Hollis Frampton 1936-1984
Gloria! (1979)
1979


""In GLORIA! Frampton juxtaposes nineteenth-century concerns with contemporary forms through the interfacing of a work of early cinema with a videographic display of textual material. These two formal components (the film and the texts) in turn relate to a nineteenth-century figure, Frampton's maternal grandmother, and to a twentieth-century one, her grandson (filmmaker Frampton himself). In attempting to recapture their relationship, GLORIA! becomes a somewhat comic, often touching meditation on death, on memory and on the power of image, music and text to resurrect the past."

""In Gloria! (1979), human mortality meets cinema's apotheosis. A tribute to Frampton's deceased grandmother, Gloria! starts with early-20th-century footage of a Finnegans Wake gag scenario (a not-dead-yet body dances at its own funeral), and ends with scrolling green-screen computer-generated textÑgoing from photographic body to digital ghost."