Using found footage and original material optically treated in mysterious ways, Phil Solomon’s films open portals to fragile worlds of unspeakably beautiful radiance. “Solomon’s work … eludes language, as if the films … were a palimpsest of obscured meaning.” (M. Dargis) His first San Francisco show in four years features the West Coast premieres of several new works, including Elemental Phrases (1994), a painstakingly hand-painted and elaborately step-printed 40-minute film made in collaboration with Stan Brakhage; Clepsydra (1992), a lyric envisionment of the film strip as a sprocketed waterfall; and a newly revised version of The Summit (1987-93) which address Charles Ives’ Unanswered Question: Whither the Twentieth Century?