Dance Chromatic
Ed Emshwiller, 1959
Digital, color, sound, 7min

“As a painter, I think that cinema, with its temporal dimensions, offers a much broader palette of expression than painting. The ability to resort to chance, [to work on] sequence and rhythm allows us to achieve intensities that are not possible in static work. I believe that the human figure moving through the forms of dance has a special meaning, a universal attraction, which makes dance a particularly powerful visual art.”
– Ed Emshwiller

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Thanatopsis
Ed Emshwiller, 1962
Digital, b&w, sound (optic), 5min

“Dancer Becky Arnold’s poses create flashes and vibrations in the image juxtaposed with Mac Emshwiller’s still face. An experimental film that describes and produces a state of anxiety. The heartbeats and creaks of the saw used in the soundtrack contribute to the intensity of the effect.”
– Ed Emshwiller

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Totem
Ed Emshwiller, 1963
Digital, color, sound (optic), 16min

“Primordial mysteries, earth, fire, water, rituals and community ties. The dancers are seen at first as motifs in a frieze; then as strange, subterranean, headless creatures; finally as random beings that appear and disappear (…). The dancers form highly textural patterns of mirror images, culminating in a series of kaleidoscopic implosions.”
– Ed Emshwiller

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Film with three dancers
Ed Emshwiller, 1970
Digital, color, sound, 21min

“Film with three dancers covers a lot of ground in that it seeks to capture and convey the energy and emotion that the dancers have to tap into in order to perform their work, how much of their ‘self’ is made up of a ‘real’ persona and a ‘theatrical’ persona. In the final sequences, the dancers’ bodies, clothed or naked, merge and evolve through multiple exposures, as the camera captures the topography of the body as a stage for motion and emotion.”
– Jenelle Porter

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Self trio
Ed Emshwiller, 1976
Digital, color, sound, 8min

“Our work together was a mutual collaboration. He [Ed Emshwiller] would draw ideas from our improvisations and often ask us to modify certain sections. We would enter wholeheartedly into the world of Ed’s visions and work for hours to try to fit into the frame of his gaze (…). Ed Emshwiller was a mentor to us, as was Alwin Nikolais; they both shared the audacity to invent new forms of expression.”
– Carolyn Carlson