(b. 1936)
Larry Gottheim is an experimental filmmaker whose works have been screened at the Museum of Modern Art, in the Whitney Biennial, and in film festivals around the world. He was the founder of SUNY Binghamton’s pioneering and influential cinema department in the early 1970s, the first of its kind to present film as a personal artform while connecting students with avant garde filmmakers from around the world.
Often considered a Structuralist, Gottheim is best known for his cycle of four feature-length films collectively entitled Elective Affinities, which he worked on throughout the 1970s, and for his silent short “Fog Line" from 1970. About the latter, he has written:
“One stares, one stares, and the fog begins to lift, the exquisite image reveals itself. The three patchy trees, the landscape lines, the tension lines, the moving ghost animals, the moving emulsion swirls, all impress themselves on consciousness, are consciousness. Still, rigid lines attempt to contain the amorphous elusive moving fog. Line nature competes with fog nature, but all is harmony, bathed in gorgeous paleness. “ [1]
[1] Larry Gottheim, quoted at http://www.no-w-here.org.uk/index.php?cat=1&subCat=docdetail&id=41. [Accessed 2/14/2014]