Now I have seen a lot of garbage from American experimental filmmaker Hollis Frampton recently, but this one here, "Magellan: At the Gates of Death, Part I: The Red Gate I, 0", despite the overlong and pretentious title was actually a bearable watch. There are some okay moments in terms of the genre and it does not drag as much as Frampton's usual stuff, even if it is not among his shortest works with a runtime of approximately 5 minutes. This does not mean it was a good watch though. I would call it mediocre at best, it is just better than all the really bad and uninteresting films he has made in his career. My verdict for this little film here is still a negative one. Thumbs down.
2 Reviews
A Study of Death
Tornado_Sam10 August 2019
"Magellan: At the Gates of Death, Part I: The Red Gate I, 0", as evidenced by the title, was a film intended to be edited into Hollis Frampton's colossal "Magellan" cycle, in the final section entitled "The Death of Magellan". Because very few segments from this portion of the cycle were actually made, this five-minute short is remembered as being part of a sort of movie trilogy, the other two films in the trilogy being "The Green Gate: Magellan at the Gates of Death Part II" and "The Red Gate: Magellan at the Gates of Death Part I". Interestingly enough, those other two films were both feature-length movies of fifty-two and fifty-three minutes, and due to Frampton's original plans for those other two works being to disassemble them into twenty-four different five-minute segments, this particular one is no doubt only an excerpt of the first part. It would have been interesting to view both parts in their entirety, but they as of this date remain unavailable online.
"Magellan: At the Gates of Death, Part I: The Red Gate I, 0" was undoubtedly pulled from these larger works as a sample for Criterion's collection of Frampton films, entitled "A Hollis Frampton Odyssey". It consists of a series of images of human skulls, bones and rotting corpses, shown in black and white and sometimes digitally tinted to create a unique effect. For whatever reason, psychedelic imagery of a geometric pattern are also shown between the skull imagery, and as a whole the visual effects produced are strange and colorful. As for said tints, they consist of green and red making a wonderful contrast between the two and undoubtedly referencing the red and green gates of both parts. Because of being only a fraction of the original hour and forty-five minute footage, it is judgeable only as an example of a larger work and undoubtedly seeing the entire thing would be great. On its own, visually interesting in the patterns and color contrasts it uses, and realistic since Frampton visited a laboratory to film actual bones.
"Magellan: At the Gates of Death, Part I: The Red Gate I, 0" was undoubtedly pulled from these larger works as a sample for Criterion's collection of Frampton films, entitled "A Hollis Frampton Odyssey". It consists of a series of images of human skulls, bones and rotting corpses, shown in black and white and sometimes digitally tinted to create a unique effect. For whatever reason, psychedelic imagery of a geometric pattern are also shown between the skull imagery, and as a whole the visual effects produced are strange and colorful. As for said tints, they consist of green and red making a wonderful contrast between the two and undoubtedly referencing the red and green gates of both parts. Because of being only a fraction of the original hour and forty-five minute footage, it is judgeable only as an example of a larger work and undoubtedly seeing the entire thing would be great. On its own, visually interesting in the patterns and color contrasts it uses, and realistic since Frampton visited a laboratory to film actual bones.
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