Lore (Sky Hopinka, 2019) (Patreon)

A very interesting change of pace for Hopinka, both literally, in terms of the general tempo of the film (more of a steady lento than previous films), and figuratively. In that latter sense, I mean that some of Hopinka's more recent films, such as Anti-Objects, Dislocation Blues, and Fainting Spells, have engaged in broadly based social and cultural commentary, working to connect First Peoples' signifying systems and political resistance to affective and emotional structures, in a kind of macro / micro, history-in-the-present dialectic. 

By contrast, Lore is defiantly "small," recalling the deeply private films of the late Jonathan Schwartz. The majority of its audio track is comprised by a lengthy poem written and read by Hopinka. The piece is quite personal although it veers into abstraction, touching on aspects of the everyday and its textures while also exploring more exploratory questions of home and memory. Toward the end of the poem, Hopinka begins mentioning specific friends by name, as the writing sheds all vestiges of generality.

Much of the visual track consists of Hopinka working at a light table, shuffling a series of image transparencies. They are cropped to various sizes, their interpenetration resulting in a form of representational version of a mid-century modernist stained glass. In his notes on the film, Hopinka has described Lore as an homage / answer film to Hollis Frampton's nostalgia, and one can see certain similarities. Like Frampton, Hopinka is working with photographs and filming them from above. They become increasingly incomprehensible over the course of their presence before the camera. And their existence in the film is both complemented and compromised by the competition of language on the soundtrack whose connection to the images themselves is highly mitigated.

A refrain throughout Lore, which takes over at the conclusion of the film, is a set of shots showing a band playing Bo Diddley's "Heart O Matic Love." We learn from the credits that Hopinka is the bassist in the band, and that filmmaker Fern Silva plays guitar. This laid back ambiance goes a long way toward explaining the overall vibe of Lore, and how it differs from so much of what Hopinka has made before. There is no grand statement here; it is an introspective film that asks its viewer to spend some time it its maker's company as if you were hanging out with a friend. For the most part, that time is rewarded.