Daniel Barnett is a leading experimental filmmaker who develops complex metaphors in his films out of rephotography and other post-production techniques. He previously visited PFA in October 1983. White Heart is his longest and most ambitious work. “Barnett's film consists of many disparate images, chosen for their strong sensual qualities, coupled with a labyrinthine and equally sensual soundtrack. After establishing the basic images, Barnett begins to interweave them, exaggerating certain qualities (color, texture) during printing. A mundane shot of a man jerkily spraying down an empty lot is adjusted so his shirt becomes a brilliant red glare. A super close-up of a fingertip holding a match is contrasty enough so every particle of sweat glistens in the lens. Concurrent sounds are similarly exaggerated and contribute to the sensual wash.... Shots are joined so that each moment resonates differently in time.” (Steve Anker, in Visions).
White Heart takes off from a series of Wittgensteinian monologues which illustrate, as Konrad Steiner writes in Cinematograph (1985), “the huge difference in the quality of knowledge we have about the experience of others, and that which we have about our own.” It goes on to investigate meaning, in a manner which Steiner likens to the painter Cezanne: “(The film has a) chaotic livelihood, (a) sense of gathering meanings right before my eyes. In this way the film is ABOUT the genesis of meaning.... (Cezanne's) still lifes and landscapes depict a threshold of vision or perhaps an ur-vision, before the objects of that vision have been fully assimilated into the familiar, expected appearances through the action of the eye-mind. Likewise, Barnett's film depicts a threshold of meaning. We are presented with a weave of sound and image not committed to a precisely rigid message....” (Cinematograph is published by the San Francisco Cinematheque.)