J.K. Eareckson

Inside/Out

Against the barren wintry backdrop of a psychiatric hospital, inpatients and authority figures drift through turgid psychological states. We meet the artist Jean and his lover Monica, patients of the facility, and several characters circling its periphery: a guard, an Episcopalian priest, and a church organist. Minimalizing dialogue and plot intricacy, Tregenza concedes only kernels of information, demanding that the viewer breathe dimensionality into his archetypes. Acting out primal instincts of lust, envy, fear, and love, subjects teeter vulnerably on the brink of sanity and insanity, freedom and repression in their attempts to navigate their existence.

The Arc

Tregenza’s second feature takes the form of a highly metaphorical road movie, as the isolated protagonist (Jason Adams) drifts from gainful employment in the East (as an arc welder in Baltimore) to a spiritual apotheosis in the West. “The formal treatment of the material ranges from rapid montage (in the opening sequence) to more conventional editing to lengthy takes without any apparent consistent pattern. Tregenza remains a master cinematographer throughout, and the various ellipses between sequences are often as provocative as the sequences themselves” (Jonathan Rosenbaum).

Talking to Strangers

It consists of only nine ten minute segments. Each shot/sequence was filmed only once in 35mm film with direct sound. The complexity and ground breaking originality of these shots has obtained widespread international acclaim.