Into the Depths of the Even Greater Depression is the most annoying movie in the world.
At least it has my vote. In it, Ken Jacobs employs a technique to get a 3-D effect that employs a rotating shutter that spins in front of the projector lens, creating a flicker/stutter effect.
I definitely got moments of 3-D. But after 15 minutes of the flickering nightmare, my vision was so screwed up I was seeing all sorts of things. It might have been interesting if it hadn't given me a headache. It also made me nauseous. I closed my eyes and waited for it to be over.
What kept me from dashing out (like some others) was the fact that we had just seen his 1996 Disorient Express, which was beautiful and strange. Jacobs took a scratchy little scrap of primitive film and showed it, mirrored it, flipped it upside down, played it backwards. It was like Georgetown Loop,in generating fantastic images by a seemingly straightforward process. Elegant.
The Q&A session was not the usual headache because KJ is an intelligent man with a clear, unpretentious way of speaking about his work--generating depth and illusions with minimal means. OK, but I still hate the Greater Depression.
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