BOXING THE COMPASS (2008)
HD/16mm, USA, 45 mins, Color, Sound
Single-Channel Video Installation, 20min, Dimensions Vary

SYNOPSIS:
Boxing the Compass is an experimental narrative film that tells the fractured story of one nameless woman’s struggle to navigate the spaces of her everyday environment. The film incorporates landscape cinematography, physical performance, and stylized image compositing to address themes of spatial perception by exploring the conflicting environments of "cinematic" space and the “real” world.

Boxing the Compass was produced to be exhibited in two different formats: as a multi-channel screening installation of two side-by-side projections, and as a single-channel theatrical release.

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT:
Thematically, the film takes a cue from the long tradition of avant-garde cinema engaging and re-appropriating genres of speculative fiction—from Godard’s Alphaville or Chris Marker’s La Jetee to Tscherkassky’s Outer Space or Craig Baldwin’s Specters of the Spectrum—while, at the same time, also incorporating self-reflexive gestures derived from Structuralist film practices. In such a way, Boxing the Compass approaches the material of film and the medium of video as latter-day tools of fantastic cartography, using the spatial possibilities of moving images to depict the hidden locations in-between mediated and physical environments. Building on these themes of space and place, Boxing the Compass explores the intersection of mapping practices and spatial navigation with contemporary cinematic forms and investigates the relationship of cinematic media to the way we negotiate and arrange our physical surroundings.

PRESS KIT LINK

Christopher Ernst is a New York-based filmmaker and video artist.
Please visit his artist's site at:
christopher-ernst.com