f i l m s
Clepsydra
1992, 16 mm film, 24 fps,14:00
Clepsydra is an ancient Greek water clock (literally, "to steal water"). This film envisions the strip of celluloid going vertically through a projector as a sprocketed waterfall (random events measured in discreet units of time), through which the silent dreams of a young girl can barely be heard under the din of an irresistable torrent, an irreversible torment.
"Solomon has evolved his technique so that in his latest work ('Clepsydra' - 'waterclock') the textures are constantly changing and are often appropriate to each figure in metaphoric interplay with each figure's gestural (symbolic) movement. He has, thus, created consonance with thought as destroyer/creator - a Kali-like aesthetic 'There is a light at the end of the tunnel' (Romantic); and it is a train coming straight at us: ... (and, to balance such, perhaps, with a touch of Zen) ... it is beautiful!"
- Stan Brakhage
Phil Solomon experiments with found footage. Clepsydra comes from a few sources, but mostly an educational film called How To Tell Time (There is other footage from a film on how to Vote).
Juror's Award (First Prize), Black Maria Film and Video Festival, 1993
Mayrah
2016, 16 mm film, 5:09
MAYRAH is a film made from a time last summer while in Sidney, Brisbane and Melbourne. Australia was such an intense flurry of impressions, movements and environments, that the film took the form of a stone skipping across moments of this time: a series of visual memories, the surface of which both reflected some brief abstract and literal elements of my experience.
Paul Clipson has made this film to an exisiting composition by Cassis B. Once the film existed Cassis B composed the current orchestral score for it.
My Person in the Water
2006, HDV, 5:30
A woman moving in the water and the gaze of a man (her husband), both seen from beneath the water, elaborated by the vectorizing force of sound, suggest an effervescence of feeling – a desire for merge among the knowledge of separateness.
