About

The extraordinary films of Arthur Lipsett offer a fascinating mix of visual essay and audio collage. Working for Canada's National Film Board (NFB), Lipsett incorporated outtakes from NFB documentaries with sound recordings and his own photographs. The results were fast-paced and impressionist works that explored sociopolitical subjects in a wry but poetic manner. In Very Nice, Very Nice 1961 Lipsett sought to critique consumerism by combining suggestive photographs with magazine images with fragments of voices criticising aspects of modern society. Free Fall 1964 combines found images and sound to create a fever dream in which humanity "falls from grace into banality". 21-87 1964 is a montage of footage and sounds that shows the individuals reduced to the anonymity of a number. In A Trip Down Memory Lane 1965 Lipsett takes an incisive look at human might, majesty and mayhem, and compiles peculiar newsreel items of the last fifty years. Fluxes 1968 uses an erratic combination of sounds and images to explore the human condition and make an indictment of the modern world.