The City of Chromatic Dissolution

Overview

Arthur and Corinne Cantrill are two of Australia's most prominent experimental filmmakers. The Cantrills are well known for their 'colour separation' films. To create these works they shoot a scene three separate times on black and white film stock, using a different colour filter each time. In the lab, they combine these three films onto a single Eastmancolour print. This process creates dramatic transitions in colour that the Cantrills liken to the vibrancy of Technicolor. Though the footage here was shot in the mid-’80s, it was only last year that they edited it into this fifteen-minute movie. Structurally it’s simple enough: just a series of views of various parts of inner Melbourne, from panoramic wide shots to close-ups of the sides of buildings. The soundtrack blends and warps familiar urban noises – cars, buskers, the ringing bells of trams – into a kind of musique concréte.