Push You Pull Me

Byron Grush created Push You Pull Me while attending the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Byron’s professor, Gregory Markopoulos, arranged for student grants from the Belgian Royal Film Archive. Byron received a grant of 1,000 feet of reversal 16mm film. Push You Pull Me was the result of the grant.; Byron created the film by shooting static live action scenes in overlapping exposures, rapidly fading in and out, using the variable shutter on his camera. Instead of rewinding, he simply reloaded the roll and continued double exposing. The scenes include a mix of individuals and settings. As an example, in one scene there are two women chatting. Double exposed on that scene is a news broadcast on a television screen. Exposed again on that scene is a woman cleaning her bed, and so forth. There are up to 12 layers of overlapping images at any given time. The sound track for this film was made by Byron’s sister, Mary Grush. She used a technique called “piano string music” in which the piano is played like a harp and an attached microphone distorts the sounds, producing an almost electronic effect.; The film was ultimately screened at the Belgian Film Festival, attended by cinema historian, P. Adams Sitney. Upon viewing the student films, Sitney said that the films looked just like Byron's professor's own work.