Michael Mideke

Michael Mideke is one of the truly unknown geniuses of black-and-white filmmaking, in large part because he's chosen to live for the last 20 years without telephone, electricity or running water in the coastal hills of central California. His films have a rhythmic beauty that unfolds into a startling revelation of the physical reality from which they spring. “I have come to make films where what happens is of secondary importance, where I am not telling stories but weaving together moods, touching on flavours of experience. My films are things to be seen and felt with some detachment as you might listen to a piece of music or observe the play of light and shadow outside your window. […] The structures of my films are full of repetitions and near-repetitions, frustrating the mind’s almost automatic response to construct a sense of narrative sequence, to attach personally held values and expectations. It seems to me when these films are working and the viewer is receptive, he is tasting something of what the Buddhists call Bare Attention.” –Michael Mideke