David Gatten Movies

Four short interludes on filmmaking, chemistry, the American West and interplanetary communications.

Continuation of the "Today!" collaboration between David Gatten and Jessie Stead.

A portrait of one of Gatten's mentors, the filmmaker Zack Stiglicz, filming on the shore of Lake Michigan.

"Starring Jessie Stead as ‘one of the filmmakers’ and assorted plastic receptacles. Transmutations of small ideas occur in random...

Part 9 of Secret History of the Dividing Line, a True Account in Nine Parts. 2028, approx. 150 minutes, color, sound, digital.

A history of scarred surfaces, an inquiry, and an imagining: for the marks we see and the marks we make, for the languages we can read and for those...

Part 8 of Secret History of the Dividing Line, a True Account in Nine Parts. 2028, approx. 150 minutes, color, sound, digital.

Close your eyes. Take a deep breath. Concentrate your attention. What Question will you ask? The Matter Propounded... makes use of an early...

The result of a series of camera-less collaborations between the filmmaker, the Atlantic Ocean, and a crab trap. For three days in January and three...

Paired texts as dueling histories; a journey imagined and remembered; 57 mileage markers produce an equal number of prospects. The latest in a series...

"The work deals with Taoist practices of Internal Alchemy and their accompanying texts. The inter-titles were mostly adapted from The Secret Text of...

From dreamy aerial opening shots, we are sent on an expedition through the storied land of our fifth most populous state, Illinois, often called a...

This timeless experimental film draws on the work of 17th century scientist Robert Boyle to present a varied combination of texts, objects, colours...

"Excerpts from Sir Thomas Browne's 1658 text Hydriotaphia Urne-Buriall Or, A Brief Discourse of the Sepulchrall Urnes Lately Found in Norfolk are...

“A companion of sorts to WHAT THE WATER SAID. An attempt to assess the potentials, possibilities and pitfalls of finding meaning in – or...

10 minutes, color, silent, 16mm

Film for Invisible Ink, case no. 323: ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (2010), was composed as an epithalamium, or matrimonial poem, for Erin Espelie....

There are two women. Or there were two women. Or there will be two women. One of them is here today. No one knows about tomorrow. There is one river,...

An unexpected letter leads to an unanticipated encounter. Some windows open easily; other shadows remain locked rooms. Have a cup of tea dear....

We search for focus, the evidence is thin, but like breath on a mirror it speaks of life and provides a compass for the way home.