THE SKY ON LOCATION, 1982, 16mm Color, 78 min.
On location in the American West,
Co-produced with Zweites Deutches Fernsehen, West Germany.
“Is it possible to confront nature with a real purity of vision? The Sky on Location is a personal meditation on the landscape of the American west that tracks the ruling conception in nature in the 19th and 20th centuries from the pioneers through the instamatic tourists, at the same time that it obsessively follows the four seasons. The elemental vicissitudes of the weather, the exact moment of the day, the color of the light and the soil and the trees form an acute visual record of the constantly changing mood of the landscape. The film successfully attempts, with quiet, passionate, almost single-minded firmness, to confront us as nakedly as possible with our cultural inability to see nature whole, without preconceptions.” – Ernest Larsen
The landscape is not seen in its postcardish grandeur as captured in the photographs of Ansel Adams, nor through its shapes as in paintings by Cezanne or Constable, but rather the film captures the mood of the landscape as in a Turner painting. The film attempts to construct a geography of the land from North to South, East to West and season-to-season through colors instead of maps. – BM
Major Festival and shows:
Edinburgh Film Festival, Scotland, 1983
Toronto Film Festival, Toronto, Canada, 1983
Broadcast on German Television, 1983
WNET, Channel 13 Independent Focus, New York, 1984
The National Gallery, Washington, DC, 1994
“Landscape in Motion”, Milan, Italy, 1999
“Topographical Films”, Muenster, Cologne, Berlin, Germany, 2005
Movie Color Images small scale
In 1982 I shot some color slides but the quality of the image and the color were not as good as the one in the film, so I just use the few images that I had shot in B&W film with my Nikon for the publicity.
Movie Color Images small scale:
B&W images for publicity:
Film clip | Duration: 2:13 min | Open full-screen for better experience
Film clip | Duration: 1:38 min | Open full-screen for better experience