12/17/08

Vault

I saw this video a long time ago (9 years ago) at a show in Philadelphia at the Trocadero. I've looked for it everywhere. Have no idea where it came from or who made it. It looked a bit like it could have been a Bill Viola video, but I don't think it was. It was simply incredibly slow motion shots of people pole vaulting, but the only part you saw (this is how I remember it at least), was the bodies going over the bar, both of which were shot close, so there was no relation to the ground, or how high up they were. It just looked like people arching and reclining with great effort and grace while flying through the air (and also featuring the weird, leotard-like track uniforms and culturally-required facial hair). Does anyone know what I'm going on about?

3 comments:

K. Wilson said...

Bryan, this made me crazy for a couple of days. I've been searching and I'm wondering if this wasn't from the documentary, Visions of Eight, about the 1972 Summer Olympics. Arthur Penn directed a segment called "The Highest" that was shot by Walter Lassally. In a 1973 article in Sports Illustrated, George Plimpton wrote about the segment, "Nothing in his film is shot at normal speed. The slow-moving silhouettes of vaulters floating against the sunlight were taken by a Milliken 16-mm. medical-industrial camera that shoots 600 frames per second. There is a curious aquatic feeling to Penn's film, much of it seemingly shot in the late-evening shadows, with the vaulters rising up against the light as if toward the surface of a pond."
Could this be it?

B. R. Smith said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
B. R. Smith said...

holy moly. maybe. that's genius. even if it's not that makes me interested enough to see it. did you get lexus-nexus hard-wired to your brain?