Phil Solomon

(January 3, 1954 – April 20, 2019)

ON LIGHT AND PEACH [or possibly PEACH AND LIGHT ON] (1973)
Super 8, color, silent 18fps, ca.3-5m
A Super 8 roll labeled by Solomon “my first film!” is present in his film collection. It is composed entirely of 1973 Super 8 Kodachrome stock, and is clearly a complete work, edited and starting with hand-scratched titles inspired by Brakhage. The title is a bit confusing, as it reads, one word at a time:
PEACH / AND / LIGHT / ON / NO
However, the title is scratched upside-down (so technically the above words appear in reverse order), which seems to have just been a rookie error on Solomon’s part, though this isn’t certain. Additionally, the NO in the title is spliced onto the rest of it, and may represent a deliberate inversion of the the word ON, but also may represent a partial attempt to correct the title orientation that was left incomplete. For the time being, unless other information emerges, the film will be referred to by the title presented above for clarity’s sake.

KEN JACOBS WOULDN’T HURT A FLY (ca.1973-75)
Super 8
No other info available at the moment, but will be updated if possible.

NIGHTLIGHT (1975)
16mm, bw, silent 24fps, 8m
Solomon’s senior thesis film from SUNY Binghamton.

NOCTURNE 3 (THE DREAM MACHINE) (aka THE DREAM MACHINE PARENTHETICALLY THE GLOW) (1977)
Super 8, color, silent 18fps, 10m
“After graduating college, I became very taken with shooting at night with long single frame time exposures on my super-8 Nizo. In the case of The Dream Machine, I found myself at a local drive-in theatre in Rochester, NY, and proceeded to make a raindance of light ‘tween projection source and screen. If you look closely, you may spot Jordan Belson’s special effects work for Donald Cammell’s The Demon Seed on the drive-in screen” (PS)

NOCTURNE FOUR [Super 8 version] (1977)
Super 8, color, silent 24fps(?), 10m (24fps) (9:51)
“The Nocturnes were originally meant to be a series, but I never blew-up the initial super-8 films to 16mm for general release, and so I eventually went with the single 16mm Nocturne (1980) as the epitome of the form I was seeking. Nocturne 4 was in many ways my internalization of Stan Brakhage’s seminal transition film, Anticipation of the Night, filmed at the amusement park across from my street in Seabreeze, N.Y., and some in Boston after I left the Rochester area.” (PS)
When I first received the original for this film from Phil in 2009, he told me it was “18fps, if memory serves”, but upon discovery of the one extant print of the film following his passing, it was labeled by him as “24fps” on the can, but “24fps?” on the reel, so although I’m favoring 24fps here as the tentatively correct speed, further investigation is needed. The 16mm blowup version being labeled by Phil as 24fps further suggests 24fps is indeed correct.

THE PASSAGE OF THE BRIDE (1978)
16mm, bw, silent 16/18fps, 7m
Originally shown at 16fps, but Phil was OK with 18fps when it became a necessity.
“When I left New York for Boston, a friend of mine gave me a 16mm home movie (from the late twenties/early thirties, which he found in a pawnshop) as a going away gift. I spent the next year analyzing every frame of this wedding and honeymoon roll, becoming more and more obsessed with every social gesture found in all parts of any given frame. By adding overlays and isolating gestures into discreet rhythms, I began (through a reversed excavation) to discover the hidden narrative. The Brides and Bachelors transubstantiating into their various guises of male and female, light and dark, compression and rarefaction; a Gothic horror tale of bonding and freedom.” (PS, program note from San Francisco Cinematheque screening, 1985)

NOCTURNE FOUR [16mm version] (1979)
16mm, color, silent 24fps, 11m
“The 16mm version, which I can send for historical purposes, is wacky, not as elegant…” (PS in email to Mark Toscano)

NOCTURNE 5 (1980)
16mm, bw, silent 24fps, 10m
This film was later revised and released in 1989 as the final (and most widely circulated) Nocturne.

