LIGHT LICKS: BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON: I WANT TO PAINT IT BLACK
BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON: I WANT TO PAINT IT BLACK
2011 | Super 8 | Silent
LIGHT LICKS are a series of films, which are made frame by frame often by flooding the camera with enough light to spill beyond the gate into the frame left unexposed. LIGHT LICKS are ecstatic flicker films inspired by jazz and mystic visionary practice.
BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON is a sub series within the LIGHT LICKS, inspired by Psalm 137, a meditation on the experience of forced exile.
I WANT TO PAINT IT BLACK
I spent the week of thanksgiving 2010 in Prague; I had never been to Europe before and as a Jew born in the 2nd World War, I had a strong association of central Europe with the Holocaust. I found Prague to be an extremely charming and beautiful city, an architectural palimpsest as it hadn’t been bombed. In this LIGHT LICK I responded to the city in the present tense but kept being drawn into its past. The grave of Rabbi Judah Lowe the alleged maker of the Golem alleged descendent of King David and certainly one of the great Jewish scholars and mystics of his time, the absence of a contemporary Jewish community and the wonderful statues bridges and buildings led me to make this dark Gothic reflection of 21st century Prague. -SAUL LEVINE 2011
Previous screenings:
UNDER 8 FEET OF SNOW: FILMS FROM BOSTON AND PROVIDENCE, Germany
US & Canadian Experimental Film Showcase, Tokyo
Chicago 8: A Small Gauge Film Festival