Timoleon Wilkins’ first-person cinematography hearkens back to the American avant-garde’s golden age—the visionary peaks of Brakhage, Baillie, et al. Of the Los Angeles filmmaker’s recent DRIFTER (1996-2010), Baillie wrote “Escritura del alma” (“writing of the soul”)—high praise indeed. I’m hard-pressed to remember many specifics of a screening of Wilkins’ THE CROSSING (2007) a few years ago, only that I was rendered temporarily speechless by the intensity of the image. As Brecht Andersch wrote about that film, “[It] suggests…the last abstract glories of Kodachrome, memorializing this period in which that most glorious of color film stocks is passing from our lives.” Indeed, this forced obsolescence of Wilkins’ chosen materials raises the stakes of his artisanal conviction that the means of expression are inseparable from what is being expressed. Drastic times require drastic measures: Wilkins has taken to projecting in-camera originals of certain films, jolting audiences with a primary experience of film as film.
– Max Goldberg, The Boston Viewfinder

Created by Mariya Nikiforova & Stefan Grabowski (of Balagan) and Max Goldberg (of Cinema Scope), The Boston Viewfinder is an online resource leading you to some sweet film gems in Eastern MA. Their mission is to ensure that the rarer films get the audience they deserve (E.G. Nicolas Rey & most of HFA’s repertoire, international films screening at the MFA, & much, much more). A Boston Viewfinder article is published every month in the Boston Counter Cultural Compass. Look for it on the Film Flam page!

2/17 – 7PM
Harvard Film Archive
Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts
24 Quincy Street
Cambridge, MA 02138