Saving the Proof (1979)

• 84%
• 1979
• Karen Holmes

"SAVING THE PROOF is a complex transformation of an ordinary action: a woman walking. The rhythm of her gait and the pulsating, repetitive sounds counterpoint with alternating images of her transversing city streets, passing windows and fences, descending stairs. As the images repeat and vary with mathematical precision, one becomes more interested in the process itself than in her destination. What appears to have been simple breaks down into a complex system of dichotomies, both in form and in content: city/country, completeness/fragmentation, presence/absence, illusion/reality, light/shadow, negative/positive, fiction/documentation. The film climaxes in a spectacular burst, as one feels that the film is literally coming apart. It ends as it began, as one long chain that can be interrupted at any point, and yet can only be seen as a whole piece.