Fisher Films
‘One thing my films tend to do is examine a property or quality of a film in a radical way. Being radical is a modest form of being extreme. They each examine an axiom of cinema and say, “What if ?” ‘(Morgan Fisher)
The films of Morgan Fisher have existed under the radar for more than twenty years. This is partly because he works in that filmic Bermuda Triangle between the avant-garde, the commercial movie industry and contemporary art. Morgan Fisher mixes cinematic history, autobiography and art historical references in his exploration of film making. Being based in Los Angeles – where the only kind of cinematic culture is the blockbuster – can’t have helped. Away from New York, around whose creative inhabitants the foundations of serious film writing were built, Fisher avoided being anointed as one of the prime ‘structural’ film makers (who included Michael Snow, Paul Sharits and Hollis Frampton). However, this gave him the freedom to be as idiosyncratic as he wished. He became the most academically reductive practitioner of minimalist film making. The process of film making, its tools, and its jargon have been Fisher’s subjects for forty years. (Mark Webber)
In this combined programme
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Projection Instructions
Study of the film process, from shooting to screening, with dry humour and precise observations. -
Standard Gauge
A reservoir of forgotten film material forms a metaphorical biography of the film history and a partial autobiography of Fisher himself. -
The Wilkinson Household Fire Alarm
Homage to and wink at Marcel Duchamp that clearly focuses more on conceptualism than on the studio film. What you see is what you hear. -
The Director and His Actor Look at Footage Showing Preparations for an Unmade Film (2)
A film in two parts: the rushes of a film and the men watching them. -
Cue Rolls
Most works by Fisher have a direct link to the machinery of film. Here he analyses the cue rolls. -
