Echo
October. 27,2023By appropriating the formal conceit of Hollis Frampton’s Nostalgia (1971), Echo celebrates structuralist cinema while expanding its horizons. Unlike Frampton’s original, Echo reverses the action of the series of personal photographs, burning on a heating-coil, allowing the voiceover to precede the image discussed, but also to meet, at last, with its flowering, unburned state, before the cycle begins again with the ash of the succeeding photo. While Nostalgia featured the work of two men, Echo is a collaboration between two women. Bustillos’s display and commentary on a series of Polaroids functions as a love letter to her subject, Sarah Evans, and to the formative subject of experimental, photochemical film, as yet vital in an age of virtual image-making and social media.
Reviews
Beautiful, moving film.
The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.
The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.
Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.