In the spring of 2016, after editing Autumn and The Dreamer, I began to project my camera original Kodachrome outtakes of footage I had shot while making my Kodachrome films from 1992 through 2009. It was inspiring to come upon this footage from another period of time and to see material that did not fit into my needs of the moment, but in retrospect is very beautiful and well worth working with.

There were many different types of material from different projects. Being low on funds, I edited the camera original without a work print and with cement splices. I have decided not to print them. I feel that their charm is in their ephemeral nature as camera original and any attempt to reproduce them only lessens their modest nature. I am hoping there will be situations when I can personally present some of these works publicly. There is of course the danger of them being damaged in projection.

Two of the films are personal travel films, Lux Perpetua I and II, shot in Oaxaca and then in France and Italy. Another is a short portrait of a dear friend and collaborator on Devotional Cinema, Nick Hoff, titled Other Archer.

The two most successful works in this series are Death of a Poet, which is a document from the weeks that Stan Brakhage was dying of bladder cancer. Dominic Angerame, then head of Canyon Cinema, and I went up to Victoria, Canada to visit Stan. Five weeks later while I was in Boulder, Colorado to screen my recent films, Stan passed away. There was a gathering at Stan’s daughter’s house with Jane (Brakhage) Wodening and her brother, poet, Jack Collom in Boulder. That night it began to snow and like a purification it did not stop for five days.

The other and the longest film in the series is called Ossuary. It is made up of footage from all my films from this period of shooting Kodachrome, 1995 to 2005. An ossuary is a decorative or ceremonial use of human bones dug up after a body decomposes.

These five silent films are for projection at silent speed, 18 frames per second.