Image Alchemy: The Films of Phil Solomon

“Over a three-decade career, filmmaker Phil Solomon has established himself as one of the great visionary artists of American experimental cinema.”-National Gallery of Art

“Film Meets Vision, Rejoice!”-Manohla Dargis, New York Times

Phil Solomon is an alchemist and archeologist of cinema. His complex optical treatments of found and original footage create mesmerizing degraded images that shimmer and shatter, revealing their hidden poetry. Meditations on loss, decay, and memory, his 16mm films are unsettling yet unforgettable. More recently, Solomon has worked digitally to create haunting, evocative landscapes. In the trilogy In Memoriam, he draws on the video game series Grand Theft Auto to conjure an existential tale of solemn beauty. His most recent Psalm, the moody Valley of the Shadow, also uses video game imagery, in an adaptation of the final moments of John Huston's The Dead.

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