Thomas Comerford in Person

Although he has been making a name for himself as a director of exquisitely quiet, meditative avant-garde films since 1997, Thomas Comerford has remained a relatively unsung figure on the experimental scene. . . . (It is with) his latest trilogy, Figures in the Landscape, Land Marked/Marquette, and this year's The Indian Boundary Line that (his) concern with landscape found its fullest and most brilliant articulation. . . . It is in Figures (which uses a pinhole camera) that Comerford begins to develop his sense of a haunted present, one unknowingly determined by past events. With Land Marked/Marquette, which explores landscapes historically related to Jesuit missionary/explorer Jacques Marquette, Comerford inaugurated his doubled role as both filmmaker and amateur historian, using intense research to frame his insatiable hunger for images. . . . A sense of landscape as a complex nest of inscriptions and codes deeply informs The Indian Boundary Line, which is something of a gentle masterpiece. . . . The film is episodic, each episode pairing differing views of the vanished boundary line (that divided the United States from Native American territory) with readings from historical texts.

Figures in the Landscape (2002, 12 mins, Color, 16mm). Land Marked/Marquette (2005, 23 mins, B&W/Color, 16mm). The Indian Boundary Line (2010, 42 mins, Color, 16mm, 8mm, Super 8mm on Digibeta)