Robert Breer at Aurora

Here is a picture of David Curtis talking to Robert Breer on Saturday afternoon.

I only had one day at Aurora, but it was full to the brim with good things. Robert Breer had been there for the whole festival. He's very hard of hearing, but it just meant that no-one could interrupt one of his great stories and if a long winded question came his way, he just chose a word and ran with it. It was encouraging to listen to a person so contented with work and life who has made a film every year for 40 years. We saw a programme of his later films in the morning, this included LMNO, Bang, Swiss Army Knife with Rats and Pigeons and What goes up.
The films have no narrative continuity, but a definate shape and structure and I enjoyed trying to think of them more as paintings with a few basic elements that arrive from front to back and in layers, which you can piece together, not necessarily there and then but later as well. David Curtis asked him how he went about starting a film, to which he answered that he enjoyed feelings of a heightened sensibility, looking forward to something that's unpredictable and not knowing the outcome. The only thing that he knew was that he would avoid suggestions of narrative and continuity, not only to emphasise the plastic nature of the work but also because our daily experiences are fragmented in that way.