by Timothy Rutt
Altadena-based filmmaker Laura Kraning will screen her film, "Devil's Gate," as part of an international program of experimental film and video work, presented by MIA at the Armory.
DEVIL’S GATE explores the metaphysical undercurrents of a Southern California landscape scarred by fire. The film lyrically depicts the physical and mythological terrain of Devil’s Gate Dam, located at the nexus of Pasadena’s historical relationship with technology and the occult, and intertwining with its central figure, Jack Parsons, who some believe to have opened a dark portal in this place. The film merges an observational portrait of a landscape transformed by fire, ash and water with a fragmentary textual narrative, providing a view into man’s obsession with controlling and transcending the forces of nature and spirit. It can be seen as unearthing a subconscious of the landscape, as the echoes of the past reverberate in the present and infect our perception and experience of place. (2011, 20 min, HD)
"Using Parson’s notes as an enticing Ariadne’s thread, Laura Kraning returns to Devil’s Gate. From the inextricable union between the exuberance of the environment and the equally massive anthropic intervention, she seeks to grasp the spirit of the place. Earth, water, air and fire are the major actors in an expanse in which the time allotted to man seems prescribed. Geometric figures drawn by the highways, stains on the concrete and the noise of the river in the background create a symphony in which one can easily get lost. Filmed in sharp black and white to the rhythm of Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2, Devil’s Gate emerges as a sample of esoteric archeology." – Carlo Chatrian, Visions du Réel
Laura Kraning’s experimental documentaries are portraits of secret worlds hidden beneath the surface of the everyday that traverse the border between the objective and the subjective, the real and the imaginary. Her early work as an abstract painter infused her filmmaking process in which she makes visible the textural and symbolic layers inherent in landscapes filmed over time. Her work has screened widely at international festivals and venues including the New York Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Visions du Réel, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Rencontres Internationales, and the National Gallery of Art. She is a recipient of the 2010 Princess Grace Foundation John H. Johnson Film Award, The City is Cinema Jury Award at the 2010 Ann Arbor Film Festival, and was nominated for a New Visions Golden Gate Award at the 2012 San Francisco International Film Festival. Laura currently resides in Altadena, CA.
