Like I noted with my
piece on Dan Sallitt’s The Unspeakable Act, I consider Gina Telaroli
enough of an acquaintance that I can’t completely write about her film without
proper disclosure. Gina is one of NYC’s most dedicated repertory film viewers,
so we do end up seeing a number of the same films and chatting before and
after. The two of us are also contributing on a project to be announced at a
later date.
Traveling Light deserves
to be seen on the big screen, so if you are in New York, I highly recommend
attending one
of the three screenings at Anthology Film Archives this weekend (and pair
it with one
of the great train films Gina has programmed alongside). For those outside
of New York, the film will stream on Lumiere
for a month starting on November 15th. It’s only an hour, and very
much worth your time.
Gina Telaroli’s Traveling
Light strikes me as a work essentially about loss, and one that operates
unlike any other film set on a train—its visual language and rhythms are highly
unique (certainly falling under the category of “experimental” but never didactically
so).1 The film is almost like a collection of postcards, filled with
moments of reflection on not only how we view the world, but also how we view each
other. It’s also a film that stirs emotions hard to explain. The fact that
Telaroli’s initial plan for the film went haywire (described her in my
interview with her) and the final work is still something of rapturous transfixion,
should speak no doubt to the conviction she has when wielding cinema.
