"[The Wind That Shakes the Barley] is enthralling, devastating...beautiful. As alive and troubling as anything on the evening news" (New York Times).
Blot Out the Sun returns to Hallwalls' Cinema after being a hit of the Dissecting Portland [Oregon] program of short films screened here this past St. Patrick's Day. A gas station/garage in what must be the least green part of Portland is the setting for this conceptual re-working of James Joyce's Ulysses. The garage owner, Jay, mechanics, customers, and neighborhood denizens share narration and portray characters, reading lines from the novel off cue cards focusing on death, love, social class, and the relationship between individuals and the universe.
"If Ulysses is the sun in the firmament of our planet's great novels, Harrell Fletcher's Blot Out the Sun is the thumb of mere flesh that appears to cover it all if viewed from just the right angle. The entirety of Ulysses distilled like fine Irish whiskey into 22 minutes by the unlikeliest of Greek choruses."
Harrell Fletcher has worked collaboratively and individually on a variety of socially engaged, interdisciplinary projects for over a decade. His work has been shown nationally and internationally. In 2002 Fletcher started Learning To Love You More, an ongoing participatory web site with Miranda July.
June, 2007 - 2007