What happens between shot and cut? What is the explosion that occurs when footage is intercut? Warren Sonbert, an important figure in American experimental cinema, juxtaposes shots of his everyday life filmed with his Bolex camera, using a singular editing style, “polyvalent montage”, that has a rhythm comparable to that of some urban symphonies, but without following the parameters of geography and time. A density of images that, like a jigsaw puzzle, produces swirling effects of multiple associations in the viewer, like in Carriage Trade, or a unified system of shots setting off mutual resonances, bringing together colour, content, movement, composition and rhythm, as in Rude Awakening. His cinema acts as a bridge between Bazin’s notion, seeing the image as an element of time and real space, and Eisenstein’s notion of shock and concatenation of images, creating an open montage system that was used by Dorsky, Hiller and even Brakhage. [16-mm screening, silent]
Rude Awakening, W. Sonbert, 1976, 36 min.; Carriage Trade, W. Sonbert, 1972, 61 min.
