The Window and the Door
Experimental
•
2m 38s
Directed by Wayne Koestenbaum • Documentary • 2023 • 3 minutes
This phantasmagoric film derives from a roll of 16mm film that Koestenbaum shot on a Bolex in Brooklyn, as well as analog 35mm photographs (self-portraits and cityscapes) he took on a Nikon. In this collage film/video, “The Window and the Door,” you can see fragments of that 16mm film and those 35mm photographs, as well as found footage and other invented elements, including a sudden vista of Elizabeth Taylor. The soundtrack is a voice-over soliloquy and an audio collage of chords that Koestenbaum played on the piano; in editing, he omitted the moments of “attack” or onset and include only the aftermath vibrations of the piano strings. The film that results from these series of experiments is dense with overlapping imagery, reflecting the paradoxical fashion in which a window, or a door, might be open to meaning and joyful experiment, but also forbiddingly closed.
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