Werner Nekes, one of the best known of the German experimental/avantgarde filmmakers, has attempted a stylistic tour-de-force in ULIISSES, which derives not only from James Joyce and Homer but from Neil Oram's The Warp. The result, for the experimentally minded, is a fascinating transposition of visual and verbal motifs from the originals into what Nekes calls a 'Homerian journey through the history of the pictures of light, ordinarily called photography and cinematography.' He takes the brain as the creator of light (in this case Ulysses' brain) and transposes his wanderings into a contemporary setting, i.e., West Germany in September 1980. Ulysses/Bloom becomes a photographer named Uli, Penelope/Molly becomes his model and Telemachus/Stephen becomes Phil. The 'narrative' of the film consists of analogues of Homerian episodes involving Calypso, Nestor, the Lotus Eaters, Proteus, the Cyclops, etc. Nekes concludes his film with visual storm, the culmination of what he describes as 'Lighterature' or writing with light. K.W.
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