Called “a small but perfect film” by no less than American avant-garde cinema’s patron saint Jonas Mekas, Larry Gottheim’s groundbreaking early work is a silent single-shot short in which the camera remains stationary but nature provides magical action. A landscape framed by the stretch of electrical wire between poles ever-so-slowly emerges in real time as a heavy fog lifts. It is a view we might dismiss with a glance in real life but (with the attention that must be paid here) reveals how endlessly fascinating such a seemingly mundane event really is. - Dennis Harvey
Larry Gottheim’s film Fog Line (1970) begins with a still shot of a landscape covered in dense fog. All that can be seen through the fog are the outlines of a few trees intersected by four high-tension wires. The setting is subtly beautiful, and the complete lack of sound creates a space for meditation. Minutes pass. Apart from some slight shaking, the camera does not move, nor do any elements within the mise-en-scène. The trees and telephone wires become easier to make out as the fog lifts, although the fog’s re- treat is so gradual that its movement is not perceived by the viewer. After eleven minutes of the same motionless shot, the film abruptly ends (see figure 1.1). During my first viewing of Fog Line, I found the film simultaneously boring and absorbing. I was bored because, on a superficial level, nothing happened. Yet I was fascinated because I had never encountered a film like this before. It was so still, so uneventful, I felt like I was staring at a photograph or a painting for several minutes rather than watching a movie. -《Motion[less] pictures》Edited by John Belton
