This fall I took a class titled “Theory and Practice of Experimental Cinema” with Dr. John Powers, a fellow Grand Rapidian who has committed most of his academic career to the study of this theory and practice. It was challenging and strange and lovely, and it was all of these things in ways I could not have anticipated. It was one of those crystallizing experiences where various themes and strands from our lives are pulled together and unified such that a new, multi-colored radiance might emerge from them. I am still, despite a few weeks since its conclusion, reckoning with some of the ways it has changed my life. And at least one of those ways is derived from the viewing of a single short film (just 13 minutes long), one I may never get to see again—though I will try. At the very least, the screening experience can never be replicated: the closeness of a cramped classroom, the texture of 16mm projection, the strange, provocative intimacy of witnessing a series of films alongside other viewers who have an equally dedicated attention.
The short film in question is David Gatten’s Film for Invisible Ink, Case No. 142: ABBREVIATION FOR DEAD WINTER [Diminished by 1,794] (2008). It has no narrative or characters. In fact, it barely has discernible imagery. Created primarily by manipulating the exposure and focus of torn paper captured on 16mm film stock, Film for Invisible Ink (which is, as the title suggests, part of a series, though there are not actually 142 of them) presents as occasional, silent, spindly black masses on a white background. This is achieved as well by its secondary method of production, where Gatten applied scotch tape to old books and placed the ink removed this way onto new backgrounds.
But, as noted, neither of these methods is especially obvious when viewing it. Rather, it is simply tangles of black strands, seemingly gathered into yarn ball-esque groupings that, through focus effects, phase in and out of visibility. Sometimes they sharpen into distinct lines, or fade into a fuzzy clot, or simply disappear into the white background entirely. And yet, there comes a moment near the end of the film where, rather than transitioning between the various blotches via these focus effects and the reset of its plain background, the inky lines seem to dance into each other, twirling between the planes of the image like emulsifications of dark lightning.
After a minute or two of this, the pale background yields to quotes about winter migration from arctic settings, eventually settling on the way these difficult environments seem to call after the animals that leave them, beckoning them to return. These quotes are the only hint at some kind of meaning to what is—without them—a purely sensory experience. While it maintains some ambiguity, the combination of quotes and the images creates a sense of memory, perhaps even grief. The way in which certain moments or feelings in our lives simply appear in the mind with varying clarity, departing and returning, only really culminating in the sense that we were there, once, and that despite leaving it (and how we feel about leaving it) it continues to call ahead to us.
And sometimes this process is not just a hazy reckoning with a single moment or feeling, but it begins to rapidly shift into a flow between multiple things, such that the most salient parts of whole narratives in our lives come to the fore almost as if they were being re-lived. The starker moments of the past continue to beckon us back to them, almost like a regular migration, a longing for something once familiar, and known, and home.
Naturally, this is only an impression, an interpretation of the feeling of watching this film. It has nothing by which to suggest a more rigid or explicit reading; it is simply black lines against a white background. In this way, it aligns with a strand of experimental film that emphasizes purely visual phenomena but then punctuates those visuals with a choice selection of words—be it the ones featured in the film itself, or even just the title. These are the only clues towards an intended meaning. But even they are so vague that the film instead amounts mostly to a feeling that must be parsed—though perhaps not fully explained—by what will always be a too succinct interpretation.
And yet, simply feeling along with something is an essential practice. Allowing all that we see—not just the figures, objects, or the figures and objects organized into narratives—to inspire an emotional reaction is a critical part of remaining in the present. While nearly everything we see is not reducible to merely perceptual phenomena, all of it is at a minimum a perceptual phenomena. Films such as Gatten’s are a reminder that the most basic of sensations are capable of meaning, of establishing a connection between us and time and the world. Of allowing us to not just react to or interrogate our experiences but welcome them as valuable collections of small perceptions, nothing more than black lines on a white background.
Perceptions that, if received in the simplicity of their being, perhaps can be appreciated later through their association with other experiences—as if a memory returning, seemingly without cause but calling us back to something we can now see as beautiful.
Kipp De Man graduated from Calvin University in 2023, having majored in film and media studies. He is currently working towards a master’s degree in the same discipline at Washington University in St. Louis. He enjoys reading and writing poetry, rock climbing, and Coke Zero.
