Confluence (1999)

Overview

A complex editing score is applied to images and sounds gathered by a video camera moving through crowded places: a market in Cairo, a carnival in St. Louis, commuters in Tokyo and a funeral in Benares. The unique edit-form of Confluence weaves these streams of movement together like notes in a musical score. Events are broken loose from their normal flow and organized into autonomous clusters. The result is a transformation of the recorded world, and its projection into a new temporal matrix. The tunnel of time becomes porous; crisscrossed by passageways and escape routes. 14:00 minutes. ". . . an exotic mélange of visual and audio rhythms." - John Columbus, Director, Black Maria Film & Video Festival "In Confluence, McElwee jumps from one location to the next as if merging into an altered state" - TL Reid, Afterimage