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PARADISE; (2011) Noe Kidder; 16MM; Music: Chris Becker; TRT: 10.00
Filmed in Lisbon, Kauai and Catskill New York: challenging the viewer, as well as my own experience of loss.
I made Paradise as a personal response to my father’s death. Creatively, it was a ritual act of mourning, but also a way to pay tribute to my father and the years he spent in Hawaii. I took old Super 8 footage and slides that my parents shot in the 1960s in Kauai and built a home-spun optical printer where I was able to re-film parts of their films, reverse them, slow them down, and control their image in in a way I never would be able to do in real-life. The experimental structure of the film is a collage of many elements, stemming from a script-poem involving creation myths that I wrote as a prelude to making the film, the music of Chris Becker, and other biographical impressions.
As always I am interested in the life of materials, expressed through performance, puppetry and rough stop-motion animation. I also was informed by my first trip to Portugal, a country that I associate with Hawaii for several personal and historical reasons. I was moved by the light, culture and music of the place. It’s history of exploration and longing for the past, its own sense of nostalgia or “saudaude” is an important influence in my many of my recent films.
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