Energies (USA, 1957) Jim Davis 9:15 color
This wonderful short by the esteemed Jim Davis is one of his trademark films which record prismatic effects via this huge apparatus refracting light onto his bedroom wall. Perhaps because of the neat electronic (early ambient?) music by Norman DeMarco, one feels as if one is floating through the cosmos, as there is no solidity in the film at all. Simply these delicate, weightless barbs of light are the crux of this “voyage”. Crystalline slivers begin to orbit this big splash of light, and shapes evocative of Francis Thompson’s NY NY begin to emerge. Then in its crescendo, washes of light cascade over the free composition, and images resembling peaks and valleys begin to surface. This piece is visual music- a free form composition which finally becomes more solid, more intimate, and then it establishes a rhythm, once the images begin to reverse back into the formlessness which began this hypnotic piece.