Thought. 1971. USA. Directed by Larry Gottheim. 16mm. Silent. 8 min.
Tree of Knowledge. 1981. USA. Directed by Larry Gottheim. 16mm. 60 min.
The final film in Gottheim’s Elective Affinities series, Tree of Knowledge makes somewhat more explicit the psychological and philosophical implications of the series while opening up new ideas and approaches that Gottheim would explore in his later work. The film revolves around two bodies of found educational films: a complete documentary in which a doctor presents interviews with two patients to illustrate the nature of “paranoid conditions,” and scenes from a film attempting to show the meaning of the seasons to children, illustrated with two child actors. Around this material, Gottheim arranges different image and sound possibilities, as when frenetic shots of an aged, bare apple tree in the filmmaker’s garden are mated with the words and gestures of the interviewed patients. The new footage counters and complicates the found footage, and together they add up to a profoundly troubling intertwining of different conceptions of the mind and science as an instrument of education and distortion. Similar to Gottheim’s earlier, silent work, Thought opens up the viewer to philosophical thought through its minimal arrangement of slowly moving elements and a shift in focus. Both films will screen on 16mm prints; Tree of Knowledge will be shown on a new print lent by the University of Chicago.