Engram Sepals

2000
Country: USA
Duration: 6 mins
Colour,
Sound: Opt.
Available Format/s: 16mm

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A Buddhist noir, the dead body remembers. – LK
“…the real power of Klahr’s figures is their mix of sensuality and insubstantiality, which not only allows the viewer to bring his own experiences to the action but makes Klahr’s key point about pop culture. Even though this stylish, provocative film, alone among the seven, is in black and white and uses the high-art music of Morton Feldman rather than pop, it makes the stuff of mass culture thoroughly alluring. The discontinuous overall design, inspired by 40’s film noir, creates the sense of an incomprehensible labyrinth, and the depiction of some figures in white line drawings on black, Klahr says, was inspired in part by magazine graphics of the 40’s and 50’s, ‘where the whites against blacks are so luminous that they have a kind of eternity in them.’ The figures’ insubstantiality suggests both universality and diminution: these are quite a bit less than flesh-and-blood humans. No character seems in control, and the viewer’s difficulty in threading his way through the narrative underscores the character’s loss of autonomy.” – Fred Camper, The Chicago Reader

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