Daniel Barnett is a leading experimental filmmaker who has made some 30 films since the mid-sixties. He has developed complex metaphors in his films out of rephotography and other post-production techniques.
Morning Procession in Yangchow and The Chinese Typewriter
Barnett's China Travel Sketches derive in part from this dream: “I was staring up into an especially brown, hazy, summer sky, when I became aware that my perspective had reversed; that actually I was looking very far down through the liquid sky and seeing a land from above. My dream-propelled gaze had followed the curve of the atmosphere, and I was seeing through the haze to China! It was around this time that I was given the opportunity to join a tour of...the People's Republic, and so was able to materialize the images of that dream.”
Morning Procession in Yangchow (1978/79, 3 mins, Color)
The Chinese Typewriter (1978/83, 28 mins, Color)
A Note in a Bottle
“I was concerned with...a quality of mind that I could describe as...the relationship between reflection and aspiration. Reflection, in the sense of thought directed within, and also in the sense of light bouncing off of. Aspiration in the sense of the detachment of breath-sound in an aspirant, in the sense of passing air in and out of the body, and perhaps also in the sense of sucking fluid out. The simplicity of the imagery and freedom with screen time were made possible by dollar-a-roll film. The simplicity of the sound-track was made possible by Karen Tax's breath control.... The images are all of the Susquehenna River in northern Pennsylvania.” D.B. Karen Tax on flute. (1974/75, 25 mins, Color (monochrome))

The Marijuana Wind
(Work-in-Progress)
“Certain of those little dust devils get touched by the idea of mischief and swell out of all proportion to wreak havoc on the ability of people to speak with one another. These winds remodulate the spoken word with a mind of their own. The relationship the characters in The Marijuana Wind have to present becomes more like their relationship to the past; or rather, for them, past and present are as in a dream in which they must learn to speak only with their eyes. This ploy allows me as a filmmaker to begin indulging in ontological jokes--the natural paradise of cinema.” D.B. (A work-in-progress, Color)