Part of the Editor's Choice series.
The Diamond Lane, 1981, is a 35mm color film written and directed by Barbara Bloom. Produced by Tom Burghard, Largo Films/ Starring: Susan Davis, Eric Fischl, Marianne De Graaf, Cees van Hoorn/ Camera: Theo van de Sande/ Music: Peter Gordon/ Editor: Leo de Boer/ Consultant: Van Lagestein/ Laboratory: Cineco, Amsterdam
Anyone can drive on the freeway––hesitating, resisting, losing the rhythm of the lane change––thinking about where they came from and where they are going. Actual participants think only about where they are, a concentration so intense as to seem a kind of narcosis––the mind goes clean, the rhythm takes over, a distortion of time occurs. The same distortion that characterizes the instant before an accident…
On the highways, the innermost lanes have been painted with a diamond pattern and reserved for vehicles with three or more passengers; the outcome being that the normal lanes remain bumper to bumper, while on the almost empty Diamond Lane the traffic flows at great speeds…
The first time this happened I thought you were crazy. Now I’m beginning to believe your theory of parallel worlds…
So they turn me to read up on quantum physics and turn myself in…
Deja vu? Don’t worry about the past, think about the future.
The director on ritual, the pain of creation, and her new film, Madeline’s Madeline.
A rediscovered milestone in independent black cinema.
The late Iranian filmmaker’s final work is an ethereal study of the mechanics of cinema.
Originally published in
Tim Burns & Jim Jarmusch, No Rio, Charles Ludlam & Christopher Scott, Jacki Ochs, Michael Smith, Mirielle Cervenka, Gary Indiana, Sonia Delauney, and Phillipe Demontaut.
I don’t think an artist and a shaman actually have that much difference if we go back, way back, in time. Today, it’s just gotten so wrapped up in intellectual stuff that we’ve gotten far away from a basic truth about what artists do in the world.
Lucy Dodd
