Bill Brand, who last visited PFA in 1983, has made some twenty-five films, all concerned in one way or another with systematic structures, and recently using optical printing techniques to fragment and abstract the photographic image. "In both Chuck Will's Widow and Coalfields, landscapes are broken up in a matrix of shapes. The viewer sees two perspectives simultaneously; not superimposed, but intersected. The shapes interact dynamically with the form and content of the photographic material. The shapes are created by mattes as in a traveling-matte technique except that, instead of following the action literally, they create a counterpoint that sometimes parallels and sometimes opposes a literal reading of the photographic image." Bill Brand Coalfields (1984, 39 mins, Color) extends this complex visual idiom to the story of Fred Carter, a retired coal miner and black-lung activist who was framed by the Federal Government in order to undercut the black-lung movement and stop his bid for presidency of the UMWA. His story is told through fragments of documentary interviews and a poetic text by Kimiko Hahn, with original sound compositions by saxophonist Earl Howard. Chuck Will's Widow (1982, 13 mins, Color, Silent) "weaves a complex of feelings and personal associations into a swirl of landscapes and abstract images.... My grandfather Albert Brand began recording bird songs in 1930. His son Charles studied ornithology, raised a large family and communicated with my mother in bird songs. I photographed Chuck Will's Widow in the mountain woods where my mother's remains and those of my father and his father are scattered to the winds. It has become a family tradition" (BB). Bill Brand founded Chicago Filmmakers, a showcase and workshop, and has taught filmmaking at Sarah Lawrence College since 1975.