MAJESTATIS (2023): The Lyricism of Celluloid
The work of Collin Aull is deeply tied to the musicality of cinema. This can be seen more recently in the lyrical construction of his super 8 fantasy short, Lohengrin: a film inspired by the opera of the same name by composer Richard Wagner, but this experimentation with the relationship between the visual form and music begins earlier in Aull’s filmography with the more abstract exercise in filmmaking, Majestatis. Accompanied by the Mozart piece, “Requiem, Rex Tremendae Majestatis”, a variety of celluloid material ranging from super 8 to 16mm to archival footage is swirled together into a grand, sweeping odyssey. Like in Lohengrin, nature is a prominent focus of the imagery. The vibrant footage of greenery and water is rich in a filmic texture which grounds the visuals in the physical. It is a work strengthened by the visible fingerprints of its creator- patterns hand-scratched into the film strips, grainy images burned into celluloid from the light passing through a film gate (which we explicitly see at one point), and found footage of old cartoons faded and tainted by a red hue. The passage of time can be felt as a physical force within the body just by experiencing the progression of these images that have been shaped by light, faded by age, and torn apart by human hands. And it’s this emphasis on a journey through time that so elegantly captures the essence of music: a medium based entirely around how sound moves through time. Not only does the presence of Mozart’s requiem guide the peaks and valleys of the film’s structure, but we even see the movement of sound waves on the film strip which drives home the idea of music’s existence within the material world. It’s in the leaves of trees blowing in the wind, it’s in the rippling water of a koi pond, it’s in the soil beneath the filmmaker’s feet, and it’s inseparable from the celluloid from which the film was birthed. Aull’s work serves to remind us of how essential music is to our lives, and how the images a filmmaker captures are the building blocks of a symphony waiting to be written.
Check out more of Collin Aull’s work here!