After Leonardo

In my six-screen film After Leonardo (1974), an old crumpled, black and white detail reproduction of the Mona Lisa is attached, during the projection, to a blank white screen.On the other screens are various filmed images of the same reproduction shot at difference distances and also images, a further refilming of the film from the screen. One interpretation of the juxtaposition of a real object (albeit a reproduction of a cultural icon) alongside its cinematic representation is that it highlights the reality of the cinematic in the context of an object we assume to be part of the real physical universe. By ‘reflection’ it reinforces a reading of the cinematic as similarly composed of physical substance and the product of material processes.Malcolm Le Grice, ‘Mapping in Multi-space – Expanded Cinema to Virtuality’, 1996, from Experimental Cinema in the Digital Age, p277.