Hollis Frampton
Filmmaker, Photographer
1936-1984

In spite of his early departure at the age of 48, Hollis Frampton remains a large figure in the history of American avant-garde film. His mode of thinking and sense of humor set him outside and above the usual academic or club memberships that seem to isolate radical film practice to a special few.

Here are notes prepared for the special screening we organized with the San Francisco Cinemathequefor June 19, 2005 at the Ninth Street Independent Film Center:

Princeton University and Anthology Film Archives put together a week of activities in November, 2004 focusing on the work of maverick filmmaker Hollis Frampton, an event meant to coincide with the Summer publication of October #109, which contained several significant new readings into Frampton's work. Not wanting to see those events go by without appropriate recognition here on the West Coast, we organized this ad hoc screening.

Annette Michelson and October (MIT Press) have regularly championed the work of Hollis Frampton, recognizing him as a unique genius of experimental film. It's sad that his work is still not better known. There are four pieces pertaining to Frampton within October #109: Federico Windhausen's "Words Into Film", Melissa Ragona's "Hidden Noise", Michael Zryd's "History and Ambivalence in... Magellan", and Frampton's own "The Invention Without A Future". While all of the writings call for renewed study of Frampton's work, the essay by Melissa Ragona stands out as a new angle into thinking about these films and their maker, taking the angle of SOUND, which was often overlooked in film practice and theory by America's "heroic" avant-garde. "Hidden Noise" is evidently an excerpt from a book-length piece in progress about sound and experimental film. The idea that there are parallels between 20th century composers of music and sound, Cage and Feldman for instance, and filmmakers, the composers of film, is a promising premise.

Steve Polta and I selected films from the NY Filmmakers' Coop catalog using several criteria: the film had not been seen in San Francisco in some time or ever, the film dealt with sound in some way, the film pertained to the Magellan cycle, or we had not seen the film. Palindrome, from 1969, is a neglected masterwork, a silent film which plays music through the eyes in one's head. Tiger Balm and Yellow Springs, 2 short films from 1972, are probably from the days when Frampton first concocted the Magellan project; both were given secondary Magellan titles. More Than Meets The Eye is an example of Frampton's kinetic montage style and conceptual brilliance, the medium funhouse mirrors the message. Drafts and Fragments is Frampton's re-make of film history, a set of 51 1-minute shots in the style of Lumiere. And Mindfall consists of 2 segments shot in Puerto Rico, Magellan's first point of landfall on the Americas, and contains a comical sound effects audio track which imposes upon the idyllic beauty of Frampton's imagery, though he has also AB printed much of the material as false-stereo superimpositions.

Hollis Frampton was a conceptual holographer, his films build thought-sculptures in the attentive mind. He played with the mental language of film like no other (maybe David Larcher does so with video-void). Frampton anticipated the computer-made film. He envisioned a year-long cycle of films, believing that film and image-thought-language is an everyday activity. At some point his films will be properly presented, in a special theater, a film for each day of the year. Early films, Zorn's Lemma, Magellan. All Frampton films Magellan.

While there are new prints of several more-often-screened films in the NY Coop collection, all of these films may be original prints. Quality varies.

Owen O'Toole, 2005.