AS IF WE (1980)
16mm, color, silent 18fps, 10m
“Musing on the past and the present, on roads not taken and the road I was already on. For Jeanine Hayden and her son Jeff, wherever you are.” (PS)

WHAT’S OUT TONIGHT IS LOST (1983)
16mm, color, silent 18fps, 8.5m
“The film began in response to an evaporating relationship, but gradually seeped outward to anticipate other imminent disappearing acts: youth, family, friends, time …. I wanted the tonal shifts of the film’s surface to act as a barometer of the changes in the emotional weather. Navigating the school bus in the fog, the lighthouse in disrepair ….” (PS)
“With material culled from various home movies (mine and others), I began to make a film as a note in a bottle about an evaporating friendship. The film gradually began to veer off into other disappearances surrounding me at the time. Images of (different) women tempered and shaped by using the film’s surface texture as a kind of emotional weather (inspired by Wallace Stevens’ use of the metaphor of weather). An attempt to repair the darkened lighthouse under adverse conditions.” (PS, program note from San Francisco Cinematheque screening, 1985)

THE SECRET GARDEN (1988)
16mm, color, silent 24fps, 17.5m
With a number of his films over the years, Solomon would sometimes show them as works-in-progress or in tentatively completed versions that he would decide to further revise before their definitive release. This was the case with The Secret Garden, which he worked on throughout the 1980s and occasionally screened, before its final completion in 1988.
“A long time ago, my sister introduced me to the patterns of refracted light that formed in the textured window of our bathroom; she called this the Magic World of Paloopa. I spent many hours in that bathroom moving my head around and watching these beings arise and disappear into melting landscapes. I credit these adventures with sparking my interest in film. The Secret Garden is a Griffith-style children’s story, which takes place inside a young boy’s fever dream (after his birthday party) on one Easter Sunday, in the middle of the night…” (PS, program note from San Francisco Cinematheque screening, 1985)

NOCTURNE (1980/89)
16mm, bw, silent 24fps, 8m
This film began as Nocturne 5 in 1980, but years later that film was revised and released in 1989 as the final (and most widely circulated) Nocturne.
“Finding similarities in the pulses and shapes between my own experiments in night photography, lightning storms, and night bombing in World War II, I constructed the war at home.” (PS)

ROCKETBOY VS. BRAKHAGE (1975-89)
16mm, bw & color, sound on tape, 25m
Phil Solomon periodically worked on this piece (particularly the soundtrack) and showed it in various forms over the years.
“A rollicking comic parody of finding myself in the peculiar position of studying to be an avant-garde filmmaker in college during the “structural film” wars, Rocket Boy was originally reviewed in the Village Voice by J. Hoberman (co-reviewed with Burton’s Batman, another “tacky super-hero,” according to Jim). He referred to me at the end of review, quite presciently as it turned out, as possibly being The Under-Dog Star Man…” (PS)

THE SUMMIT (1988-89)
Super 8, color, sound 24fps, 16m
Phil Solomon worked on this film off and on over many years, at one point blowing some of it up to 16mm, and even screened it publicly, but never officially released or distributed it. In 2013, he asked me to project it and assess it, and I found it really fascinating and it felt quite complete to me. He was encouraged by this and then considered releasing it after all, but this didn’t happen before his passing.

REMAINS TO BE SEEN [Super 8 version] (1989)
Super 8, color, sound 24fps, 17.5m
“Using chemical and optical treatments to coat the film with a limpid membrane of swimming crystals, coagulating into silver recall, then dissolving somewhere between the Operating Theatre, The Waterfall, and the Great Plains.” (PS)
Solomon worked on this film for a number of years, and in its initial stages he referred to it as Winterskin, even screening an in-progress version of it under this title on at least one occasion in 1985 at San Francisco Cinematheque (though likely again on other occasions). In his program note from that in-progress screening, he described the film as follows:
“I have been thinking about and trying to make a film portrait of my parents for many years. For the past three years, I have been watching my mother slowly disappear inside herself, as her illness has radically changed the lives of both of my parents. Winterskin is an urgent attempt for me to confront my own feelings of helplessness and distance (geo and emotional) in the tones and movement of the photographed moment, rather than through the various formal ‘treatments’ of my other work. I am presenting a brief silent sketch of this film tonight (I expect the finished film to be much longer, with sound) as it is the most current expression of my needs in filmmaking. The brief landscape shots which bridge certain sequences were photographed during the various trips to see my family – and were usually the only moments when I could be alone.” (PS, program note from San Francisco Cinematheque screening, 1985)

THE EXQUISITE HOUR [Super 8 version] (1989)
Super 8, color, sound 18fps, 14m
“Partly a lullaby for the dying, partly a lament at the dusk of cinema. Based on the song by Reynaldo Hahn and Paul Verlaine.” (PS)

CLEPSYDRA (1992)
16mm, bw, silent 24fps, 14m
“Clepsydra is an ancient Greek water clock (literally, “to steal water”). This film envisions the strip of celluloid going vertically through a projector as a sprocketed waterfall (random events measured in discreet units of time), through which the silent dreams of a young girl can barely be heard under the din of an irresistable torrent, an irreversible torment.” (PS)

REMAINS TO BE SEEN [16mm version] (1994)
16mm, color, sound, 17m
Although essentially the same film as the original Super 8 version, this 16mm version (blown up by Phil Solomon himself) has some minor differences of picture and sound.

