Taking a Line for a Walk: A Homage to the Work of Paul Klee

Subtitled a homage to Paul Klee, the celebrated artist and Bauhaus teacher whose works were branded as degenerate by the Nazis. The title refers to his aesthetic dictum - his use of geometric lines to shape space and colour. The film takes his cure and creates an astonishing voyage of possibliities with lines, creating cities, vast universes, waterworlds, out of nearly nothing. This boundless, godlike creativity has a critical dimension, and beneath the exuberance can be noted ghostly individuals trapped in the lines, in their repressive houses, lives, selves, these massive totalitarian, inhuman constructions. Epiphany and innocence are invoked only to be qualified, as the lines become the heartbeats of a dialysis machine, uniform, terminal.

This is an exciting, angry film, and the dizzying versatility of the line is remarkable to see. Raoul Servais' PAPILLONS DE NUIT, has a similar genesis, based as it is on the work of Paul Delvaux, and is a masterpiece.