Hapax Legomena I: Nostalgia (1971) Online

In both this and Zorn's Lemma Hollis rips apart the connection between sound and sight. This movie uses memory to effect the change, Zorn's Lemma uses repetition and minimal plot to achieve similar results.

Plot: "Frampton burning slowly his an nostalgia black and white photograph who his taken on a hot plate." Yes, whatever that means.

Actually, the "plot" is very simple: photographs slowly burn on a hot plate while memories of the photos and their subjects are explained to the audience. This makes it a story of memory and family, as well as a bit of poetry... and something of an autobiography of Hollis Frampton for those who want to know more.

One interesting aspect is that the narration, despite presumably being the words of Frampton, is allegedly done by filmmaker Michael Snow. Snow is possibly even more notable than Frampton, often considered one of the greatest Canadian filmmakers, alongside Atom Egoyan and David Cronenberg.

"Hapax Legomena I: Nostalgia" already sounds like a film that would not be for general audiences, but maybe only for 1% of cinema-goers. Hollis Frampton made this 35-minute film back in 1971, so it has its 35th anniversary this year. It is possibly his most known and most successful work looking at the inclusion with the National Film Registry. But this is not an indicator of a great film this time. On the contrary, it should give aspiring filmmakers hope that one can make such a mediocre film that has very little camera work and the dialogue feels like random rambling from start to finish, and you can still reach some of the biggest honors with your work. I am generally not too big on Frampton from what I have seen so far, but to me it feels like he hits a new low with this one here. Shocking to see he produced many sequels to this mediocrity (and that's kindly-speaking). Highly not recommended.

I am literally stunned to see that this work has a '7.0' rating on IMDb as I write this. There's nothing more here than a series of thirteen photographs taken by director Hollis Frampton in prior years, and as each is presented, they are laid down on a hot plate grid and one watches as they're slowly consumed by flame and turned into ash. The photographs aren't even that good to begin with. This thing runs for thirty six minutes folks, and much of that can be attributed to an inordinate amount of time spent on the charred remains of each photo. Adding insult to injury, after the first few photos, the off screen narration describing the prints doesn't match up to what you see on screen. One can obviously take advantage of the fast forward button, but then you wouldn't have experienced the torture of having to sit through it. So I tortured myself for the full thirty six minutes so you don't have to. Lest you believe that there's something wrong with an artist destroying his own work, I'll reference Frampton once again as he completes his quote above by adding "...they can be resurrected by rewinding the film". Sorry, once was enough.