The Films of Hilary Harris (2006)
Four visionary short films: Organism; 9 Variations on a Dance Theme; Highway; Longhorn
Studio: Mystic Fire Video XX
Video: 4:3 Color & B&W
Audio: PCM mono
All regions
Extras: TV interview from Camera 3 (1964) and film clips
Length: 80 minutes
Rating: ***1/2
I was unfamiliar with Harris, though I was studying film at NYU in NYC during a summer when he was making some of his films. The former head of the NYU Grad School of the Arts called him one of the few really interesting filmmakers in the country. The first film here – Organism of 1975 – is the filmmaker’s epic vision of NYC which he shot over a period of 15 years. He built his own time-lapse cameras to capture a completely different-from-usual view of the metropolis and its inhabitants, and the film won an Academy Award for him. The documentary filmmaker had won another Academy Award in 1962 for Seawards the Great Ships, and died in 1999.
The theme of Organism is established with microscopic shots at the beginning and close of circulation in the body, which is then imitated in the flow of human beings and traffic thru the streets, walks and rail lines of NYC. This was the first time an entire short film consisted of such speeded up footage of people, cars, trains, etc., and it may only seem a bit dated now in its 4:3 low-def appearance because we’ve been spoiled by the similar wide-screen hi-def features from Godfrey Reggio and Ron Fricke often using the time-lapse technique. The soundtrack, with snippets of medical descriptions about various aspects of circulation in the body, gets a bit on one’s nerves after awhile.
9 Variations is a dance film with a single dancer, in B&W, and should appeal to those who appreciate the extremely niche area of modern dance films. Highway is a sort of earlier (1958) rehearsal for Organism, with the actions usually speeded up naturally rather than time-lapse, showing trains and cars speeding by to an active jazz soundtrack. Longhorn is a strange short visual piece with pairs of long pointed shapes moving around.
— John Sunier
