Portraits in the Big Film Series

The Big Film Series is a unique collection of hand processed 35 mm films that are filmed and projected using an antique hand cranked motion picture camera and projector. In these performative film screenings, Lee Krist operates his projector among the audience rather than anonymously from an isolated projection booth, creating an intimate screening experience reminiscent of the dawn of cinema. In these nine films, technique and media come together to weave compelling portraits of individuals outside the standard motion picture film projectory. With the intent to intertwine the elements of traditional still photographic portraiture with the kinetic intensity of motion picture film, in this body of work Lee Krist explores the sublime expression of self in posture and gesture. Each portrait is approached with a unique method of construction that encompasses a variety of non-traditional film techniques such as hand processing, the chemical reduction of silver halides, hand painting on film and creating multi-layered positive prints through in camera bi packing. These films exist solely in their camera original form.

Film Installation Tableaux Vivant
Tableaux Vivant is a dual motion picture film and film installation that explores virtually every aspect of the filmmaking process. It is a vast collection of contemporary ektachrome portraits and landscapes shot in Oregon. Shooting Ektachrome slide film through a variety of still cameras and then hand-processing the film, Lee Krist has assembled these short strips into a grand scale 3-dimensional film installation. Hung vertically like the newly strung weft on a loom, hundreds of film strips run from the ceiling to the floor. When this wall of film is illuminated with a flickering white light from a quartet of film projectors it turns into a vivid quilt of color transparencies. This light also casts a shadow of the film on a white wall gallery wall that is ten feet away and running parallel to the hung film. As viewers walk through this corridor between the projectors, filmstrips and projections on the wall, they are able to come in contact with the interaction of light, film and image expanded into a kind of raw multimedia architecture that recall the Structuralist experiments of Hollis Frampton.