Wind

1968, 5:37 min, b&w, silent, 16 mm film on HD video

Wind is a 1968 performance film, recently restored. Cutting between snowy fields and a raw seashore, Jonas focuses on a group of performers moving through a stark, windswept landscape. The 16mm film — silent, black and white, jerky and sped-up — evokes early cinema, while its content locates it in the spare minimalism of the late 1960s. As in Songdelay, another early performance film, Jonas is concerned with stripping down the medium and foregrounding the figure and its ritualistic movements in space. Her performers struggle over and over with their fluttering coats, battling the gusts of a wind which, though soundless and invisible, defines the contours of this piece.

Camera: Peter Campus. Editors: Peter Campus, Joan Jonas.

Preserved by Anthology Film Archives through the National Film Preservation Foundation's Avant-Garde Masters Grant program and The Film Foundation. Funding provided by the George Lucas Family Foundation.

 
 

This is a video transfer of a work initially shot on film. This is best shown as a projection, to reflect the original medium.
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