In the years since the resurgence of 3D in Hollywood thanks to James Cameron, we’ve seen the dimension-expanding tool profiteered in a number of bastardized ways, but every so often a filmmaker comes along to truly push its boundaries in an exciting manner. Following Jean-Luc Godard and ahead of Bi Gan, Blake Williams premiered PROTOTYPE, which looks a major storm in Texas in 1900 to investigate the medium of cinema itself.
Andrew Ward said in his review from the Museum of the Moving Image’s First Look Festival, “PROTOTYPE‘s unique combination of archival footage and 3D imaging techniques creates an image of the past that is chiefly concerned with space over time, playing out like a performance of the Galveston storm rather than a simple retelling of the event through a use of historical footage.”
Ahead of a release later next month by Grasshopper Film, the first trailer has arrived, which seen in standard 2D still manages to be an enticing tease. See the preview below.
As a major storm strikes Texas in 1900, a mysterious televisual device projects images of unknown origin. Blake Williams’s experimental 3-D sci-fi film immerses us in the aftermath of the deadly Galveston disaster, represented by remarkable and mysterious sights of one world nearing destruction as another emerges. A haunting, mind-bending consideration of technology, cinema, and the medium’s future, PROTOTYPE combines archival material with various optical manipulations and imagist surfaces to fashion an experience with no clear ancestor or likely successor. A Grasshopper Film release.
PROTOTYPE opens on August 31 at the Museum of the Moving Image.