David Gatten

David Edward Gatten (Born February 11, 1971, Ann Arbor, Michigan) is an American experimental filmmaker and moving image artist. Since 1996 Gatten's films have explored the intersection of the printed word and moving image, cataloguing the variety of ways in which texts function in cinema as both language and image, often blurring the boundary between these categories. His 16mm films often employ cameraless techniques, combined with close-up cinematography and optical printing processes. In addition to the ongoing 16mm films, Gatten is now making hybrid 16mm/digital works and has completed an entirely digital feature-length project called The Extravagant Shadows.

Among other projects, they are currently working on a series of films entitled Secret History of the Dividing Line, a True Account in Nine Parts, a project which Artforum magazine called "one of the most erudite and ambitious undertakings in recent cinema." He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005 to continue work on this series of films exploring the library of William Byrd II of Westover (1674–1744) and the lives of William Byrd and their daughter Evelyn Byrd (1707–1737). [Wikipedia]

Known For

What The Water Said, Nos. 4-6

The Extravagant Shadows

Film for Invisible Ink case no. 71: BASE-PLUS-FOG

Crossing Brooklyn Ferry

This Day’s Madness did prepare Tomorrow’s Silence

The Great Art of Knowing

Moxon’s Mechanick Exercises or the Doctrine of Handy-Works Applied to the Art of Printing

Film for Invisible Ink, case no. 323. Once Upon a Time in the West

Shrimp Boat Log

By Pain and Rhyme and Arabesques of Foraging