U B U W E B - Film & Video: Paul Glabicki

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Paul Glabicki

Diagram Film (1978)

Live-action and still images of objects, places, classic films and other situations are presented and then followed by animated diagrams that explain, transform or re-interpret what has just been seen. The animated sequences become a vehicle of entry into an alternate viewing space. This is the first part of a trilogy of Diagrammatic films: DIAGRAM FILM, FIVE IMPROVISATIONS and FILM-WIPE-FILM.

"DIAGRAM FILM alternates shots of planes, cars and people walking with comically elaborate moving diagrams of them. And sometimes it reverses itself, as when a group of triangles is replaced by a shot of tepees. The diagrams head off into fantastic Rube Goldberg machine movements, with details undergoing constant transformation." - American Film

"The transformation of the original imagery is one of destruction and reconstruction, at once abstract and ethereal." - Filmmakers' Monthly

Awards: Ann Arbor Film Festival; Athens Int'l Film Festival; Baltimore Film Festival; Sinking Creek Film & Video Festival; Big Muddy Film Festival; Kent Film Festival; SF Art Institute Film Festival.

Five Improvisations (1979)

The diagrammatic space first entered in DIAGRAM FILM becomes the stage for temporal, rhythmic, informational and spatial play with a single diagram (a 144-drawing cycle) that refers to the film and animation process, animation history, specific filmmakers and other encoded data. The arrangement of the drawings for each of the five sequences was improvised on the animation during the act of shooting, creating five variations and possible readings of the animated composition. "The film does not only diagram the film frame, it fills it with movement and ultimately explodes it. Homages to Windsor McCay and Georges Melies are justified by the film's humor and dynamism." - Chicago Reader

"The consequences of these incredible shifts is to engulf us in a powerful referential package of filmic elements. Glabicki - in this, his best film to date - has fashioned a fast, delirious, scintillating and playful homage to his predecessors." - Film Festival Review

Awards: Ann Arbor Film Festival; NY Filmmakers' Exposition; Sinking Creek Film & Video Festival; Purdue Film Festival; Kent Film Festival.

Film-Wipe-Film (1983)

The film is a journal (drawn by hand over a period of four years), opera, and journey through 100 animated sequences which are joined and transformed by 100 film wipes in continuous successsion. The film is a synthesis of both abstract and figurative imagery, analysis and commentary, writing and multiple languages, multi-layered sounds and music, lyrical and contrapuntal relationships, and elaborate animated compositions. The film plays with the thresholds of change between intuition and analytical thinking, as well as between what is read or heard as "figurative" or "abstract." The various animation sequences range from pure geometric abstraction to symbols, metaphors and icons (boxing ring, car, chair, airplanes, steps).

This film is not computer generated or assisted in any way.

Awards: Ann Arbor Film Festival; Black Maria Film and Video Festival; Chicago Int'l Film Festival (Hugo); Baltimore Int'l Film Festival; NY Filmmakers' Exposition; Sinking Creek Film & Video Festival; Festival of Experimental Film, Chicago; Santa Fe Film Exposition; SF Art Institute Film Festival.

Object Conversation (1984)

A series of source objects (scissors, a barbell, piano, boxing ring, ladders, an hourglass, an arch) are presented, defined, demonstrated, discussed, spoken about, juxtaposed and progressively re-invented during the course of a multi-layered visual and aural "conversation." The film plays with language, the viewer's memory, assumptions about "familiar" objects, associations and gender, puns, hieroglyphic forms and conscious and unconscious processes of thinking and perception.

"The film reprocesses the first motion picture studies by still photographer Eadweard Muybridge and elaborates on allusions to the origins of the medium itself as well as on the relationship between image, spoken word and text .... The viewer's perceptual dexterity is exercised as the elements ... appear momentarily in one state then reappear elsewhere on the screen in yet another." - Black Maria Film and Video Festival

Awards: Festival of Experimental Film, Chicago; Sinking Creek Film & Video Festival; Bucks County National Film Competition; Black Maria Film and Video Festival; Atlanta Film and Video Festival; Athens Int'l Film Festival; Santa Fe Film Exposition

Rent or purchase these films from Canyon Cinema

Paul Glabicki in an internationally acclaimed multi-media artist. His interdisciplinary career has included work in experimental animation for film and video, painting, drawing, photography, installation art, sound, and computer imaging. He earned a BFA in Painting at Carnegie Mellon University, and two consecutive MFA degrees in Painting, and in Film, at Ohio University. He is a recipient of numerous awards, grants, and fellowships for his work, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the American Film Institute. He has exhibited his work at numerous museums, film and video festivals, and institutions worldwide, and has lectured and taught at colleges and universities throughout the United States, Europe, and Japan.

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