3 Bill Viola Titles Now Available on DVD for the first time from Microcinema International

3 Bill Viola Titles Now Available on DVD for the first time from Microcinema International DVD

Microcinema International is proud to make available for the first time on DVD, three of the most important works of video art by Bill Viola, one of the most important video artists in the world:

1.Hatsu Yume (First Dream)
2.I Do Not Know What It Is I Am Like
3.The Passing


Bill Viola: Hatsu Yume (First Dream)


“I was thinking about light and its relation to water and to life, and also its opposite - darkness or the night and death. I thought about how we have built entire cities of artificial light as refuge from the dark. Video treats light like water - it becomes a fluid on the video tube. Water supports the fish like light supports man. Land is the death of the fish. Darkness is the death of man.”
— Bill Viola, 1981

HATSU-YUME (FIRST DREAM) is Bill Viola’s masterpiece, the greatest work by one of the most important video artists in the world. A spiritual allegory equating light and dark with life and death, Hatsu-Yume was produced in Japan in 1981 while Viola was artist-in-residence at the Sony Corporation. The title refers to
Japanese folklore, wherein things done on the first day of a new year are significant. But the tape is not to be taken literally as a dream. For Viola, it’s more like the aboriginal concept of dreamtime, the creation of the world. That’s why, as a whole and in its parts, Hatsu-Yume progresses from darkness to light, stillness to motion, silence to sound, simplicity to complexity, nature to civilization. There are two interwoven themes: the dark water world of fish,
and Buddhist rituals invoking the souls of dead ancestors. As in a dream, we frequently can’t tell if these wordless streams of image and sound are unfolding in real time, slow-motion or time-lapse. A work of extravagant pictorial beauty, Hatsu-Yume represents the most painterly use of light in the history of video. Form is content: the light that lures fish to their death protects human life. At once ominous majestic, and deeply spiritual, Hatsu-Yume is the work of
a visionary poet of image and sound.

DVD, 2006, 56 minutes
CATALOG # MC-592
$ 39.95 SRP $ 49.95 Educational
STREET DATE: 11/28/2006

Details:
http://www.microcinema.com/programResult.php?program\_idY2


Bill Viola: I Do Not Know What It Is I Am Like

An epic journey in five chapters, I DO NOT KNOW WHAT IT IS I AM LIKE is a personal investigation into the inner states and connections to animal consciousness we all possess. In a stream of images of striking clarity, depth and beauty, woven within a subtle fabric of natural sound, Bill Viola evokes a timeless view of the natural world and our place in it. This is a major contribution to contemporary video art that masterfully speaks to us in the inner language of subjective thoughts and collective memories. Bill Viola
and Kira Perov gathered images for this video work over a period of two years. In the course of their travels they spent several weeks with a freely roaming herd of buffalo in Wind Cave National Park, South Dakota, recorded a time-lapse sequence beside a glacial lake in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, and attended a week-long firewalking ritual at a Hindu Temple on the island of Fiji. During This time, Viola was also artist-in-residence at the San Diego Zoo.

— Kathy Rae Huffman, Curator/Producer, The Contemporary Art Television Fund

DVD, 2006, 89 minutes
CATALOG # MC-593
$ 39.95 SRP $ 49.95 Educational
STREET DATE: 11/28/2006

Details:
http://www.microcinema.com/programResult.php?program\_idY3


Bill Viola: The Passing

“Rarely, if ever, has video been so visionary in its mood, so poetic in its language and so powerful in its emotional impact.”

—Steven Bode

THE PASSING is not only among Viola’s best works, it is arguably the most important video art work of the late 20th century. It inhabits a penumbral world between consciousness and sub consciousness, dreams and reality. These fleeting thoughts are bought more clearly into focus via footage of Viola’s family
and, in turn, connected up to the passage of the generations and the ceaseless cycle of birth and death. Bill Viola (born in 1951) has been working in video and experimental music since 1970. His videotapes and installations have been exhibited world-wide, at amongst others, The Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Moderna Museet (Stockholm), Documenta 6 (Kassel), the Centre Pompidou (Paris), the National Museum of Modern Art (Tokyo) and the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam). Viola is considered a pioneer in video-art and has been awarded many prizes.


DVD, 2006, 54 minutes
CATALOG # MC-594
$ 39.95 SRP $ 49.95 Educational
STREET DATE: 11/28/2006

Details:
http://www.microcinema.com/programResult.php?program\_idY4

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