Скачать или смотреть Bill Brand Introduction to Mytha Kolesar HESSIE SURVIVAL TRANCE French subtitles

Bill Brand Introduction to "Hessie Survival Trance"
Opening of "Show in Progress" Acte 3
December 7, 2023

Bill Brand:
"Five or six years ago Arnaud Lefebvre showed me a DVD of a 1974 Super8 film of Hessie by Mythia Kolesar. The film appeared to be mostly abstract with veils of graphic textures obscuring images of Hessie posing and performing.

Arnaud knows that I am an experienced film preservationist and asked if anything can be done to improve the quality of the DVD.

At first I thought the graphic effects were intentional but Arnaud learned that the film had been damaged in a flood. I volunteered to try and took a copy of the DVD to my studio and did what I could to improve the image.

A year or so later Arnaud wrote the he had found the actual Super8 film and sent it to me.
Because I am interested in Hessie and am happy to part of Arnaud’s gallery, I used my own resources and time to make a high resolution scan of the Super8 film and produced a much improved video. The water damage textures were still evident but the improvement made the colors more vibrant and made the images of Hessie more visible. We were very pleased.

Then, just this year Arnaud obtained another Super8 print of the film but this one was not damaged by the flood. So we again scanned the film and began an adventure collaborating to restore the film and resolve several problems and discrepancies between the two Super8 film prints.

While the undamaged print is unaffected by flooding, it also has a different sound track. The first print features a poetic, associative sound track in English with Hessie’s voice but the undamaged print has a similar but different text in French with Mythia’s voice. Reconciling the two versions was complicated by the fact that the voices were recorded on each film at different speeds and each film was scanned to digital at yet other different speeds. All this meant the films didn’t line up when played together. It also meant that the voices played at the wrong speed and at the wrong pitch.

Here’s a short video where I adjusted the speed so the two versions play together and you can compare the flood damaged version to the undamaged film.

Arnaud found a company in Paris to Scan the undamaged Super8 film and he sent the digital file to me in New York. Comparing the two films I discovered that the undamaged film has a whole section that is missing from the damaged film and that the damaged film has a few seconds of image missing in the undamaged film. So even after adjusting and matching the speed, it was still a challenge to match the two sound tracks to the picture.

Further, the sound recording on both films is poor quality and it is hard to understand either Hessie’s English or Mythia’s French. I’m guessing that Hessie and Mythia made the film together even though the film is officially directed by Mythia and Hessie is officially the subject. I suspect that together they decided what to shoot, That Mythia edited the footage and that Hessie wrote or improvised the sound track recording directly onto the film print while projecting the film. Then, I’m guessing that Mythia recorded the French version more or less following Hessie’s English text but translating to French and improvising her own interpretation of Hessie’s poetic and evocative words. So even after I did an audio remix to make the words and sounds clearer, we thought it would be best to make subtitles in English and French for both versions. This led to a fascinating collaborative process between myself and Arnoud of deciphering and translating the words we heard in French and English. Sometimes Mythia’s French phrases helped us understand Hessie’s English phrases. Sometimes it went the other way. Eventually we came to better understand the words in both languages and their relationship to the images. In the end we made four versions of the film: “HESSIE SURVIVAL TRANCE” in English with English subtitles, “HESSIE SURVIVAL TRANCE” in English with French subtitles, “HESSIE TRANS PERCE SURVIE” in French with French subtitles and HESSIE TRANS PERCE SURVIE” in French with English subtitles.

Recounting our restoration journey is interesting but it doesn’t give much sense of the powerfully beautiful and meaningful content of the film. But hopefully the restoration allows us to experience better Hessie’s evocation of existential questions, musings on time, invisibility, anonymity, diaspora, nature and graphic expression.

Tonight we will show HESSIE SURVIVAL TRANCE” in English with French subtitles. Immediately following the film, Katy will perform a painting inspired by Hessie and Mythia’s film and by Hessie’s work in general."

Filmé le 7 décembre dans le cadre du vernissage de "Show in Progress", Acte 3.
Captation Vidéo Pascal Hausherr.