Psalm III: Night of the Meek
Philip Solomon
Artist BioPsalm III: Night of the Meek is a short, 16mm sound film, a highly personal interpretation of the Jewish legend of The Golem. This film is essentially a moving painting, an experimental film with a photochemically charged, dynamic surface. Psalm III: Night of the Meek combines, through a variety of optical printing techniques, documentary archival footage, key images from the original fiction film of The Golem (a classic 1920 German expressionistic film by Paul Wegener), and Solomon’s cinematography to evoke the legendary tale of Rabbi Loew’s monster created out of clay in order to save the Jewish population of the 16th century Prague ghetto from a pogrom. The figure of the Golem (a predecessor of Shelly’s Frankenstein monster) is used as a symbolic figure of the embodied resistance of people under siege.
Philip Solomon
Broomfield, CO
Phil Solomon teaches film aesthetics and film production at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Since arriving in Boulder, Mr. Solomon has produced, among other films, several collaborations with the late Stan Brakhage, including Elementary Phrases, Concrescence, and Seasons…. Mr. Solomon’s work resides in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, Massachusetts College of Art, The Chicago Art Institute, the Oberhaussen Film Collection, and several university collections. He has been honored at many festivals, including Three First Prize awards at Black Maria, The Oberhaussen International Short Film Festival, and Ann Arbor for his experimental films. Mr. Solomon received a Guggenheim Fellowship and an Artist’s Fellowship from the Colorado Council on the Arts. He has exhibited his films in every major venue for experimental film in Europe and the U.S. for several years, including the San Francisco International Film Festival, the Whitney Biennial, the Viennale, the Pacific Film Archive, the San Francisco Cinematheque, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Stadkino Cinema, Anthology Film Archives, Millennium, and three Cineprobes (one man shows) at the Museum of Modern Art.