Metrograph

“Sitting somewhere on the edges of fiction and reality, the cinema of Australian-born filmmaker Amiel Courtin-Wilson is not easy to define. His films, often rooted in real-life encounters with marginalized figures, unspool from Amiel’s immersion in the lives of his subjects. This couldn’t be any clearer than in his 2016 film, The Silent Eye. Set entirely in the Brooklyn apartment of free jazz pioneer Cecil Taylor, who Amiel lived downstairs from for two years before making the film, The Silent Eye captures, with great sensitivity, an emotionally powerful, improvised performance between Taylor and longtime collaborator, Japanese Butoh dancer Min Tanaka. Observing what feels like a private ritual, Amiel summons a shared language between two old friends. Evoking a world that exists outside the frame and building on what Fred Moten has described as Cecil Taylor’s ability to see ‘gestures and spaces in an aurality that exceeds but does not oppose visual-spatial determination.’ —Series curator Jason Evans, This Long Century.

Q&A with director Amiel Courtin-Wilson and This Long Century founder Jason Evans on Saturday, August 2nd