"I work only with theelements around me, the forms and substances of my daily existence,invention rooted in what is there.... The Lovers, light and shadow, andtheir offspring, space and time, are my themes; working with theirparticularities is my passion and delight.... I'm a light thief andshadow bandit, I deal in retinal phantoms...." (Andrew Noren). Thus has Noren described his major opus, TheAdventures of the Exquisite Corpse, an open-ended work (of which LightedField is Part V) which established the filmmaker as a sublimesensualist, romantic poet, celebrator of textures, surfaces, colors andforms as revealed and transformed by light and shadow. In Lighted FieldNoren continues this obsession; his passion for the movement of lightand shadow-on objects, bodies, across landscapes, on sidewalks, wallsand windows, on the textures of cat fur, table glass and gossamercurtains-pulsates to the rhythm of his pixillated, single-framedglimpses of the world around him. Noren doesn't just capture light andshadow, he creates their play. His passion becomes ecstasy. "Noren filmsin a heat, kinetically...there is an imperative about the moment and itis immediately felt" (Larry Kardish, The Museum of Modern Art).* Noren's virtuoso camerawork has been described as akind of sorcery; his images are manipulated, animated and composedcompletely within his Bolex. In fact, the shadow of filmmaker and Bolexis a repeated motif throughout Lighted Field-a conscious homage toVertov and The Man with a Movie Camera? There appear to be otherhomages, to the film artists of the twenties-Hans Richter, Man Ray, Ren?lair, Eisenstein. Noren even introduces stock footage, anothercomponent of his world (he is employed by a film library), withconscious reference to the filmmaking process, and this material toocomes under his "magicianship."* Lighted Field is not an abstract film,although there is no chronological ordering of sequences or narrativeprogression. Rather, as Noren says,* "an affinity of light, movement,form, gesture" provides the linkage, he "flexible rhyme"* of his playof light and shadow, which is indeed often playful. Edith Kramer *quotations from Larry Kardish "Of Light andTexture," a Museum of Modern Art publication