The Blue Velvet Project

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This Friday, Filmmaker will conclude “The Blue Velvet Project,” a year-long endeavor helmed by Rumpus columnist Nicholas Rombes.

Published three times a week, the project is an ambitious feat: for every 47 seconds of film, Rombes analyzes a frame from David Lynch’s neo-noir classic, and delves into the psychological, cultural, and historical implications present in Lynch’s oft-surreal cinematic landscape.

Though shot composition and Rombes are no strangers—you may know him from his “10/40/70″ series here at The Rumpus—his decision to critically deconstruct Blue Velvet has been informed by both ideas of constraint and technological evolution. From the introduction to the project:

“The goal is to move through this seminal film in the equivalent of digital slow motion, using the technologies of our hyper-speed era against themselves to rediscover the photographic beauty, lost meanings, and ideological fault lines in the frames of Blue Velvet.”

For further reading, “The Blue Velvet Project” received a write-up this month at A Piece of Monologue, and was also featured over at HiLoBrow shortly after its debut.

 

Rebecca Rubenstein is the interviews editor for The Rumpus. She is also a lover of cinema and a Scrabble hustler. When not reading books made of paper, she can sometimes be found writing at Badly Marked Street Signs and, more frequently, thinking on Twitter. She resides in San Francisco. More from this author →