Since 2000, Michael Robinson has created a body of work exploring the poetics of loss and the dangers of mediated experience, a cinema of ambivalent melancholy and existential danger. The General Returns from One Place to Another pits a cynical Frank O’Hara monologue against an ominous vibrating landscape. And We All Shine On is a machine-eyed vision of a post-apocalyptic paradise. Light Is Waiting, in which a Full House episode “devours itself from the inside out,” excavates a hypnotic nightmare of a culture lost at sea. Frequently working with abjected imagery-forgotten television, mid-century magazines-and overly familiar pop songs, Robinson’s work flirts with a resigned pessimism, yet dares to find hope in the very heart of despair. Also screening: Tidal, Victory Over the Sun, You Don’t Bring Me Flowers, Chiquitita and the Soft Escape and All Through the Night. (Steve Polta)
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Sunday, April 27, 2008
Shine On
Films by Michael Robinson
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts