Found+Film+Flashes

Found Film Flashes (1973), 16mm, black and white, optical sound, 3.25 min

After a rapid flickering interlude of upside-down footage depicting a sleeping woman, the screeching sound of cued audio tape on a reel-to-reel player signals the radical rupture between sound and image in Film Found Flashes. A collage of recurring speech fragments such as “process normal,” “this tape was made at the speed of 9.5 centimeters,” “this voice sounds normal,” and “do you think she uses words purely for the rhythm” – provides a patchy voice-over “commentary” which skids across a sampling of found film. Other sleeping women appear. “This woman who was working…” “It’s about tonight, it’s about tonight.” “It’s lemonade!” But the image which predominates and consumes this film is a masculine one: a man who gazes off-screen. The image is flipped so that sometimes he looks to his left, and sometimes to his right. Sometimes rapidly flickering back-and-forth with accompanying staccato-stutter. Is he dreaming of the sleeping nymph? “It’s about tonight…” To further compound the relation, the man is being viewed via the round-edged rectangular tube of a television set. Are the sleeping women dreaming of him? “It’s lemonade!”