Alaska

Alaska is large and cold and slightly crazy. The film Alaska by Dore O. is small and cold and also slightly crazy. Dore O. is a German artist and an experimental film maker. Alaska is from 1968. It is a wordless film with a simple, droning soundtrack that sounds as if it is a piece for violin and refrigerator hum. (Possibly the hum is the result of age.) It may be about Alaska. It may be about the north. It may be about swimming in cold water. It cuts between images of water, images of stippled walls, and images of a beach. And people on the beach. And all the people are out of focus or cut in two. The water rolling in is superimposed with a shot of a woman—half in and half out—floating. Her body is cut in half not by camera frame, but by the effect. The water’s superimposition. More color, more detail, it asks for more of the camera’s, and the viewer’s attention. The body is half out-to-sea. Half lost-at-sea. Then there are the bodies out of focus. The camera sits on the beach, it’s focus fixed. The bodies approach from far away. They slowly gather into recognizable shapes—from a darkening spot to a pillar to a column with shifting colors at its base to a fuzzy biped. And they run through the focus, never allowing the camera more than a fleeting in-focus shot, or the viewer a chance to process and judge. The body fades in. The body fades out. Arms and legs may as well be smoke, and hair just a fog.