Eve Heller

The films of American independent filmmaker Eve Heller illuminate brief moments that slip away from the viewer’s gaze, like the clear yet fragmented images of a dream. This effect is heightened through the use of flickering light, multiple exposures, the grain of the emulsion (greatly magnified by an optical printer), and occasional slow motion. Working with found footage, Heller unleashes latent content from the original material (Last Lost) while creating entirely new poetic associations (Her Glacial Speed) that can also be thoroughly humorous (Ruby Skin). 

Even Heller’s semi-documentary, Astor Place – filmed with a hidden camera through the mirrored windows of a café – captures this lyrical quality. The parading passers-by seem to obey a hidden choreography as if part of some secret production. Behind This Soft Eclipse, on the other hand, swings back and forth between the parallel worlds of day and night, positive and negative images, on solid ground and underwater. Here, the filmmaker reveals herself definitively as a magician of light.

Eve Heller was born in the U.S. in 1961 and studied at Buffalo and New York University. The child of a German mother and an Austrian father who was forced to emigrate in 1938, she grew up bilingual and studied both film and German literature. She received a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree from prestigious Bard College. Her teachers included Peter Hutton, Paul Sharits, Tony Conrad, Peggy Ahwesh and Abigail Child. Three early works from this period (1978-82) have now been transferred from 8mm to 35mm film and will receive their first screenings during this show at the Filmmuseum.