Swim [Original]
Identifier
F.2025-04-0019
Date Of Production
circa 1981
Abstract
"Norm Bruns's films impart a naive quality even when the vaguely sinister eroticism that underlies the mystery of his rituals and the stylization of his images becomes most apparent, as it does in Swim. For the first time Bruns employs overtly erotic male imagery along with multiple symbols of water and fire and a slight suggestion of torturous pain. A dark-haired young man is the swimmer, the supplicant and the recipient of invisible sexual favors. Throughout this ritual he is, above all, a sleepwalker, as the final, circling close-up of his passive face and calmly staring eyes attests. While these scenes are complexly sexual, one cannot ignore the sweetly clumsy innocence of their presentation. The simplicity and directness of the metaphors are as unabashed as the manipulation of these sleepwalking beings. Every seen and unseen hand is the filmmaker's; every invisible force is his will. Bruns becomes the benign but all-powerful magician in the theater of his imagination. What is ominous in Swim is not evil, but simply the unknown. Good and evil are not factors in the Bruns filmic world: His characters may be caught eternally in the trance of his fantasy, but they come to no harm. The real world does not impinge on them." — Barbara Sharres, "Trance Occurrences," Chicago Reader, January 15 1982.
Format
Super 8
Extent
99 feet
Color
B&W
Sound
Silent
Reel/Tape Number
1/1
Notes
The corresponding audio for this film can be found on a separate cassette tape in the collection.
Element
Originals
Genre
Form
Related Collections
Main Credits
Bruns, Norm (is filmmaker)
Participants And Performers
Evans, Dennis (is actor)
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