Palinode

Cast: Derrek Olsen and others
Music: “Wagadu” by Wladimir Vogel
Filmed in Switzerland (Zürich)
Note: The final edit includes part of Early Monthly Segments on the same reel.
First Public Screening: Österreichishes Filmmuseum, Vienna, 21 May 1996
Original Version: Palinode, 1969, 16mm film, sound, 34 minutes
First Public Screening: Club Nuovo Teatro, Milan, April 1970
Projection copy preserved in La Cinémathèque Royal de Belgique, Brussels.

In Palinode a disk-shaped matte continually shifting in and out of focus alternately blocks part of the image or contains it. Its respiratory rhythm matches operatic fragments of Wladimir Vogel’s Wagadu, as the camera studies a middle-aged male singer in Zurich, singing, eating, window shopping, meeting a young girl. The filmmaker told himself, ‘Don’t let yourself know what that film is about while you are making it.’
(P. Adams Sitney, Film Comment).