movie world

In the decade spanning 1975 to 1985, visual artist Joseph Bernard completed more than 100 films in Super 8mm. Frustrated by a lack of funds, materials, and attention, he withdrew from filmmaking and, ultimately, public art production entirely, though he remained on the faculty at Detroit’s College for Creative Studies, retiring in 2007 as Professor Emeritus. American experimental cinema is considerably poorer for both the brevity and obscurity of his career. Happily, the latter of these issues might now be rectified thanks to the Blu-ray release of Prismatic Music, a collection of 40 of Bernard’s films.

Prismatic music is an astonishing Blu-Ray release of 40 Super 8 films by Detroit filmmaker Joseph Bernard. Bernard, a protege of Stan Brakhage, went from painting to film to painting again over the course of 40 years. These films cover the period of 1975-85 in Detroit, Provincetown and Chicago, and now reside in The Academy Of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Collection. Transferred from original film source material in 2K at the prestigious Cinelicious Hollywood, this project offers 6 hours of film.

Too rarely screened, Bernard’s work offers a rich contribution to traditions of formalist and experimental filmmaking, often described in terms of—but never reducible to—rhythm, color, abstract expressionism, photography, documentary, self-portraiture, and collage.

BD50 | 1080p AVC | 360 minutes | 42.8 Gb + 3% rec
Language: Silent
Subtitles: none
Genre: Short, Experimental