The Cinematheque

3D Presentation

Long associated with exorbitance, computer-generated effects and high-tech gloss, 3D has nevertheless been adopted by filmmakers and artists throughout moving-image history. The short films in this program each take an unorthodox approach in their explorations of stereoscopic illusion, turning to DIY techniques and lo-fi tools to add a unique sense of depth to our encounters with their images, whether they require glasses or not. Calling on six(!) different 3D formats—Dolby 3D, Anaglyph, ChromaDepth, Pulfrich, Diffraction, and the autostereoscopic (i.e. glasses-free) Eternalism—these works collectively expand our notion of how lens filters affect and interact with the moving image, and make full use of cinema’s structural and material make-up—colour, grain structure, movement, and light—to utilize their respective spectacles (or the lack thereof!). Together, they create new, previously unimaginable sensations for the brain and eyeballs.

Advisory: Some films in this program contain strobing effects that may affect photosensitive viewers.

3D video introduction by curator Blake Williams.

Dimensional Excursions
USA 2024
Peter Rose
15 min. DCP

Polarized 3D American filmmaker Peter Rose has spent nearly fifty years exploring time, landscape, and repetition with a mathematician’s precision. Dimensional Excursions offers a selection of 3D scenic composites that transform public space into a hyper-dimensional fantasia.

3D Movie
USA 1975
Paul Sharits
8 min. 16mm

A highly curious stereo grain-storm, the existence of which was only discovered a decade ago, 3D Movie relies on old school red-cyan Anaglyph glasses to divide its millions of dancing celluloid particles—red and pink, blue and turquoise—as they slither around one another in a sea of unresolvable information.

UFOs
USA 1971
Lillian F. Schwartz
3 min. Digital

Trailblazing computer artist Lillian F. Schwartz only discovered, decades after making her iconic animations, that many of them became 3D if viewed through ChromaDepth glasses. Radiant and colourful, UFOs is a fast-moving display of three self-orbiting orbs, which in 3D weave around one another in manic, seemingly impossible ways.

UFOs courtesy of the Collections of The Henry Ford

Above the Rain
USA 2019
Ken Jacobs
13 min. DCP

American 3D maven and experimental-cinema icon Ken Jacobs employs his patented ​“Eternalism” technique to transform stereo-images of ocean waves into a stroboscopic maelstrom of green matter.

cinéma concret
Japan 2015
Makino Takashi
24 min. DCP

Japanese sound and moving-image artist Makino Takashi applies the acousmatic principles of musique concrète to his signature process of layering images until they dissolve into expressionistic abstractions.

Let Your Light Shine
USA 2013
Jodie Mack
3 min. Digital

American filmmaker Jodie Mack made Let Your Light Shine as the ecstatic coda for her blockbuster avant-garde roadshow of the same name. The black-and-white animation, handmade from optical polyrhythms, radiantly explodes off the screen when viewed through Diffraction lenses.