Near Windows

1997
16mm, color, silent, 12 minutes.
Director, Camera, Editor: Ken Paul Rosenthal

Nearby windows frame and illuminate four years of voyeuristic observations lyrically woven into a time-lapsed tapestry of light, unsuspecting neighbors, and street drama. At the intersection of private and public space, does a glance become The Gaze? Does the eye become a recording device?
– KPR

“A voyeuristic adventure into true reality TV, without the double-crossing lovers or rows of single women waiting for courtship, the film is a poetic fabric of unseen detail and time-lapse vibrancies, conveying an urban surrounding through four planes of sight: the filmmaker, the camera lens, windows, and the viewer. A strength for framing windows in virtually every shot, we are always reminded that the view is through thin glass and borders on what is private and what is public.

This delicacy is felt through captured moments of a neighbor brushing his teeth, a street drama with paramedics, or even a disobedient cat. A drape becomes a heartbeat throughout the days changing wind, bushes waltz and jitter with excitement surrounded by urban details, and the sun becomes the master composer of light by drastically shifting shadow and texture amidst the fast passing day. Serenity is seen when a person washes the window from outside then enters and embraces the tenant, conveying that the filmmaker has respect for the life outside his windows and embraces it with a kiss. A sense of innocence resonates and the universal eye of curiosity is in bloom for urban details, thrusting the mundane into the extraordinary.”- Matt Bowler, Filmmaker

Screenings

Itinerant Cinemascape National Tour, 2004
33rd Humboldt International Film Festival – Honorable Mention, 2002
Anthology Film Archives, New York City – What’s New in the Avant Garde, 1998
1st Splice This! Super 8 Film Festival, Toronto, Canada, 1998
Other Cinema, San Francisco – New Experimental Works, 1997
Museum of Modern Art, New York City – Big As Life: An American History of 8mm Films, 1997
San Francisco Cinematheque, 1997