Light Reading, 20 min., black & white 16mm film, UK, 1978
"The view through the lens may be blurred or defined -- focused or unfocusfocused or unfocused -- depending on what you think you know; what you imagine you see; what you learn to look for: what you are told is visible." Lis Rhodes
Since the 1970s, Lis Rhodes has been making radical and experimental films that challenge the viewer to reconsider film as a medium of communication and presentation of image, language, and sound.Dissonance and Disturbance examines the relationships in her work - from film, composition and writing - to the notation of sound and image, and the language of political dissent. To quote Lis Rhodes: "It is dangerous to step out of line, and lethal not to".
Formally rigorous, Light Reading is a visual and aural essay on gender and perception that implicates the viewer in their act of looking. Through meticulous attention to the material of film itself we see glimpses of a photograph and torn images, we hear repeated and fragmented sentences, are continuously asked to look and look again as the auditorium is lit and simultaneously made two-dimensional by the film’s insistent, arresting strobing.
The bloodstained bed suggest a crime..No answers are given, after the torrrent of words at the beginning of the film, all the film offers are closed images and more questions..Is it even blood on the bed, what fracture is there between seeing and certainty? If there has been a crime, 'she' might still be victim..How can a crime of such complexity and continuity be 'solved'? The voice searches for clues, sifting through them, reading and re-reading until the words and letters loom up nightmarishly, no longer hung on the structure of language. Felicity Sparrow, Her Image Fades as her Voice Rises, Arts Council of Breat Britain 1983
