Bamboo Xerox

Bamboo Xerox

  • Overview
  • Crew

Status

Released

Release Date

Jan 1, 1983

Runtime

0h 9m

Original Title

Bamboo Xerox

Director

Barbara Hammer

Description

"Behind my desire to 'activate' the audience is a distaste for sutured, hegemonic cinema. By this, I mean a cinema dominated by both narrative and documentary traditions, cinema that hypnotizes its audience through invisible editing, illusionist sound, and 3D) perspective. With Bamboo Xerox, I found another strategy to move my audience and break illusions. I photographed bamboo (my favorite grass) from my backyard and then xeroxed both sections of living bamboo and the photographic stills of the bamboo. After editing the film, I had the entire six-minute film blueprinted as a black and white scroll. I stretched the scroll horizontally around the theater space so that the audience could see the film frame by frame before they saw the projection. Perhaps the audience could break the illusionist ritual-or at the very least experience a different way of seeing a film." — Barbara Hammer