THE EXQUISITE HOUR [16mm version] (1994)
16mm, color, sound, 14m
Although essentially the same film as the original Super 8 version, this 16mm version (blown up by Phil Solomon himself) has some minor differences of picture and sound, including an adaptation of the film to 24fps playback.

FIGURE/GROUND (1994)
16mm, color, sound, 10m
This film was revised and subsequently released as The Snowman ca.1996.

ELEMENTARY PHRASES (1994) (w/ Stan Brakhage)
16mm, color, silent 24fps, 33m

CONCRESCENCE (1996) (w/ Stan Brakhage)
16mm, color, silent 24fps, 3m

THE SNOWMAN (ca.1996)
16mm, color, sound, 8m
The film Figure/Ground, made in 1994, was later revised and re-released as The Snowman. Although the year of this film is typically given as 1995, it seems to more likely have been re-released in 1996, based on some extant screening notes from that time period (specifically, 1995 screenings seem to still reference Figure/Ground, while a 12/19/1996 SF Cinematheque screening refers to The Snowman).

“…” (the seasons) (1998) (w/ Stan Brakhage)
16mm, color, silent 24fps, 3m
This short film was released and for a time distributed through Canyon Cinema, but Phil Solomon removed it from availability once he began to finish the final Seasons… in 2002. It comprises material that eventually appeared in that later film. A program note from a show at Hallwalls (Buffalo) on 3/27/98 gives the running time as 10 minutes. This could either be an error, or there may have been another alternate early iteration of the film, though a 10m print of this early version has not turned up.

THE TWILIGHT PSALMS
The Twilight Psalms were conceived by Phil Solomon as a series of seven short films that would borrow their titles from particularly evocative episode names from The Twilight Zone (a show Solomon dearly loved) and comprise a multi-part, feature-length “elegy for the twentieth century”. The seven film titles were chosen in advance based entirely on the resonance of the episode title alone (in other words, these were not necessarily his favorite episodes, and in some cases were even episodes he didn’t rate particularly highly). The seven originally intended titles were The Lateness Of The Hour, Walking Distance, Night Of The Meek, On Thursday We Leave For Home, Mute, Dust, and The After Hours, although it’s likely several others were under consideration beyond these. The first three of these were completed and released as 16mm short films, but the long-term project was in some ways superseded by American Falls. Years later, after Solomon had essentially abandoned the initial intended plan for this project, he also used the Twilight Zone episode title Valley Of The Shadow (as “Psalm IV”) for one of his final completed works in 2013.

THE LATENESS OF THE HOUR (TWILIGHT PSALM I) (1999)
16mm, color, silent 24fps, 10m
The earliest screenings of this film were listed as OVERTURE: THE LATENESS OF THE HOUR, with the idea that the entire series of Twilight Psalms would be shown as a larger, multi-part piece, but this “Overture” designation was dropped almost immediately.
Solomon had for a period intended to re-do his optical printing of the film’s original bi-pack rolls due to a printed-in visible hair in the gate, but later made peace with this artifact and allowed it to exist as-is.
For the first several years of its existence, the “Twilight Psalm” series title was foregrounded in Phil’s presentation of this work, and it was referred to as Twilight Psalm I: The Lateness of the Hour. But in later years, he decided to diminish this series identity, and preferred simply to call this film The Lateness of the Hour.
“A little Nachtmusik… breathing in the cool night airs, breathing out a children’s song; then whispering a prayer for a night of easeful sleep. My blue attempt at a sequel to Rose Hobart.” (PS)

WALKING DISTANCE (TWILIGHT PSALM II) (1999)
16mm, color, sound, 23m
For the first several years of its existence, the “Twilight Psalm” series title was foregrounded in Phil’s presentation of this work, and it was referred to as Twilight Psalm II: Walking Distance. But in later years, he decided to diminish this series identity, and preferred simply to call this film Walking Distance.
“Inspired by Kiefer and Ryder, dedicated to Stan Brakhage. Imagining one of those rusted medieval film cans having survived centuries, a long lost Biograph/Star, a Griffith/Méliès co-production, a two-reeler left to us from, say, the Bronze Age, a time when images were smelted and boiled rather than merely taken, when they poured down like silver, not be to fixed and washed, mind you, but free to reform and coagulate into unstable, temporary molds, mere holding patterns of faces, places, and things, shape-shifting according to whim, need, the uncanny or the inevitable… Walking Distance is a simple Golden Book tale of horizontals and verticals, a cinema of ether and ore…” (PS)

“YES, I SAID YES, I WILL, YES.” (1999)
16mm, color, sound, 3m
Although this film – made in response to his successful engagement – was periodically shown publicly, it was not originally placed into regular distribution by Solomon.

