The Extravagant Shadows

“We are no longer spectators, witnesses, viewers, readers, or users. We become entirely present: upright, astute, yearning, human. We become present. We become as we should be.”—Film Comment on watching The Extravagant Shadows

Last year, while in the midst of a five-city touring retrospective organized by the Wexner Center, filmmaker David Gatten realized a 14-year-long dream of creating The Extravagant Shadows, his first digital feature. In it, the director transforms minimal elements (text, paint, sound) into a film that’s as bold, original, conceptual, and monumental as any you’ll ever see. Telling a fractured story of love separated by space and time, and the language-obsessed lovers who attempt to bridge the two with their letter-writing, the film fuses the pleasures of reading and viewing with beautifully visualized texts that echo (and borrow from) novels by such authors as Henry James, Maurice Blanchot, and Stefan Zweig. Fittingly, this is a film that’s going to be written about for years to come. (175 mins., 2K DCP). Stay after the screening for an onstage conversation between Gatten and Ohio State Arts and Humanities Distinguished University Professor Ann Hamilton.