“I’d like to say more, but words fail me. This is historically reductive. That won’t do. One makes choices. Choices are made. The opacity has been tapped. The black quivers, the matter is set in motion. There is light. Its primeval, prehistoric. At last, the first film! It trembles in the eye-mind. Unique.” (Michael Snow)
In an interview with Jonas Mekas in 1971 Ernie Gehr explained how, to make History, he had held black fabric in front of a movie camera without a lens (“its image-forming device”), using a light to illuminate the cloth. Mekas didn’t ask why there was no lens, because he grasped the implications of Gehr’s granular vision. “History comes closest,” Mekas said, “to being nothing but the reality of the film materials and tools themselves.” (Manohla Dargis)
