Recent Work by Paul Sharits

762 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA, 94110

3rd Degree, 1982, 24 min., color/sound, premiere; Epileptic Seizure Comparison, 1976, 30 min., color/sound.

Paul Sharits, whose earlier “structural” films were landmarks of that genre, continues making powerful works combining purely formal properties of film (rhythmic and color patterns) with visceral metaphors and imagery. 3rd Degree “is about the fragility of the film medium and human vulnerability. It is also an ironically comic work and there is a formal beauty in the destructiveness of the burning film. While the film (from section to section) develops, becomes more visually complex… it nevertheless implies not finality; rather 3rd Degree implies endurability, extension and on-goingness.” Sharits, of Epileptic…, writes, “The films are of two patients, extracted from a medical film study of brain wave activity during seizures… Everything was done to allow the viewer to move beyond mere voyeurism and actually enter into the convulsive state, to allow a deeper empathy for the condition and to also, hopefully, experience the ecstatic aspect of such paroxysm.”

SFCINEMATHEQUE