Xcèntric 2023
Explosions of distant stars
The films of Timoleon Wilkins
Audiovisuals
US filmmaker Timoleon Wilkins has been making films in super-8 mm and 16 mm for over 25 years. Using the materials of amateur cinema he has created a personal, poetic body of work inspired by the masters of American avant-garde cinema, Stan Brakhage, Bruce Baillie and Nathaniel Dorsky. This session presents a selection of short films created in the first decade of the 2000s, when digital photography emerged and many photochemical laboratories disappeared.
Working on the threshold of celluloid obsolescence, Wilkins is one of the few filmmakers still using reversible colour film. His sumptuous Kodachrome and Ektachrome images resonate with a static love of colour and contrast, uncovering beauty amid the unsustainable reality of modern life. For him, cinema is the medium with which he expresses what he cannot say with words. And he does so by trying to reflect emotional states using images of his surroundings that are, somehow, permeated with other worlds. Although he usually starts with a concept, he likes to embrace spontaneity and intuition in the shooting and editing of a film, making it a process of constant discovery that flirts with everything that is lyrical, comical, narrative, metaphorical and mystical.
Lake of the Spirits, 1998, 16 mm, 7’
Los Caudales, 2005, 16 mm to digital, no sound, 17’
The Crossing, 2007, 16 mm, no sound, 7’
Quartet (In-Camera), 2004-08, 16 mm to digital, no sound, 12’
Drifter, 2010, 16 mm, no sound, 26’
Copies courtesy of the author.
Directors: Timoleon Wilkins
This activity is part of Xcèntric 2023
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