The Animals of Eden and After1970

The term THE WEIR-FALCON SAGA appeared to me, night after night, at the end of each of a series of dreams: I was 'true' to the feeling, though' not the images, of those dreams in the editing of this and the following two films. The three films 'go' very directly together, in the (above) order of their making: yet each seems to be a clear film in itself. At this time, I tend to think they constitute a 'Chapter No. 2' of 'The Book of Film' I've had in mind these last five years (considering SCENES FROM UNDER CHILDHOOD as Chapter No.1): and yet these 'Weir-Falcon' films occur to me as distinct from any film-making I've done before. They engender, in me, entirely 'new' considerations. I cannot describe them: but there us an excerpt from 'The Spoils,' by Basil Bunting, which raises hair on the back of my neck similarly: 'Have you seen a falcon stoop/ accurate, unforeseen/ and absolute, between/ wind-ripples over harvest? Dead/ of what's to be, is and has been–/ were we not better dead?/ His wings churn air/ to flight./ Feathers slight/ with sun, he rises where/ dazzle rebuts our stare,/ wonder our fright.' I might add that THE MACHINE OF EDEN operates via 'spots'–from sun's disks (of camera lens) thru emulsion grains (within which, each, a universe might be found) and snow's flakes (echoing technical aberrations on film's surface) blots (upon the lens itself) and the circles of sun and moon, etceteras: these 'mis-takes' give birth to shape (which, in this work, is 'matter,' subject and otherwise) amidst a weave of thought: ( I add these technicalities, here, to help viewers defeat the habits of classical symbolism so that this work may be immediately seen, in its own light) : the 'dream' of Eden will speak for itself.