Films by Stuart Sherman

Duration: 15

Creator: American Federation of Arts

Format: 16mm

Color: Color & B&W

Sound: silent

Description: Filmmaker/performance artist Stuart Sherman, a cinematic descendant of Melies and Deren, employs montage and simple props to fashion visionary geographies, visual puns and analogies. His magical/mysterious vignettes undermine the laws of time and causality and have been likened to riddles, jokes, koans and paradoxes. 1.) Globes (1978), b&w/col. 3 min.: Cultural and perceptual contrasts are evoked in this non-linear mythic episode in which a hammer, a paintbrush, a bucket, a pile of clothes, a window full of globes and a couple are manipulated via the filmmaker/demi-urge. 2.) Skating (1978), b&w., 2 min.: Juxtaposition and editing are used in this meditation on the human/environmental act of skating and its component parts. 3.) Hand/Water (1979), b&w, 2 min.: The filmmaker's waving hand, its wooden facsimile, a steamship, a rowboat, the ocean and a bowl of water are the main elements in this visual pun that is also a study of scale. 4.) Baseball/TV (1979), b&w, 1 min.: Using the accoutrements of baseball, Sherman analyzes the magic of tv/film representation and offers a pun on the word catch. The camera catches the image, just as a baseball player catches the ball. 5.) Roller Coaster/Reading (1979), b&w, 3 min.: Meshing the visceral and the intellectual, Sherman proposes, through editing and parallel camera movement, that the act of reading is exhilarating, like riding a roller coaster. 6.) Rock/String (1980), b&w, 1 min.: The filmmaker effects a variety of visual tricks that confound spatial relationships and defy gravity. 7.) Theater Piece (1980), b&w, 1 min.: Through solipsistic, demiurgic actions, Sherman leaves his imprint on the theater world. He sits in a seat in the audience, occupies a chair onstage and stands at the door of the theater. Becoming transparent, he leaves his trace everywhere. 8.) Bridge Film (n.d.), b&w : The filmmaker intersects the flow of traffic on narrow streets and on the canals of a European city. 9.) Chess (1982), b&w, 1/2 min.: Sherman underscores the oppositional component of the board game with split screen techniques and evocative black and white graphics. 10.) Fish Story (n.d.), b&w/col.: A naked man jumps off the deep end from a diving board into a surrealist watery world of fish and cellar stairs.