David Gatten
Born
11 February 1971 (55)
Place of Birth
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Biography
David Edward Gatten (Born February 11, 1971, Ann Arbor, Michigan) is an American experimental filmmaker and moving image artist. Since 1996 Gatten's films have explored the intersection of the printed word and moving image, cataloguing the variety of ways in which texts function in cinema as both language and image, often blurring the boundary between these categories. His 16mm films often employ cameraless techniques, combined with close-up cinematography and optical printing processes. In addi...
David Edward Gatten (Born February 11, 1971, Ann Arbor, Michigan) is an American experimental filmmaker and moving image artist. Since 1996 Gatten's films have explored the intersection of the printed word and moving image, cataloguing the variety of ways in which texts function in cinema as both language and image, often blurring the boundary between these categories. His 16mm films often employ cameraless techniques, combined with close-up cinematography and optical printing processes. In addition to the ongoing 16mm films, Gatten is now making hybrid 16mm/digital works and has completed an entirely digital feature-length project called The Extravagant Shadows. Among other projects, they are currently working on a series of films entitled Secret History of the Dividing Line, a True Account in Nine Parts, a project which Artforum magazine called "one of the most erudite and ambitious undertakings in recent cinema." He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005 to continue work on this series of films exploring the library of William Byrd II of Westover (1674–1744) and the lives of William Byrd and their daughter Evelyn Byrd (1707–1737). [Wikipedia]
Filmography (34)
The Spirit Lamp
2025
🎬 Director
This Day’s Madness did prepare Tomorrow’s Silence
2021
🎬 Director
The Heart is the Residence of the Spirit
2019
🎬 Director
Narrow Rivers, Open Seas & Seventeen Sunsets (Silences for A Merchant Mariner)
2018
🎬 Director
Odysseus and the Oceanic Feeling
2017
Intermission
2016
The Illinois Parables
2016
China monumentis (A Roll for Peter)
2016
🎬 Director
Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions
2016
🎬 Director
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
2015
🎬 Director
What Places of Heaven, What Planets Directed, How Long the Effects? or, The General Accidents of the World
2013
By Pain and Rhyme and Arabesques of Foraging
2013
🎬 Director
The Extravagant Shadows
2012
The Matter Propounded, of Its Possibility and Impossibility, Treated in Four Parts
2011
🎬 Director
So Sure of Nowhere Buying Times to Come
2010
Film for Invisible Ink, case no. 323. Once Upon a Time in the West
2010
🎬 DirectorOrdinary Time, Equivocal Inventory
2009
🎬 Director
Journals and Remarks
2009
🎬 DirectorToday! (excerpts)
2008
🎬 DirectorToday! (excerpts #28 and #19)
2008
🎬 Director
Film for Invisible Ink, Case No. 142: ABBREVIATION FOR DEAD WINTER [Diminished by 1,794]
2008
🎬 Director
How to Conduct a Love Affair
2007
Today!
2007
🎬 Director
What The Water Said, Nos. 4-6
2007
Shrimp Boat Log
2006
🎬 Director
Film for Invisible Ink case no. 71: BASE-PLUS-FOG
2006
🎬 Director
The Great Art of Knowing
2004
🎬 Director
Fragrant Portals, Bright Particulars and the Edge of Space
2003
🎬 Director
Secret History of the Dividing Line
2002
The Enjoyment of Reading, Lost and Found
2001
🎬 Director
Moxon’s Mechanick Exercises or the Doctrine of Handy-Works Applied to the Art of Printing
1999
What The Water Said, Nos. 1-3
1998
Hardwood Process
1996
Silver Align
1995
🎬 Director