- Edge of Alchemy is the third film in a trilogy examining the psychological terrain of women's inner worlds. In this handmade film, assembled from over 6,000 collages, the actors Mary Pickford and Janet Gaynor are lifted from their early silent features and cast into a surreal epic with an unending of the Frankenstein story and contemporary undercurrents of hive collapse. Music by Lech Jankowski (Brothers Quay). Edge of Alchemy received major funding from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the Creative Capital Foundation. "Edge of Alchemy is the epitome of Stacey Steers' unique vision of collaged re-examination animations, an uncanny way to carry on in the great tradition of surrealist cinema. Max Ernst would refer to Lautréamont's sewing machine and umbrella to define the structure of the surrealist painting as 'a linking of two realities that by all appearances have nothing to link them, in a setting that by all appearances does not fit them.' I would add, making it all feel so seamlessly inevitable and inexplicably right...the 'feeling of form', as Suzanne K. Langer might have put it..." (Phil Solomon)—Stacey Steers
- Mary Pickford and Janet Gaynor, delicately lifted from their early silent films, are cast into a surreal epic with an upending of the Frankenstein story amid a contemporary undercurrent of hive collapse. In this handmade film, Stacey Steers selects sequences from early cinematic sources, prints the frames and re-contextualizes the action, allowing the 'story' assembled from appropriated images to evolve over time. She inserts her actors into newly imagined collage environments, built by hand from fragments of 19th century engravings and illustrations. Edge of Alchemy is the third film in a trilogy examining women's inner worlds. Music by the Polish composer Lech Jankowski (Brothers Quay). Funding provided by The John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the Creative Capital Foundation.—Stacey Steers
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