Paul Sharits (1943-1993)

I have always been an admirer of Jeffersonian ideals, to share and in the past year, after having begun reading Dr. Dumas Malone’s 6-vol bio, Jefferson and His Time, my admiration ^has depended and crystallized into ^a desire to make a dedicatory visual “tone poem” to Jefferson, in the form of an intense “abstract-musical” (pure color, rhythm and sound) film—a film in which I would attempt to celebrate thru rhythms-melodies-chords of pure color and sound (spoken text artificial by computer), the spirit and struct[ure] of Jeff’s major stmt [statement], T.D. of Ind. Jeff felt that of all his achievements, this was his highest—more important than ever his Presidency. It appears to me that such a filmic undertaking is a very appropriate Bicentennial project.

The style of the ^30-40 min film ^thus far as planned is a continuation of several of the tendencies of my film work of past 10 years; however, a refinement and energetic  amplification—to fit the grand scale of sentiment/spirit and declarative of Jefferson’s remarkable text to match in sound-visual relation its range of syntactical semantic structures. Shifts of tone and emotional modes, reflect upon its moments of fluid, jubilant idealism to its staccato