Guest post by Alex Svensson.
I first experienced the work of filmmaker David Gatten in 2010, at a weeknight screening of experimental short films held at Emerson College in Boston, MA. I remember the films that night were well suited for the bitter chill and absent sun of the city in February; though memory escapes with each passing year, I’m still greeted by flickers of icy light urgently dancing with bursts of darkness. With Gatten’s selected piece – What the Water Said, Nos. 4-6 (16mm, 2007) – at the forefront of my recollections, the mind drifts between haunted fragments of nature, swaths of grieving bodies, and obscured visions of what could pass as either the outer reaches of the universe or a level of Hell suffocated by black ice. Needless to say, the strange, beautiful discomfort of the evening still lingers. (more…)
