Gibbs Chapman and John Davis in Person

Dana Plays's Nuclear Family (2001, 22 mins, Color, 16mm) is a haunting, emotional exploration of human isolation drawn from observational films-scientific films, documentation of animal-behavior experiments, and early preschool footage. In Candide (2001, 9.5 mins, Color/B&W, Video), John Davis exquisitely edits a stream of TV footage, primarily ads, so that a sense of discomfort subversively settles in. Abigail Child's Dark Dark (2001, 16 mins, B&W, 16mm) is composed of a series of short fragments from four films, which she presents almost unaltered; the effect is one of disquiet, even menace. Gibbs Chapman looks at the mystery of the human subject in his witty An Examination of Exhibits A(1)-E(5) (2001, 19 mins, Color/B&W, 16mm). Using scientific film, as well as his own footage, he looks at attempts to understand the world at a time when "never have so many people understood so little about so much." The title of Keith Sanborn's Semi-private sub-Hegelian Panty Fantasy (with sound) (2001, 4 mins, B&W/Color, Video) just about tells it all. Bill Morrison's three-part Trinity (2000, 12 mins, B&W, 35mm) uses early erotic images and sensual footage of the production of film stock to examine the desire to look. Dream Work (for Man Ray) (Austria, 2001, 12 mins, B&W, 35mm, 'Scope, From Sixpack Film), the third in Peter Tscherkassky's dynamic CinemaScope trilogy, continues his exploration of contact printing as a method for "dream work."