Perhaps in anticipation of the reprise screening of David Gatten’s The Extravagant Shadows on Monday, April 29 at the Elinor Bunin Munroe film center in New York, the press has been paying close attention to Gatten and his latest work.
In the March/April 2013 issue of Film Comment, an article by Holly Willis covers everything from Gatten’s three part retrospective that travelled across the States last year to his educational background and a reflection of his first filmmaking experience. In the final part of the aptly titled “Pleasure of the Text,” Willis discusses the shift in approach concerning the remarkable three hour feature The Extravagant Shadows, highlighting Gatten’s use of a Nikon DSLR to produce the film.
Tony Pipolo presents a more in-depth discussion of The Extravagant Shadows in his piece “Adapted for the Screen,” featured in the April 2013 issue of Art Forum. While Pipolo also situates The Extravagant Shadows within the larger context of Gatten’s work, he focuses more so on leading the reader through the visual and critical aspects of the work.
Both Willis and Pipolo leave the readers with powerful considerations that seem to echo what The Extravagant Shadows left with them. While Willis says of the film’s engaging nature, “We are called forth as subjects, and as beings uniquely able to make connections, understand relations, and produce meaning…We become entirely present: upright, astute, yearning, human,” Pippolo concludes, “In refusing to subjugate words to images, he extends the means and pathways of cinematic endeavors, which, however ephemeral and tentative, illuminate the endless nights of our lives.”
With this in mind, if you are in the area, the reprise screening of The Extravagant Shadows is not something to be missed. More details on the screening are available here.
Gatten will also be featured in the Spring 2013 issue of Filmmaker Magazine with respect to his two course sequence, Intro to Arts of the Moving Image: Better Living Through Cinema and Matters of Life and Death, taught through Duke’s Program in the Arts of the Moving Image. The issue is forthcoming, so keep your eyes open as to when it hits the stand.
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The April 2013 issue of Art Forum, the March/April 2013 issue of Film Comment and the Spring 2013 issue of Filmmaker Magazine can be found on the stand in print, or accessed online at artforum.com , filmcomment.com , and filmmakermagazine.com (Spring 2013 issue forthcoming).
