The Cinematheque

In Person: Jon Jost

“As a filmmaker I am very very tired of ​‘stories’ as normally shown in the cinema … I am trying to find other means, visual and aural, to evoke human behaviours and responses.”

Jon Jost

In this under-screened Jon Jost film, the dissolution of a long-term relationship gives subtle, narrative shape to an otherwise poetic still-life study of Port Angeles. The story, of ​“minor importance” by the filmmaker’s own admission, was developed through improvisation with his two actors, Stephen Taylor and John Manno. They play a gay, middle-aged couple whose mundane grievances—neglected chores, accusations of indifference, financial instability—edge their relationship toward a tragic end point. Encircling these scenes are tableaux of sea, sky, flora, and domestic interiors, which, by dissolving glacially into one another, suggest passages of time and the impermanence of everything. Other visual strategies (sliding split screen, oscillating camerawork, overlapping images) attest to Jost’s ongoing explorations in form. Manno, a trained harpist like his character, supplies the picture with its beautiful diegetic music. Celebrating ten years, Blue Strait is a jewel in the experimental DIY director’s suite of digital films.

Jon Jost will introduce the film and participate in a post-screening Q&A.