Offscreen.

André Habib introduces his interview with Bill Morrison, most known for his haunting Decasia: "If Morrison has, in recent years, imposed himself as one of the most important experimental filmmakers of his generation, it is because he has understood the possibilities of a poetics of the archive, of the historicity not only of cinema but above all of its material base and of its modes of projection, exploring and expanding all its limits."

The long, rich talk probably climaxes when Morrison observes, "I believe every artist has this fantasy to see nitrate on fire, it's some sort of sexual metaphor," and is accompanied in the latest issue of Offscreen by Habib's consideration of Morrison's work, editor Donato Totaro's and another from Claudy op den Kemp, who is sent back to memories of Peter Delpeut's Lyrical Nitrate, a film that "opened up a world of images I didn’t know existed, which highly influenced my further choice of study."

Totaro reviews This Film is Dangerous: A Celebration of Nitrate Film, a 720-page collection introduced by Martin Scorsese, edited by Roger Smither and published by the International Federation of Film Archives.

Offscreen also offers an online browsing tip, the previously noted Industry from filmmaker Richard Kerr.

By the way, in the previous issue, Totaro and Peter Rist interviewed Bottled Fool director Hiroki Yamaguchi, Rist interviewed the team behind Fuon (The Crying Wind)... and more.

Posted by dwhudson at December 18, 2004 11:04 AM