by Jodie Keeling

For the most part, when I enter a movie theatre I'm certain most of my expectations will be fulfilled. History has repeatedly shown me: I can expect to sit, face forward in a half comfortable chair, the lights will go dim, the projector will switch on, and a beam of light will shine through some dead celluloid matter to send forth a cast of characters that converge to tell a story on the screen in front of me. Light+ Celluloid= Life. It's a tiny miracle and I come expecting to leave the narrative of my own life behind for ninety minutes, to journey into the illusion of another. Hopefully to leave afterwards feeling the affect.

Anthony McCall's Line Describing A Cone (1973) simultaneously upsets and exceeds any movie-goer's ordinary expectations. I knew right away it was not going to be like any film I had seen before. The viewer is placed in the most unusual cinematic scenario. There are no chairs to recline in, nor screen to gaze upward at. There is just a projector on the floor and a smoke machine in the corner of an otherwise empty warehouse room. The film begins then with everyone standing around the room at comfortable distances from each other, as strangers do. And it's clear from this point that this film is going to demand a different kind of attention.

Lights go down, the projector whirrs, and for a moment nothing happens. The room remains pitch dark until a distinct 40 foot solid beam of light makes its way from the projector to the opposite wall where it forms a single pinpoint of light. ("Let there be light!") We gather around it along either side. Then someone touches it, and a long shadow casts through the empty space, blacking out portions of the pinpoint of light now becoming a line on the opposite wall. Ohh... Suddenly the attention of everyone in the room is focused. The beam expands in its arc circumscribing the bottom quarter of a white circle in the blackness of the wall. A horizontal cone is gradually forming across the room, narrowed to a tip near the projector, broadened at its base on the wall opposite. The audience's fascination is growing. You could hear a pin drop. Hands and arms passing through. Everything but the beam is completely shrouded in darkness so if you look along the length of the beamof light towards either end, hands, arms, heads and other body parts apparently attached to nothing, appear and disappear inside of an illuminated cone floating in dark space.

People shift up and down along the length of the sides of the forming cone. Standing near the projector, at the tip, looking down toward the base, I notice the circle being etched into the far wall. Everything within the circumference is illuminated as if it were in a spotlight. Everything outside remains invisible. At the far end, people pass through the cone from one dark side to the other, visible for a moment and then, poof. Gone. There. Gone. There. Gone. Standing at the base, looking towards the tip, the diameter of the circle gets smaller. Only parts of bodies visible now. Hands. Arms. Heads. Faces. Chests. There. Gone. Everyone is whispering. Whispers. Giggles. Laughs. "Wow." I want to hold, to taste the light, chew it up and swallow. People are on the floor crawling under and around the beam. Strangers lying down by strangers on the floor, engaged, absorbed in play with light and shadow. Some walk the length inside, others marvel from the periphery, hesitant to break the tunnel's flow. Some play, others watch- actors and observers. We all take turns. And the line eventually carves a complete circle on the wall, describing the full circumference of a cone through space. The completed form holds. In awe, we all stand back and watch superficially scratched film send constellating, random flares of light darting around the galaxy of the room, like a universe expanding until the room goes black.

Ah. Definitely unlike any film I've ever seen. Traditional film pulls the viewer OUT of the theatre through the window of the silver screen. The escape and engage happens somewhere "out there" at the level where our thoughts and emotions identify with the characters, but are not directly linked to the narrative story. Narrative is compelling because it is safe. You get to experience a fantastic journey with very little risk. Line Describing a Cone engages its viewer through spectacular wonder, at a direct, physical and experiential level. The subtlety of its simple geometry and formal qualities pull you INTO relationship with the space and the people around, bringing you into the present, while illuminating mysteries of the human drama where images and words usually fall short. But the end itself, a line described cone floating in space, is really a large amplified projector's beam- the source, from which a new narrative can begin.