This year's closing night program features a mind-expanding double bill: Ray Gun Virus and Razor Blades by Paul Sharits. Sharits was certainly one of the most unique and intense figures in experimental filmmaking in the United States in the 20th century. Originally trained as a painter at the University of Denver School of Art, Sharits began working with 16mm film in the 1960s. The main features of his work from this period are a complex dissection of semiotics, both of language (spoken and written) and the semiotics of film - particularly through his extensive use of the flicker. Ray Gun Virus is one of Sharits' first flicker films, a rapid succession of colored, clear and black film images. To create the work, Sharits filmed monochrome sheets of colored paper and then edited the footage into precise visual rhythms. "The projector is an audio-visual pistol," Sharits wrote about Ray Gun Virus. "The retinal screen is a target. Goal: the temporary assassination of the viewer’s normative consciousness." Razor Blades is a 16mm double projection, with the projectors not precisely synchronized. Like many of Sharits' films, Razor Blades consists of a stream of different images - monochrome colors, dotted patterns, cut-out images of fruits, bodies and blades. When viewing the work, the interaction of juxtaposed colors merges with the persistence effect that normally allows the viewer to perceive movement, creating a sense of visual overtones or "phantom images". Sharits once explained in an interview that his work "brings us to the limits of our perceptual abilities so that often one cannot tell whether or not what one is experiencing is in the work or in oneself."

Thanks to Light Cone (Paris, Miguel Armas) for providing the prints of this program. Festival closing with double projection and drinks after the program.