SHORT FILMS BY ALAN BERLINER
1975 - 1985
"These collage films are drawn from a vast personal library of sounds and images, steadfastly accumulated over many years. This randomly assembled and ever expanding pool of elements serves as the basis for a form of "bricolage," -- cultural artifacts and residues/cinematic odds and ends collected over time and transformed into works attempting to bridge a wide range of poetic horizons: the actual with the possible, pre-history with science fiction, magic with science fact. The medium with the message. Ultimately these films document my need to put order to my universe, a place burdened by my need to make the puzzles fit the pieces."
EVERYWHERE AT ONCE (1985)
10 min. Color Sound
"...a musical montage, a synchronized symphony composed from an infinity of elements at hand...a journey in images at the speed of sound."
"Virtuoso Editing"
Grand Prize Winner, Ann Arbor Film Festival, (1986)
Honorable Mention, Bucks County Film Festival, (1986)
Television Broadcast, WNET/Thirteen "Independent Focus", (1990)
NATURAL HISTORY (1983)
13 min. Color Sound
"From there to here...from then to now. The soundtrack feature 33 frogs, 22 birds, lion growls, bomb whistles, a heartbeat and the chromatic scale."
Permanent Collection:Television Broadcast, WNYC/31, "The Garden of Eden", (1984)
Honorable Mention, Bucks County Film Festival, (1985)
MYTH IN THE ELECTRIC AGE (1981)
13 min. Color Sound
With Commentary by Marshall McLuhan
"...Berliner's film which talks about nature, culture, and technology impresses through its outstanding classical editing techniquee...Berliner finds precise and original transitions.."
International Conference/Exhibition "Found Footage" Viennna, Austria, (1991)
CITY EDITION (1980)
10 min. B/W Sound
"...the newspaper page...you have very loud and noisy headlines...a mosaic space made up of unconnected items from every part of the world at once.... The total lack of storyline...is as sophisticated as Picasso..."
LINES OF FORCE (1979)
7 min. Color Sound
"Explores the urban and highway landscapes of cars and trucks, traffic signals, tunnels, and blinking arrows. A simple electronic tone punctuates small shifts and sudden changes within the montage of images."
COLOR WHEEL (1976)
20 Minutes Color Silent 24 fps
"Filmed throughout the changing light and weather of a full year, a child¹s hand pushed merry-go-round spins roulette wheel-like color energy: Red snow. Blue rain. Green ice. Yellow sun."
FOUR CORNER TIME (1976)
A series of 4 black and white silent films around and about an urban traffic intersection. I see these short films as a seedbed of ideas and obsessions that inform and contexualize many of the visual and editorial strategies in my subsequent longer-form films.
Line
8 Minutes B/W Silent 18fps
"Cars trucks, pedestrians and the line they pass over, by, under and through."
Perimeter
11 Minutes B/W Silent 18fps"
"A hand-held camera follows the "lines of force" of a busy pedestrian crosswalk."
Traffic Light
10 minutes B/W Silent 18fps
"The rhythms of stop and go, stasis and motion, night light and light flashes."
Intersection
11 Minutes B/W Silent 18fps
"Geometric composition meets geometric editing" (in 4 corner time.)
PATENT PENDING (1975)
11 min. B/W. Sound
"A film of a film within a film. One reel. One take. A soundtrack of musique concrete -- whirring gears, sprocket wheels, and intermittent clatter."
"...a series of visual effects peculiar to cinema. First, the outer edge of the reel seems to take on something of a third dimension; it seems thick rather than flat. Later, the interaction of the camera's shutter speed and the graphic rhythm created by the by the holes in the reel as they spin through the image creates that reverse motion effect we are familiar with from stagecoach wheels in Westerns. Finally, the holes in the reel are moving so quickly that their round images tend to double up on the viewer's retina and become animated in a manner reminiscent of some of Oscar Fischinger's abstract animation."