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The recent Criterion release of A Hollis Frampton Odyssey marks the first collection of Frampton’s 16mm (some b&w, some color, some mono, some silent) films on DVD. The 24 pieces in question (28 if one counts the four one-minute “pans” that are used as menu background animation on the two-disc set) span 1966-1980, range from barely one minute up to just under one hour, total nearly four-and-a-half hours and are helpfully categorized into four subsets: early works, three representations from his seven-film opus Hapax Legomena, 15 pieces from his Magellan project (a massive artistic undertaking that was interrupted by Frampton’s death from cancer at the age of 48 in 1984) and Zorn’s Lemma, the almost feature-length work that became the first example of the American avant-garde to be selected for the New York Film Festival. I can’t even hope to give more than cursory information or insights in my limited space, but the accompanying essays in the collection provide explicitly detailed analysis and historical framing.

Frampton cuts an amusing though slightly difficult pose in the interview excerpts and brief framing comments that are available as extras (the audio-only comments may indeed be taken from the featured interview, conducted in 1978). He has wildly unkempt hair, chain smokes like cigarettes were going out of style, and speaks in a monotone nasal, pausing at such irregular beats, he may well have been David Byrne’s inspiration for his narrator role in True Stories. At times, he seems like Jim Henson’s beatnik brother, and other times, when he makes direct eye contact and seems intent on staring down the camera, he becomes more than a little unnerving.

And yet, all of this is contradicted by his words, which he seems to choose for maximum comic effect. I don’t know if martini dry can aptly encompass his wit, perhaps bone dry? I can’t begin to replicate his audio on the written page, but there is more of a self-deprecating bent than one would expect, and an insistence on pausing to find the precise way he wishes to express himself. I don’t doubt that he did not suffer fools gladly but he seems able to balance a strong ego with a knowing wink in his own direction.

I have had the opportunity to see the three longest pieces included in the Criterion package on film at various points over the last decade: Zorn’s Lemma, Winter Solstice, and (nostalgia). The first and last were screened as part of classes I took at NYU, and the middle one was shown by a local Portland collective known as Cinema Project that holds twice yearly programs of avant-garde cinema each featuring about a dozen screenings. (nostalgia) made such an impression on me at the time, and continues to, that I would be accurate in assessing it as my favorite short film of all time. It, alongside “The Body” episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer - see my November 11, 2009 Chapter Two column “Buffy, Baby, and Brett for more on that - has given me more to ponder about the nature and meaning of memory and loss than any other piece(s) of filmmaking that I have encountered.

The elements of (nostalgia) are bracing in their simplicity: A narrator recounts the histories behind 12 photographs taken by Frampton, most from at least ten years prior. As the narrator speaks, each photograph is seen resting on what the audience soon discovers is a hot plate. As each (approximately) three-minute anecdote is related, the photograph smokes, smolders, and soon is consumed by the heat. If the photo burns quicker or the story is shorter, than there is silence on the soundtrack, as the husk of the photo crumbles and ash takes to the air.

The first catch is that in each case, the narrator is not describing the photo we are then looking at, but the one that is next to appear. Thus, the film begins with a photo that has no story and ends with a rather breathless, purposely cliffhanger-ish encapsulation of a photo that we will not see. In the other instances, we must keep the narration from before fresh in our mind to see how the photograph compares to the image we have created. This comparison must then be done in the “shadow” of paying attention to the current description. It’s like a slightly more cerebral cinematic take on the childhood game Concentration.

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