In 1967, Larry Gottheim started the Cinema Department at Binghamton University which was the first regular undergraduate program that dealt with cinema as a personal art. Considering the theme of nature in art and functions of racial, cultural and personal identity, Gottheim’s practice explores the ways in which time, movement, and becoming are bound up in a complex relation between formal cinematic patterns and pro-filmic subjects.

This month DIM Cinema arranges a series of studio visits, beginning with Jem Cohen’s short portrait of the sculptor Ann Truitt (1921-2004) and ending with the ceremonial liberation of Jay DeFeo’s painting The White Rose, weighing over 2,300 pounds, from her second-floor studio in San Francisco. In between, and in their respective studios, Sarah Pucill plays with the blinds, Bruce Nauman walks in an exaggerated manner, and Ken Jacobs goes psychological-psychedelic.

The motif of the loop, or more precisely repetition with variations, is one of the formal and thematic principles recurrent in experimental cinema, one of its major functions being to defamiliarize the gaze in a strange paradox. This selection of films offers an overview of different techniques and conceptual variations of this fascinating and troubling motif.