Palindrome 1969

Directed by Hollis Frampton

While working at a photo lab, Frampton found that the waste at both ends of the rolls of processed film—where chemicals worked on the emulsion through clips used to attach the film to the machine—produced images far too interesting to be discarded. For Palindrome, Frampton selected images which he described as “tending towards the biomorphic,” resembling abstract surrealist painting. However, the rigid palindromic structure that Frampton imposes on the images—a motorized sequence based on “twelve variations on each of forty congruent phrases”—deviates from the subjective aesthetic of the expressive, demonstrating Frampton’s interest in the “generative power” of films composed by rules and principles.