Film in Which There Appear … (1966)

Owen Land (formerly known as George Landow) 's early materialist works anticipated Structural Film, the definition of which provoked his rejection of film theory and convention. Having first explored the physical qualities of the celluloid strip itself in Film in Which There Appear …, his attention will turn to the spectator in a series of literal films that question the illusionary nature of cinema through the use of word play and optical ambiguity.




Land explores the material qualities of celluloid film, turning its imperfections into content, in this early film, made from a brief loop of a Kodak colour test.
Usually the imperfections of filmmaking are normally suppressed, but in this short they are at the core of a work: we see the sprocket holes which normally are out of sight, the dust which is normally incidental recurs here in patterns, and the image itself, the static face of a girl, becomes incidental to the movement of the film. The audience sees not just one but two frames of the girl on the running film at center screen. These holes, unlike the images of the woman, are much more variable and therefore flicker. Here is the essence of "deconstructivism": the marginal becomes center, and the center becomes marginal.
This is one of the earliest examples of the film material dictating the film content. It is a kind of Duchampian found object, a looped test film that focuses attention on the medium and the viewer.