Human Frames: Fear

The Human Frames project consists of a series of 10 film programs—suitable for exhibition in art galleries and other public forums—that examine various human emotional states through the perspective of experimental cinema. This compilation of nine shorts (ranging in length from one to 14 minutes) from 2002-10—representing filmmakers from Austria, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Israel, Palestine, and China—focuses on the subject of fear. Formats employed include animation (in Arnaud Delord's Mr. Moth) and manipulation of found footage (in Sylvia Schedelbauer's False Friends), but most consist of newly shot scenes edited into hallucinatory images reflecting dreamlike responses to subconscious terrors. Some of the phobias explored are connected to childhood traumas (such as Mr. Moth, which concerns a boy who fears retribution for his torture of insects), while others reflect contemporary societal concerns, as in David Cotterrell's Green Room—consisting of a single static shot of emergency medical personnel awaiting the arrival of casualties in a war zone—or Guli Silberstein's Excerpt, which manipulates Internet footage of a family hiding behind a wall as fighting occurs near their house. As with many experimental films, the meaning in most cases here is opaque, and this compilation is best approached as a work of art rather than as cinematic narrative. Also newly available in the same series is Human Frames: Impermanence. A strong optional purchase. Aud: C, P. (F. Swietek)