David Gatten Movies

From dreamy aerial opening shots, we are sent on an expedition through the storied land of our fifth most populous state, Illinois, often called a...

The result of a series of camera-less collaborations between the filmmaker, the Atlantic Ocean, and a crab trap. For three days in January and three...

Strips of previously unexposed film went into the ocean and these fragments are what returned. In this final installment of a nine year project...

"This chapter of my ongoing exploration of the Byrd library finds its name and shape within a single volume from that collection: Athanasius...

Four short interludes on filmmaking, chemistry, the American West and interplanetary communications.

A history of scarred surfaces, an inquiry, and an imagining: for the marks we see and the marks we make, for the languages we can read and for those...

Cut-glass gleaming, shards of vision interrupted, reformulated, and freshly shaped into a response to the power of words and their ability to both...

“A companion of sorts to WHAT THE WATER SAID. An attempt to assess the potentials, possibilities and pitfalls of finding meaning in – or...

Suggestion is the rock, and the physical evidence is the evanescent spray that breaks against the unseen. Transitive enharmonics of things touching...

This timeless experimental film draws on the work of 17th century scientist Robert Boyle to present a varied combination of texts, objects, colours...

A closely watched candle and an invitation to the dance. William Byrd booms among his books while Evelyn keeps to a quiet window; the volunteer fire...

"Excerpts from Sir Thomas Browne's 1658 text Hydriotaphia Urne-Buriall Or, A Brief Discourse of the Sepulchrall Urnes Lately Found in Norfolk are...

"Starring Jessie Stead as ‘one of the filmmakers’ and assorted plastic receptacles. Transmutations of small ideas occur in random...

10 minutes, color, silent, 16mm

A limited-run performance of songs written by David Lynch and Chrystabell, with Chrystabell performing the material to tracks of David’s...

Close your eyes. Take a deep breath. Concentrate your attention. What Question will you ask? The Matter Propounded... makes use of an early...

"Linked together by the texturality of forgotten objects and frayed (or physically manipulated) imprinted text images, the film represents a thematic...

"The work deals with Taoist practices of Internal Alchemy and their accompanying texts. The inter-titles were mostly adapted from The Secret Text of...

Four uncut camera rolls, unspooled intermittently across thirteen years. One is a portrait of a friend, another is of a particular plant, the third...

A portrait of one of Gatten's mentors, the filmmaker Zack Stiglicz, filming on the shore of Lake Michigan.