Juan Downey Trailers

Four Stars Trailer (1967)

15 December 1967

Photographed entirely in color, Four Stars was projected in its complete length of nearly 25 hours (allowing for projection overlap of the 35-minute reels) only once, at the Film-Makers' Cinematheque in New York City.

The Laughing Alligator Trailer (1979)

01 January 1979

Merging the subjective and the objective, the autobiographical and the anthropological, The Laughing Alligator is a highly personal observation of an indigenous South American culture.

The Motherland Trailer (1986)

01 January 1986

The Motherland is an ironic parable of Downey's native Chile. Returning to Santiago, he finds a society in the grips of the military dictatorship of General August Pinochet.

The Circle of Fires Trailer (1979)

01 January 1979

Much of Juan Downey’s pioneering video work critiques the purported objectivity of ethnographic observation and documentation.

Shifters Trailer (1984)

01 January 1984

Downey examines meanings and interpretations of signs, symbols and systems of representation in Western cultural history in the third part of The Thinking Eye series.

The Looking Glass Trailer (1981)

01 January 1981

Essay film about surfaces.

J.S. Bach Trailer (1986)

01 January 1986

Resonating with a melancholy poetry, J.S. Bach is a subjective essay that merges a reflection on identity and the creative process with a lyrical documentary on the life of Johann Sebastian Bach.

Information Withheld Trailer (1983)

01 January 1983

Information Withheld is a complex investigation of signs and symbols in Western culture. Applying linguistic, semiotic and iconographic analysis as systems of interpretation, Downey decodes signs from everyday traffic signals to Michelangelo's paintings, drawing on Leo Steinberg's statement that the sign — "simple, unambiguous and universally understood" — contrasts with art's essential premise of "information withheld.

Bachdisc Trailer (1988)

01 January 1988

In "Bachdisc", Downey constructs a sophisticated fusion of the classical and the technological, merging the labyrinthine technology of the interactive laserdisc with the intricate, delicately intertwined structure of a Bach fugue and his own nonlinear compositional strategies.

Chicago Boys Trailer (1983)

01 January 1983

Asa Nisi Masa Trailer (1989)

01 January 1989

An exploration of the televisual through interviews and film clips.

Maids of Honor Trailer (1975)

01 January 1975

Las Meninas is a brilliant essay on illusionism, mirrors and perception in art, life and video, articulated by Downey as a subjective interpretation of Velasquez's eponymous Baroque masterpiece.

Satellitenis Trailer (1984)

01 January 1984

Exchange of nine video letters sent between New York and Santiago since 1982. Fragments that employ associations and reiterations to examine the influence of experience on the creative act.