Tasks:
1) Watch.
2) Discuss.
3) Send me your suggestions for the next Short of the Day per PM, along with links to the shorts and comments, questions for the other users to think about, and/or info about the short.
Detailed project introduction: here

Sphinx on the Seine (Paul Clipson, 2009)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OydU9YzYXz8
Length: 8 minutes 29 seconds[/color]
Suggested by: Carmel1379
Many people would probably argue that Paul Clipson’s short films are nothing but meaningless pretty (or not, depending on your taste) images tied together by an equally meaningless, but pleasing title; that there is no idea, concept, didactic message, analytical narrative or real raison d'être to it other than it existing for its own sake, as a purely aesthetically pleasing stylistic creation that might produce particular atmospheres and moods. Generally I’d have to concur, but I’d add that his shorts can also be technical experiments (such as his ‘The Lights and Perfections’ where he changes focus to discover that a shot can have whole different-looking image in it) or their making can be a source of personal, perhaps therapeutic fulfilment. In an interview he said himself that it’s about “being a witness (…) aware of changes, differences, transitions (…) going out and gathering” until the sequence of images link themselves, “cluster” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eb1VlPU73XA).
In this sense, ideas “emerge” from the film stock, because of continuity and editing, similarity and dissimilarity between images. The viewer can obviously also unconsciously or emotively entertain various sensible thoughts. And ‘Sphinx on the Seine’ seems to have something systematic about it.
Railways, electric power transmission towers and their wires all feature and superimpose abundantly in the first few minutes. The camera starts to wobble more intensily and we see a sunrise, the shedding of light on Earth such that it’s day again and things can be seen more clearly. So one’s transported to day to see the water, clouds, houses, on which motor- or railway one travels. But one also comes to realise that darkness is just as essential as is light - the shadows of people walking on the streets, the contrast between what’s dark and lit creates newer patterns, the two inextricably related, complementing each other.
This are obvious things, but it’s what a wordless film stock carrying recorded imagery reveals. Not every shot can be accounted for either, that’s a bit of the point if one listens to his interview again. His other short films will play around other things and sequences of images. The music is also quite important, in different shorts there will be different degrees of intensity, in ‘Sphinx on the Seine’ it’s a rather low murmur, hence why I also linkenned travelling/transporting with awakening, sunrise and discovering, since a tumultuous score would probably mean one’s already active and lucid within the spatially and temporally constricted world that one witnesses.
Note his filmography on IMDb, iCM & letterboxd is incomplete, MUBI has a more exhaustive one.
Comments by: Carmel1379