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SURPRISE!
THE FILMS OF ROBERT HUOT:
1967 TO 1972
PAGE 1
In a decade when tens of thousands of men and women throughout
the world are independently producing films in 8 and 16mm,
to presume that we already know who the most inventive,
most exciting contemporary filmmakers are is extremely foolish.
Of course, impressive bodies of work have surfaced, and
we may feel confident that future developments will in no
way eclipse them. Nevertheless, because so few regular screening
opportunities for independent film have developed and because,
by and large, the few journals which cover independent film
to any degree have tended to publish pieces on filmmakers
who are already comparatively well known, it has been difficult,
and continues to be difficult, for filmmakers who do not
carefully maintain their public relations to be recognized
at all. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that if a
major genre of film is developing in the 1970s – as
psychodrama developed in the 1940s and formal film in the
1960s – it is probably diary film or a variety of
combinations of diary and formal film; and the makers of
diary films can be predicted to be a good deal more private
about their accomplishments than filmmakers involved in
lass personally revealing types of work. This may seem to
be proved by a single look at the almost entirely unknown
body of work produced since 1967 by a completely unsung
filmmaker named Robert Huot; in my view, it constitutes
one of the most impressive achievements of the American
independent film movement.
For
the purposes of this discussion, Huot’s films can
be divided into two groups: the small group of short films
he made in 1967, 1968, and 1969; and the sizeable body of
diary work which has dominated his filmmaking since 1970.
By the late1960s Huot was becoming a widely recognized painter;
until he became disillusioned with the New York scene and
dropped out, his conceptual and minimal paintings were regularly
exhibited alongside works by Frank Stella, Larry Poons,
and Col LeWitt. The earliest films reflect his interest
in applying the concerns he was then exploring in his painting
to a new art form. They are also evidence that from the
beginning Huot was committed to an informal kind of filmmaking,
which at first resulted in his making films with whatever
materials and methods happened to be handy.
Leader
and Scratch are extensions of Huot’s early interest
in minimalism. Both may reflect a desire on his part to
“out-minimalize” other film artists, but they
are successful in reducing the number of filmic variables
so completely that essential qualities and potentials of
the materials of film can be felt. While Scratch is nothing
more than eleven minutes of dark leader with a continuous
handmade scratch, the resulting imagery varies a good deal,
depending on how deeply Huot dug into the emulsion: when
the scratch is shallow, for example, it seams to bead and
move up through the image; when the scratch is deep, it
seems to remain within the frame, vibrating horizontally.
Leader is a bit less extreme that Scratch. Framed within
beginning and ending passages of academy leader, strips
of black, green, and clear leader alternate, at first every
thirty seconds, then more and more quickly, and finally
much more slowly. These irregular alternations intensify
out awareness of some of the potential variations in the
direction and mode of our attention during a screening.
When green leader is projected, continual shifts in color
density tend to keep the eye attentive to the screen. During
passages of black leader, on the other hand, the screen
is so dark that it provides almost nothing to look at; as
a result, one’s attention tends to be drawn to other
light sources, especially to the projector, if it is within
the screening space. When clear leader is projected, we
are aware both of the tiny events occurring on the screen
and the lighted screening space.
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