THE BIG STICK / AN OLD REEL
1967-73 16mm, b/w, silent, 10min
"[The film] intercut[s] two Charlie Chaplin shorts centering on policemen with newsreel footage of police crowd control and street fighting. Levine questioned the social implications of media, not only by making temporal, aesthetic and contextual comparisons of his sources, but by presenting this discomforting ragout in a film gauge whose cost, availability and mobility make simply working it an intrinsically political gesture. Levine also understood how to use very fast cutting in old-style 8mm, a difficult task in that the splice is in the middle of the frame. A cut is therefore void of illusion, and in fact threatens to obliterate a weak image [...] Levine's adroit use of graphic action from the newsreels and close-ups from the shorts changed the rapid cuts from awkward stumbles to almost profound superimpositions." - James Irwin, Artweek
NOTE TO ERIK
1966-68 16mm, color, silent, 4min
NOTE ONE
1968 16mm,b/w, silent, 6.5min
A study in grey and white of my parents. An evening film. - S.L.
LOST NOTE
l968-69, 16mm, b/w, silent 10min
NOTE TO PATI
1969, 16mm, color, silent 7.5min
"Note on snowstorms in February-March '69. The restoration of the landscape. Begun to show friends on west coast violent beauty of this period. Childhood memories, snowball fights, sleddings, etc., and how I felt about Medford where I live kept entering into the film. The principal birds in the film are the blue jay and the crow, both beautiful, smart and ruthless." - Saul
NOTES AFTER LONG SILENCE
1984-89, 16mm color, sound, 15.5min
WHOLE NOTE
1999-2000, 16mm, b/w, silent, 10min
A portrait of my father in the last days of his life. "Nothing is as whole as a broken heart" hasidic saying. S.L.
saullevine.com
* subject to change, possible bonus film!
