John Cage: From Zero

FROM ZERO is a fascinating study of merging form with content. I can't say it's perfect, but its best parts are quite good. It's broken into four shorts, each complete with opening title and closing credits: "19 Questions," "Fourteen," "Paying Attention," and "Overpopulation and Art." "19 Questions" is simply an interview, made fascinating by two factors - a) John Cage is a charming interview subject, and b) each question is subjected to the random restriction of having to be answered in a very specific time frame ranging from 1 second to 58 seconds (a stopwatch is used). "Fourteen" is probably the greatest triumph of the film, featuring a performance of the titular piece by the Ives Ensemble in which the lighting, camera movement and editing are all controlled by similar principles of indeterminacy as the musicians themselves. "Paying Attention" stumbles somewhat - it's a deconstructive video of another interview and, aesthetically speaking, it feels somewhat lacking (and I am fairly comparing it to similar efforts of the same period by figures such as Nam June Paik, not contemporary deconstructive video artists). "Overpopulation and Art" is the most obtuse of the pieces. It combines audio from Cage's spoken word essay "Overpopulation and Art" (concerning his ideas on overpopulation, unemployment, education, creativity, anarchism, and Buckminster Fuller) with his piece "Ryonji," with a visual approach that seems to take a page from Derek Jarman's BLUE and maybe half a page from the visuals of Peter Greenaway's THE FALLS. A bit confounding, but not unpleasant. Overall, a 8, 9, 4, and 6 respectively for the shorts, rounding out to a 7 as an overall rating. Would make a good double-feature with Nicolas Humbert & Werner Penzel's film STEP ACROSS THE BORDER on Fred Frith.