The Gaze
Filmmaker & Tour Co-Producer
Jan 2017 – Jul 2018
Following on from my 2014 Cucalorus Film Festival artist residency, I collaborated with fellow resident and Canadian musician Rozalind MacPhail. Responding to her call for silent films with personal connections to the city of Wilmington, I re-edited and re-purposed a 1940s civic film I discovered in the New Hanover County Public Library during my residency to create THE GAZE.
THE GAZE is an experimental film. Fascinated by reactions to the camera, I picked out every moment a citizen gazes directly at us in this city council-sponsored promotional film. The original film is entitled MY HOMETOWN: A CITY SEES ITSELF and was 16mm film transferred to analogue video then to digital file. Losing a generation with each transfer, the film’s history is reflected in its format. The lyrics that inspired Rozalind’s song are about the personal connections I feel when gazing back at a familiar place and its people on screen.
Rozalind created a soundtrack for my film along with other artists’ films to create her project From the River to the Ocean which we toured around North Carolina in the Summer of 2018. Rozalind performed her original live soundtrack to short films on big screens around the state including Cameron Art Museum in Wilmington and Durham’s Shadowbox Studio. Rozalind’s multi-layered sound looping and live flute performance accompanied a really striking mix of films to create a vivid sonic/visual live portrait of a city.