PROTOTYPE

March 22 · Regal Riviera · 4:00 P.M.

Blake Williams, 2017, 63 minutes

Blake Williams, guest co-curator of the Stereo Visions program, will introduce and discuss his film.

“The most significant 3D film since Goodbye to Language.” — Calum Marsh, The Village Voice

At the end of the 19th century, Galveston, Texas was a boom town with a population approaching 36,000. Situated just above sea level on Galveston Bay, the city was an important port of trade in the Gulf of Mexico, and its residents had grown accustomed to the flooding that regularly accompanied storms and heavy rain. They weren’t prepared, however, for the category 4 hurricane that made landfall on September 8, 1900, bringing sustained winds that leveled the town. Approximately 8,000 people were killed, making the Galveston Hurricane one of the deadliest natural disasters to ever strike the United States.

Houston-born, Toronto-based filmmaker Blake Williams uses the 1900 disaster as a point of departure for his first feature, PROTOTYPE, a film that — pardon the cliche — is unlike anything you’ve seen before. Photos and stereoscopic images of Galveston in the aftermath of the storm give way to idyllic footage of a quiet Texas farmstead, deserted except for two horses. And then all hell breaks loose. Over the next hour, PROTOTYPE warps and bends, mutating into a kind of Lynchian chimera, before resolving again. Phil Coldiron writes:

Finally the storm subsides, the machine breaks down, and we are left on the beach, once again in the rich color of late Godard where before there was only grisaille. A sailboat moves slowly by. Clouds are seen from above, unconvincing in their calmness. A lone bird sits on stone steps to nowhere, watching the waves come in.

Williams has worked with various 3D processes for nearly a decade and is a scholar on the subject as well. His anaglyph short film Something Horizontal screened in 2016 at Big Ears, and three of his other anaglyph films — Many a Swan (2012), Baby Blue (2013), and Red Capriccio (2014) — screened at The Public Cinema. PROTOTYPE is his first major work using polarized 3D. It premiered at the Locarno Film Festival before screening at the Toronto International Film Festival and the Museum of the Moving Image’s prestigious First Look program.

We’re pleased to present the Southeast premiere of PROTOTYPE and wish to thank Blake for his contributions to the curation of Stereo Visions.