Sidewinder's Delta Film Analysis

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As an up and coming art critic walking in to the Carnegie Museum of Art, my eyes flitter from painting to sculpture to every medium of art in my sight. My eyes continue to be briefly captured by multiple art pieces until I come across a pitch dark room, with a singular video playing. The sign outside the room indicates the film is called Sidewinder’s Delta and it is by Pat O’Neill and it came out in 1976. I take a mental note to research more about the director and the film itself. The large, empty seeming room is intriguing so I walk a bit closer and peek inside. The first thing I see peering into the room, is a wide screen with random, vivid color blotches appearing on and off the screen. Maximum creepy vibes are being felt just peeking …show more content…

I tried to put all my thoughts together regarding the film. How could I critique something as obscure as this experimental film? Are there more film pieces similar to this? Or maybe similar as in one feels the same out of body experience? That out of body experience, seeing yourself in third person view, seems to go hand in hand with the film, Sidewinder’s Delta. In the beginning, watching Sidewinder’s Delta puzzled me. I did not have much background information regarding experimental film, so in that moment my biggest question, “Why?” could not be answered by simply watching the film. I thought there had to be a set explanation as to why the color schemes included those colors, or why the day was being sped up. I was looking for both symbolism and an explanation surrounding each clip of the twenty one minute film. The subjects of both English and Art seem to have acquired a reputation of delving deep in to the symbolism surrounding an object or medium that in reality may not have a second layer to be …show more content…

Does every object whether it be art or a book, need a reason behind it to exist? Not everything needs to go and challenge a belief or explain this and that. People will come to conclusions filled with reasons of why certain colors were used and why the colors changed the way they did in O’Neill’s Sidewinder’s Delta, but Pat O’Neill confessed, “I had only the vaguest idea how to use the footage I was collecting” (Fearless). The man behind the whole film, at once had no idea where or what he was doing with his footage. He had no new tidbits of information to explain to questioning people

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