On September 25th I attended “Traces of the Wild” a presentation of films by the filmmaker Robert Schaller in the Union Theatre at UWM. It was an interesting experience on many levels, not to mention the fact that the filmmaker was there, in person, and projecting many of his own films.
Unfortunately, I was there with a class, and we were not able to stay for the whole screening, but I did enjoy seeing the works i did see. Of these, my favorite was a piece entitled, “The Tree of Life.” The film is made up of individual frames of a tree, taken from various angles and distances. It was shot on 16mm film, and edited entirely in the camera, which was advanced one frame at a time, essentially taking a long series of still photos of the tree.
The effect was fantastic. Each shot of the tree could be described as having negative (blue sky) and positive spaces (tree parts.) Each overlapping frame created a moving, shifting pattern of tree. The fractal nature of trees came through to manifest a tapestry that was as much texture, and flashing light as it was familiar because of my familiarity with trees.
It reminded me in more than a few ways of Mothlight, a film by Stan Brakhage. In both pieces the materiel was gathered frame by frame (Mothlight by gluing moths on each frame, and The Tree of Life by taking still shot after still shot) without real knowledge of how the footage would look when ran through a projector.
The pieces where also similar in the overall mood created. This may have to do with the intent of the makers. After seeing The Tree of Life I read a description on the internets that said that Schaller was trying to “portray six stages of life.” I thought this was similar to Stan Brakhages attempt to creat, “the life and death of a moth” in his piece. It seemed to me that both pieces increased in pace and motion in a sort of climax.
As popular as Mothlight is, I can say that I enjoyed looking at and experiencing “The Tree of Life.” While the method used to create both pieces has some effect on the artistic merit of each, I found Tree of Life more aesthetically pleasing and moving. It left quite an impression on me. End Bog.
