“Men & Lines” voyeuristically spies on several linemen. Choppily shot from the muddled perspective of jumbled branches, the workers tend to the telephone line primarily from their respective cherry pickers. This sequence plays for nearly two thirds of the runtime, until the camera’s action yields to a patient pan communicating the workers’ proximity. Abruptly the
“[Christmas Lights & Snowy Morning]” consists of two parts. The first section staggers around a dark room tinged with red light, recording a female figure in a white tee shirt as she fiddles with Christmas lights. The second, beginning nearly exactly halfway, opens with peering out a small window onto a snowy morning, the second
“Belden Manor / Curtains & Walls” hazily fades in upon demolition. Shrouded under a sheet of heavy, fat-flaked snow, a crane clamps portions of the building’s remains and tears away little by little. Amongst the violent scene, various construction workers and vehicles trudge through the weather and debris, in a facilitation capacity. A brief survey
Similarly to a portion of “E1 A&W F Print,” “El” focuses on the Chicagoan locomotion via CTA trains. A static camera idly sits passenger, recording the swiping cityscape. Scampering atop rooftops, visual markers identify (for at least a portion of the footage), in particular, the Blue Line’s peripherals. A short portion of footage depicts the
“Palmer Square Art Fair” documents the festive bustling at the eponymous park, a locale in several of Elam’s films. Elam pans around the park splitting focus on the diverse patrons and the diverse art represented at various stands.
Elam wanders about an art fair in “Palmer Square Art Fair ’85,” documenting the happenings of the event. Setting scale, the short begins on the outskirts of the festivities and then, slowly progresses inward examining several of the affair’s vendors. Elam takes particular looks at two fair facets, recording extended shots of a band performing
“Fire on Wayne” consists of Elam capturing smoke and flames billowing out of a home. Through longer, observational shots (opposed to Elam’s oft disposition for brevity), Elam documents, through a grainy, blue-hued frame, not only the incident, but also an assortment of firefighters and on-lookers reacting to the fire.
This footage starts in Chicago’s Palmer Square Park, where JoAnn Elam films the people around her and the houses bordering the park in a series of rapidly edited shots. Elam then turns her attention to a neighbor’s house shot from inside another house and through a brown and yellow curtain, to a pigeon on the
Following a garden’s progression from dormant to hospitable,”Armitage & Western” utilizes sharp cuts to communicate the passage of time and to record the toiling of hunched-over women whose hard work fostered such transformation. Elam concludes the piece with a car parallel-parking in the background, visual focus placed on a blossomed flower in the foreground.
Elam’s “El Shots,” sharing footage and theme with Elam’s “El,” sketches travel in Chicago. From people scurrying across intersections, to cars blurring down pavement, to watching buildings whizz by from an El-situated vantage (seemingly the Blue Line), Elam outlines how people orient the city as well as juxtaposes said locomotion with meandering individuals, e.g. children