Bradley Eros and Jeanne Liotta have described their exquisite, sensual Dervish Machine (USA, 1992, 10 mins, B&W/Color, 16mm) as "hand-developed meditations on being and movement, as inspired by Brion Gysin's Dreamachine, Sufi mysticism and early cinema. A knowledge of the fragility of existence mirrors the tenuousness of the material. The film itself becomes the site to experience impermanence, and to revel in the unfixed image." We have paired it with Jean Epstein's classic of the French avant-garde, The Fall of the House of Usher (La Chute de la maison Usher, France, 1928, 52 mins, 20 fps, Silent, 35mm), which, based on Edgar Allan Poe, tells of a husband who tragically paints his wife's portrait. Both films revel in the expressive possibilities of cinema-rhythmic editing, moving camera, superimpositions, hand processing, slow motion-rather than in its capacity to imitate reality. They develop an evocative relationship between representation and reality; the potential to animate, to bring to life, is mirrored by the possibility of drawing life away. The taking and making of images is seen as a passionate pursuit: religious, magical, mysterious.-Kathy Geritz