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MillimeterPortrait of the Artist
Jan 1, 2001 12:00 PM, Matt Cheplic
Portrait of the Artist In making a short film about modern painter Serena Bocchino, director Monica Sharf dispensed with that hallowed documentary staple, the talking head. In fact, Sharf did away with talking entirely.
Observer Highway Revisited - named after the Hoboken, New Jersey, street where Bocchino has her studio - offers nothing for the ears but the pulsating jazz of legendary drummer Max Roach and his combo. As for the visuals, Sharf shot Bocchino over a day and a half, capturing the genesis, evolution, and completion of a single painting.
Condensing such work into a three-minute film made for a fun, highly caffeinated sprint, characterized by short, jumpy bursts of images rather than long sequences.
Sharf delivered the film for a budget of only $800 (aided largely by the free editing of Rachel DeSario). She reveals she was inspired to an extent by the omnipresent ABC black-and-yellow print and television campaign. "That campaign uses stills for its interstitials, but they're used in such a way that there's a lot of motion," she notes. "My cameraman, Tom Moore, stressed that we could achieve that effect in camera."
Sharf shot 16mm, using a "very old" Bolex, with the music playing in the background to establish the mood early on. "It was old-fashioned," she concedes, "but so many things were done in the early part of the century with special effects in camera because they didn't have all these tools we have. So, why couldn't I do the same thing in the year 2000?"
Observer Highway Revisited will be screened at New York's Museum of Modern Art next June.
Continue the discussion on “Crosstalk” the Millimeter Forum.
