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There are some people like drinking coffee with milk. Without milk they do not consider coffee as COFFEE. However, when milk is forced to be taken away from their coffee, feeling might be unnatural and then they question themselves: what is the definition of coffee? Adjusting to the habit of drinking this without-milk-coffee is…


still frames
from
Song and Solitude by Nathaniel Dorsky, 2007
images are slowly presented
they are unforgettable
they are like the refrain of love
There is no either song and sound in the entire film, whereas the melody from heart rang when viewing this images.


This is my second time drawn by this landscape filmmaker’s works even looking at the single still frames from his three songs: Song and Solitude, Sarabande, and Winter. I was pleasurably engaged when sitting in the theatre and my thought at that moment was full of the positive aspects about life. I was thinking about my loved one who passed away a year ago and whispering to her, without knowing any information that the first song is that Dorsky made for his past dear friend Susan Vigil. Afterward, I questioned myself the in-depth reason that I am fond of these pieces: because they are purely pleasure to watch or because they remind me of certain profound meanings? My later conclusion declares to the first one, and the most important key for this enjoyment is its whole concentration to one aspect which is the presence of images. Hence, the images ingrain in my mind, like a significant person or melody.

The style of Peter Hutton’s works are similar to style of Dorsky: the subject and the theme are bright and clear, the images are well-organized and poetic, except that I found a minimalism approach on Hutton’s work rather than pure pleasurable piece. Minimalism requires not only clean and simple footage but also imagination, and my imagination started exploded once my gaze is filled with his footage in the open and silent theatre space. Again, I think it is the silence that gets rid of the distraction, and aids the imagination to construct the minimalistic interpretation.

It is the same principle as taking milk away from coffee, Dorsky and Hutton have their soundtrack absence in their works. Somehow, the films does no longer seems like FILM as its general interpretation. Suddenly, I am enlighten by a conclusion that a silent film can be tasted similar to a poem: read it words by words, and appreciate the whole piece on the process of our association. It is a passive process, whereas I consider passivity as an elegance in literature. In Dorsky and Hutton’s films, shots are equal to words—some verb, and some adjectives—all are significantly composed and selected and the statements stand out distinctively. Perhaps this is the reason why they do not need the aid of sound to convey their meanings.