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Sunshine and Shadow in New York: Recent Films by Brian Frye
Capsule by Fred Camper
From the Chicago Reader
At 27 Brian Frye has become one of the most original experimental filmmakers around. At first his movies sometimes look a bit like failed documentaries or home movies, but they have subtle moments of beauty and a philosophical dimension that make them rewarding. Nadja (2001) consists of multiple repetitions of a brief view of a woman's face and the bands of color labs use for print-quality tests. She winks and talks to the viewer but remains a cipher, like the woman in the Andre Breton novel of the same title; the resulting mix of sensuality, formal structuring, apparent randomness, and denial of knowledge is characteristic of Frye's work. In Self-Portrait as Kaspar Hauser (For T.C.) (2000), Frye films himself with a pinhole camera, the jittery movements and fuzzy images countering the usual intimacy of self-portraiture. For Across the Rappahannock (2002), he filmed a reenactment of a bloody Civil War battle in Fredericksburg, Virginia, giving it an appropriate melancholy distance. On the same program, seven other recent Frye films and a travelogue about Hollywood. 74 min.
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