INNOCENCE AND DESPAIR (2001)
digital (SD), color, sound, 3m
“One week after 9/11, filmmakers Jay Rosenblatt and Caveh Zahedi put out a call to over 150 experimental and documentary filmmakers for contributions to a collective film project (Underground Zero) addressing those tragic events. My contribution was my first digital video (with material culled from 16mm footage, both archival and my own) and to make something of a public work, something I had never done before. I was meditating on ideas of before and after, of how the summering people in my little film could never have imagined looking up at the New York City sky at a world such as existed on that day.” (PS)

SEASONS… (2002) (w/ Stan Brakhage)
16mm, color, silent 24fps, 16m
This collaborative film made with Stan Brakhage existed in at least one or perhaps more tentative initial versions starting in 1998, but only achieved its final form in 2002. Phil finished the film in the last months of Brakhage’s life, and was moved to be able to show it to him to get his approval before Brakhage’s death in March 2003. Phil would often talk about how meaningful it was for him that Seasons… was apparently the last film Brakhage ever watched on film before he died.

NIGHT OF THE MEEK (TWILIGHT PSALM III) (2002/2004)
16mm, bw, sound, 24m
This film was initially released in 2002, but Phil Solomon later revised the soundtrack and released it in its final form in 2004.
For the first several years of its existence, the “Twilight Psalm” series title was foregrounded in Phil’s presentation of this work, and it was referred to as Twilight Psalm III: Night of the Meek. But in later years, he decided to diminish this series identity, and preferred simply to call this film Night of the Meek.
“(In Memoriam, Anne Frank) It is Berlin, November 9, 1938, and, as the night air is shattered throughout the city, the Rabbi of Prague is summoned from a dark slumber, called upon once again to invoke the magic letters from the Great Book that will bring his creature made from earth back to life, in the hour of need. A kindertodenliede in black and silver on a night of gods and monsters…” (PS)

IN MEMORIAM (MARK LAPORE 1952-2005) (2005-2009)
digital, color, sound, 49.5m total
This series of three digital pieces (and one related precursor, Crossroad) was made by Phil Solomon as a memorial tribute to his lifelong friend Mark LaPore. The material for all of these pieces comes from Grand Theft Auto games, meticulously interacted with to produce the remarkable images contained therein. Although the quartet has often played together (or the trio of films without Crossroad), the individual pieces can be shown separately as well.
“Sometime during the new century, I began to suspect that videogames (which I had literally not seen since PONG in the 70’s) were having a major impact on the aesthetic and philosophical renderings of time, space and gravity in the commercial cinema I was seeing. The simulacrum and its attendant theories had finally caught up with me, and so I promptly went into Best Buy and bought a PlayStation 2 and asked about interesting games that I could explore without actually having to play. The Geek Squad recommended the infamous Grand Theft Auto series to me. Needless to say, I was shocked, appalled, disgusted… and absolutely fascinated. Mostly I became intrigued by the (narratively unnecessary) level of detail assigned to the renderings of landscape (particularly in the small rural area-this is a game of primarily urban warfare after all). I spent a great deal of time in a Warholian trance just noting the light change, the grass gently swaying in the wind.
“In the late summer of 2005, the filmmaker Mark LaPore, my best friend since college days, when we discovered the art of film together, visited me in Colorado and insisted on making a short piece together – something we had never done before. We stayed up all night and created a short rather uncanny piece ( of what I later learned would be described as ‘machinima’ a genre I was thankfully unfamiliar with) which was first referred to as Untitled ( for David Gatten) and would eventually be re-titled Crossroad.
“About 3 weeks later sometime in the early hours of 9/11/2005 (a date no doubt chosen intentionally), Mark LaPore ended his life by his own hand. I realized the film we had made together was his parting gift. In response to this utterly shocking and tragic event, I created the trilogy In Memoriam (Mark LaPore 1952- 2005) with all visual materials culled from Grand Theft Auto gameplay. The great challenge here was to treat the crude, sometimes cartoon-like simulacrum with profound tenderness, rather than easy irony (which is already built in and which pervades much of this kind of work). In Memoriam offered me a new opportunity to stretch what I was creatively capable of achieving (particularly by now being able to traverse the z axis to ‘track’ as it were …) without resorting to my usual bag of photochemical cinetexture magic – I was on my own again nowhere to hide. And so in speaking plainly, I searched once again for the uncanny sublime…

