SIFF 2018: * [“Star”] **1/2

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 26, 2018)

https://www.sffilm.org/assets/images/SFFILM%20FESTIVAL/2018/star_767x576.jpg

You see, the thing about “experimental films” is that…they’re experiments. And the viewer gets the dubious privilege of being the lab rat. How do I describe this one in particular? To paraphrase Keir Dullea in the film 2010: “My god, it’s full of stars!” Hence, the film’s title. I could also describe it as being 90 minutes too long, because Johann Lurf’s high concept collage would have been a perfect 10 minute short. Lurf curated every starry image on film that he could get his mitts on (spanning 1905 to 2017) and condensed them chronologically into a narrative-free film. It also gives you  a condensation of how film technology itself has evolved over 100 years. Something else you may get from this 99-minute flash-cut endurance test: a bout of vertigo, or an epileptic seizure. Watch at your own risk.

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