Nas Correntes de Luz da Ria Formosa (In the Rays of Light
of Ria Formosa) is a kind of documentary shot over a period of 3 months
in summer of 1997 and then edited over the next 2 and a half years.
It utilizes the aesthetic nature of DV, and in this case of the particular
quality of a specific DV camera, the SONY DX700, a camera which was
withdrawn from the market quickly owing to apparent complaints about
its focusing system. LUZ willfully uses this “problem”
as the basis of its aesthetic: it is all a little to very much out of
focus, which with this camera also produces a kind of aura or bloom
in areas with brighter light. I liked this quality very much and shot
about 12 hours of material in the small town of Cabanas, Portugal, and
a bit in nearby Tavira. The work is a spiritual portrait of a place
and time. It is, as is Cabanas, willfully slow, meditative, passive.
It has no evident narrative, though I hope I was able in my editing
and other choices to impart a kind of slowly developing momentum which
functions vaguely like a narrative, or like the melodic line in a piece
of music. Finally LUZ is about light, and philosophically about
life, and our place on this planet, and its place in the universe.
1997-1999 | Digital Video | Color | Sound | 112 minutes
Camera, edit, and concept : Jon Jost
Music: Carlos Paredes, guitar, very much altered on computer.
Shown at Rotterdam 1999,
Festival dei Popoli, Florence
|