Sufjan Stevens: The BQE

In an earlier blog post, I wrote about how Flickr user Ettubrute was using his still camera as a way of making interesting films. This post is about what Sufjan Stevens did in his film The BQE.

Using a very old film video camera, Sufjan made a partially documentary-style film about the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, but he did it in a very interesting way. Instead of showing just one screen of footage, he showed three, back to back. Sometimes the images connected, sometimes they didn't. According to Sufjan, the intent of the film is to give an interesting point of view of a part of Brooklyn that he loves, and to develop his photographic eye.

He did exactly that. The film transitions from being mostly photograph-like into a raging geometric maze. He used his video camera to create time-lapsed scenes. But instead of showing them simply as what they were, he mirrored them in the three-across format to turn them into something else.

Unfortunately, the clip with the mirrored videos is no longer available. This is a clip from a different part of the film that uses the three-across format to play on a theme.

ⓒ Asthmatic Kitty Records and Sufjan Stevens. I do not own this.

This is a very interesting presentation, because it is technically and literally a film. But it is set up as photography. In a way, this is a backwards approach to what Ettubrute did. But both accomplish similar things: merging photography and film interestingly.

One thing that Sufjan has over Ettubrute is his incorporation of sound. Sufjan designed the score of the film himself, so it is intended to go with it perfectly. And it does. It goes up and down in intensity and changes at all the right points, making his film even more rhythmic than the patterns of traffic already were. It sounds curious in parts and strong in others.