Film by Bill Morrison
Original compositions by Dave Douglas
Commissioned by Stanford Lively Arts

(2010, 68 min, DV)

An adaptation of Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" using found film footage, with an original soundtrack by Dave Douglas, performed by Keystone.

Performed by Dave Douglas and Keystone
Dave Douglas - trumpet
Marcus Strickland - saxophone
Adam Benjamin - keyboards
Brad Jones - ampeg baby bass
Gene Lake - drums
DJ Olive - turntables
Geoff Countryman - mixing

"Cinema itself may be the monster, as it begets images are not always in the realm of the visible, but of the imagination...This is an apt metaphor for the revamping of the myth of Frankenstein performed by Morrison and Douglas: it’s not easy to make a man, it’s not easy to make a film. In both cases we have a composite creature “stitched” from disparate parts, some recognisable, some not. Morrison combines barely legible shots (decayed footage) with images partially obscured by various states of decomposition or by an absence of context. The familiar – family pictures, pageantry, educational films – is made uncanny, as in this lovely sequence excerpted from a 1970s soft porn film, in which lovemaking in the wood between two attractive models is artificially degraded, suggesting the innocence of early erotic cinema ... the lost paradise of an unattainable 'normality'." - Bérénice Reynaud

"An inspired collaboration between one of the most adventurous American filmmakers and one of the most exploratory American jazz musicians, found-footage production "Spark of Being...draws fascinating parallels between the invention of cinema and that of the Creature, and pulls Shelley's 19th-century tale into the modern age."

"Mary Shelley’s "Frankenstein" receives a semi-abstract retelling in this outstanding piece of experimental filmmaking."

"Dave Douglas and experimental filmmaker Bill Morrison’s project, "Spark of Being", is one of those true partnerships that the rest of us regard with envy and awe — where both halves are complete and robust on their own, and function just as well together."