Alaska

“ALASKA is an emigration film, a dream of myself, the consequences of the act with
society.” (Dore O.)

1968, 16mm, color/si, 18m, for rent from Canyon Cinema, Inc., San Francisco for US $55

“Could be that you would like this film which poses no language problem. The sound is just
electronic noises, no language. To my mind, a painter (or poet) could have done this film.
It has a very quiet rhythm accelerating somewhat towards the end, with interspersed irritating
glimpses at paintings (a tiger head, a little girl’s face, people in front of the yellow tiger
painting, a man’s face, the shadow of hands in front of the camera, etc.) interrupting the flow
of water, waves, the coast – sometimes the coast UPSIDE down, sometimes greenish,
sometimes photographed with a sepia-colored filter in front of the lens, the flow some archaic
symbol of life perhaps, of streaming elements (the flow of data in our consciousness, in
dreams?);

there are other shots where this element of motion is contrasted with
slabs of concrete piercing out of the screen,
their thrust towards us,
hard and with well-defined corners;

again there are shots of persons (almost always a young woman)

running at the beach,
sometimes walking very slowly,
as if in (again) a dream,
down a pier,
into a landscape of
silence, of loneliness;

the sea seems to be filled with ice

floating, as she walks
down the pier, we see
she has already
left it, seems to walk
on into the lonely landscape, the distinction
between pier and beach or sea
has been wiped out,
at least it has become blurred,
she gets lost
walking on the water,
disappearing in the distance where
there is a cut
and the next sequence begins.

At another time we see her walking

down the pier, and at the same time,
she moves in the other direction too –
superimposition as a means to show
the contradicting (psychic?) forces
tearing at “us”?

There are images of the girl floating,

as in a painting by Chagall
where two lovers
float up in the sky; here
there is such closeness,
the dream
is one of being alone; still it is
about an experience
of weightlessness,

a quiet
experience.

(Andreas Weiland)