“All images for In Memoriam were captured from the videogame series Grand Theft Auto,
where Mark and I,
boys of summer,
were allowed to roam and wander
without mission
without murder
‘cheating’ our way through the streets of polygonal horrors,
finding (to our continuing astonishment)
amusement,
poetry,
and
darkness,
just over there
at the edge of town…”
(Phil Solomon)

CROSSROAD (2005) (w/ Mark LaPore)
digital (SD), color, sound, 5m
This film was initially shown under the title Untitled (For David Gatten). After Mark LaPore’s death in September 2005, Phil Solomon renamed it Crossroad and it inspired an eventual trio of digital pieces organized under the umbrella title In Memoriam (Mark LaPore 1952-2005). Although it is often shown with the other three pieces it preceded, it is to be considered a separate, though related, work.

REHEARSALS FOR RETIREMENT (2007)
digital (SD), color, sound, 10m
First part of In Memoriam (Mark LaPore 1952-2005).

LAST DAYS IN A LONELY PLACE (2008)
digital (SD), color, sound, 22m
Second part of In Memoriam (Mark LaPore 1952-2005).

STILL RAINING, STILL DREAMING (2009)
digital (HD 720p), color, sound, 12.5m
Third part of In Memoriam (Mark LaPore 1952-2005).

AMERICAN FALLS (2010/2012)
digital (HD 720p), color, sound, 55m
This is a piece commissioned by and initially premiered at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, where it ran as a six-channel installation from April 10, 2010 to July 18, 2010. It was subsequently revised slightly, and installed in a variety of galleries (usually as a three-channel installation), and although its ideal state is as an installation, it did also show as a cinematic work. (The difference between the six- and three-channel versions is essentially just a matter of doubling the screens.)

EMPIRE (2012)
digital (HD 720p), color, sound, 48m
This piece has been shown as both an installation piece and as a cinematic work.

THE ETERNAL COURTSHIP (2013)
digital (HD 1080p), color, sound, 1m

THE EMBLAZONED APPARITIONS (2013)
digital (HD 720p), color, sound, 6m
This film — produced from the large amount of raw material used to make American Falls — was created for a commission from Chuck Workman, for his feature film What is Cinema? (2013)

PSALM IV: “VALLEY OF THE SHADOW” (2013)
digital (HD 720p), color, sound, 7.5m
This film was initially completed in 2012 as 8:54 running time, but revised and finally released in 2013 at 7:31.
This digital piece was a late addition to Solomon’s by now greatly modified conception of the Twilight Psalms series of films. Valley of the Shadow was not one of the initial Twilight Zone episode titles he originally had chosen for the films in this series, but as the project evolved (and was to some degree abandoned from its original envisioning), Solomon decided to employ another episode title he appreciated as the name of this film. Given also the identity of “Psalm IV”, this suggests both the relationship of this piece to the initial Twilight Psalms series, but also an acknowledgement of that series’ evolution and modification away from its initial conception, post-American Falls. This film is also sometimes referenced as only Valley of the Shadow.

UNFINISHED PROJECTS

ALTERNATING CURRENTS (1994/1999)
16mm, color, silent 24fps, …m
This was an unfinished collaboration with Stan Brakhage. This film was actually screened publicly at least a few times, including at Pacific Film Archive (11/15/1994, described as a premiere), MoMA (5/3/1999, also described as a premiere – probably a revision), and First Person Cinema, CU Boulder (4/24/2000). TBD, but it’s likely that Solomon probably screened a workprint or even spliced original of the film in these instances (as he had done with The Lateness of the Hour), and then withdrew the film to work on further. It was never ultimately completed or re-released.

CONGENIAL MENINGES (FRED AND GINGER)
This was an unfinished collaboration with Stan Brakhage. In a May 1998 article in The Independent about Brakhage, the articles states, “Another current project is Congenial Meninges, a collaboration with Boulder colleague Phil Solomon, in which the two attempt to capture ‘the grace of dancing, most specifically the kind of grace generated by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.'” Phil told me it was something he was working on at various times, but I have a feeling he didn’t get too far along on it.

SIMPLY BECAUSE YOU’RE NEAR ME (2013)
digital (HD), color, sound, 12m
This video game piece was shown at Los Angeles Filmforum on May 19, 2013, but this may have been its only public screening (TBD), and Phil Solomon subsequently decided to reconsider or rework it. It was ultimately never released.
“The many moods and shades of love, set in a virtual Hong Kong. Inspired by the films of Wong Kar Wai.” (PS)