Kerry Laitala

A collection of short experimental horror films, some well-known, some not.

Collaged entirely at the Akademie Schloss Solitude, this film comes from the depths of a submerged self. Elements include found material from a German industrial film about a youth prison, a British mountaineering documentary, and my own footage.

The existential crises of our present moment in conversation with the unlikely magic of motion picture technology.

Educational film material is hand-processed, manipulated, and recontextualized by the voices of women at the newest U.S. Supreme Court Justice's confirmation hearing.

Candy apple light emissions filmed at a Topsham, ME fair create a series of photic stimulating events that tickle the retinas.

Loie Fuller was a major innovator in fin-de-siècle dance, costuming and theatrical lighting design. Her Serpentine Dances became hugely popular, inspired dozens of imitators, and are best known today through the early films shot by the likes of W.K.L. Dickson, Alice Guy Blache, Segundo de Chomon, Georges Melies and others. Towards the end of her career Fuller brought her troupe to San Francisco’s PPIE, where they performed under the dome of the Palace of Fine Arts as a fundraiser to allow it to become the only major structure to be saved from destruction at the end of the fair. Laitala filmed San Francisco dancer Jenny Stulberg in the act of resurrecting Fuller’s fluttering aura through her own choreographed interpretations. Then she reproduced Stulberg’s image onto separate film strips which will rejoin together projected onto a phantom presence that brings a sculptural element into the proceedings. Voicehandler provides the sound.

“Motion/color/light studies shot in my studio” — Kerry Laitala ”The vibrant, abstract spirals of Kerry Laitala’s experiments with chromavision leap off the screen in pulsating 3-D.” — Kathy Geritz and Irina Leimbacher

Shivery bits of elusive emulsion, refractive light sprays ignite the depths of two dimensions to expand the terrain of undulating forms. Vertical motion of frameless space testing the limits, Phantogram unites the torch and surface, forms made mobile. Indecipherable messages from the dead, a telepathic telegram captured on the medium of film... The "redblind" refraction of elements explored, expand beyond the edges of the frame using sweeping gestures and textures both torn and tactile. Slippery shimmers slide across the celluloid strip, to embed themselves on the consciousness of viewers.

The inherent violence that is intimated at in this handprocessed film, can only offer a clue of past interventions.

Creation and destruction. Grandiosity and hubris. Glory and The Abyss. These are some of the themes explored in Figments in Film, Number One, which features images from the PPIE while the buildings were in the process of being destroyed. Viewers will be draped in a cloak of decay, rebirth and contemplation. Images were hand-processed, toned and tinted.

Out of the Ether re-assembles disquieting images from decades-old hygiene and science films, merging them with the filmmaker’s own Bolex camerawork. It was re-photographed on the optical printer, toned and tinted to bring out pulsating hues of oozing greens and yellows.

Micro- and macrostructures in colourful spaces. This 3D visual experiment truly delves down into the realm of dreams, creating a new world in grand compositions.

In 1915 Walter D'Arcy Ryan induced explosions of color over the night sky as part of the Pan-Pacific International Exposition (PPIE), a presentation the likes of which had never been seen prior, and which became the model for light displays at future World's Fairs and illumination showcases. One hundred years later, Kerry Laitala pays tribute to this historical moment with a dual-projector performance involving archival images of silhouetted spectators of the 1939 New York World’s Fair sharing screen space with sinuous light shapes swirling, twinkling and bouncing across the frame like unbound forces of energy. The City Luminous: Spectacle of Light will be accompanied by a live soundtrack by Voicehandler (Jacob Felix Heule and Danishta Rivero), who manipulate sounds from various sources including a mechanical music box from Switzerland.

Pure shards of colorful light shimmers across the screen as the images are pulled through the projector like taffy in this abstract work that highlights the synthetic properties of the medium.

"Fire Fly EYE" is my response to the devastating re-making of the world brought on by anthropogenic climate change and corporate "stewardship" of our natural resources. A ritual of reclamation in the face of overwhelming destruction, invoked through filming discarded consumer products, sifting spectacle out of catastrophe. -K.L.

Hallowed portrays a mystical voyage made back in time by an unconscious woman in the throes of a cataleptic state. She finds herself in Plato's cave where flickering flames incite a prehistoric cinematic reverie evoking an experience of magical proportions.

"Secure the Shadow" is a meditation on disintegration and morality. The film utilizes antique Medical stereoscopic images from the Victorian era, which are simultaneously disturbing and beautiful.

"Kerry Laitala's love of the movie process gives rise to richly crafted and oddly unclassifiable imagery. Re-inventing an antique movie technology using a revolving glass disc, projected lighy and a sequence of early black and white images, and merging it with the later technology of 16mm film, RETROSPECTROSCOPE pulls the moving image backward into a sense of wonder that is both nostalgic and strangely new. –Scott Stark

Digital video in Chromadepth 3D. "The bubbly dayglo images and bleepy beats added a nice sacriligous feeling, since experimental film shows often feel like going to church." -David Cairns

Muse of Cinema is a rowdy frolic through early moving picture technology and illuminates the atmosphere of the darkened, Victorian era theater. Magic lantern slides spring to life as they directly address the audience, highlighting many problems endemic to this time, and which communicate technical difficulties prevalent in the projection booths of the era.