believe, is from a print of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Shelly Winters—which is actually I think one of the most powerful works he's made from this cycle—is particularly interesting because it's imageless. He uses a film of only the soundtrack of a film and without the image, but with varying kinds of white, and it's particularly special to me because upon the third or fourth time watching the film, I realized that the audio track in which you can hear certain police reports and, kind of, true stories about domestic violence. Actually, it's obviously from the Boston area and even more specifically I can tell it's from my hometown Quincy because of different streets that are mentioned. Like a lot of his work, it's grounded so specifically in the people of this area and the kinds of lives that people lead in brutal Massachusetts. The final film though is The Turquoise Garden which is one, I believe, one of Luther's garden films, right? I think this might be a film that was left to bury in his garden outside of his apartment, outside of his house in Revere.

But you know, as Haden mentioned last night, you know, while we can talk about all the kinds of amazing techniques that Luther does, and with the projection tonight, which will be marvelous, you'll see them in a kind of in a way that I think they've rarely been seen. It's really exceptional how well they're presented here. But I can't I don't think we should just think of this as formalist work, although it's definitely has a tendency; the real power of the work is how the emotions are able to come through, and how it has this incredible mix of just terror and joy and fascination and trauma, and it's just, it's always such an intense emotional experience to go through these but also an intensely beautiful one. And one of the things that Luther has talked about is that 16mm film, because he can apply color directly to the film and achieve these kinds of colors are actually impossible in printed film itself, and a richness of the image that to him is a kind of return to joy and happiness and a color for him does represent happiness. 

And if you got the chance to see the amazing slide exhibition that was upstairs, you'll also see that there are really very strong continuities between this kind of work that he's been doing on 16mm and simultaneously making work on slides using very similar methods, often with a jeweler's eye. So he's working almost like a jeweler on these tiny, tiny pieces of film. And so I think a lot of the effect visually of this material is really playing on this idea of magnification, and little things becoming giant. Little elements in a film becoming monumental. And in the same way that you know, everyday aspects of our everyday lives that might seem inconsequential can become enormously important to us. And I think that that's part of what is going on in the work as well. I'd also like to quote my mom, who came and saw Luther; my mom knows Luther, has met him and came to see his slides yesterday and she said, “I don't know how he makes something beautiful from this stuff. It's incredible.” And I agree. I don't know how he makes something so beautiful from this stuff. I hope you enjoy the program.

[APPLAUSE]

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