This engaging documentary about media artist Grahame Weinbren effectively captures the complexity, mystery, and excitement of the creative process. In his work, Weinbren continues to fundamentally redefine cinema's over-reliance on linear narrative, and instead refashions it through the creation of interactive cinema installations. Frames focuses on the thought processes behind the creation of Weinbren's individual pieces over the past 15 years. Drawing from such diverse sources as history, mythology, and psychology, and rooted in the works of artists as varied as Wittgenstein, Freud, and Beethoven, the artist deftly weaves together in each work multiple threads of narrative. The viewer, in Weinbren's own words, "then follows the pathways, deviating or continuing in a line as the mood takes him." Director Henry Corra and editor Charlene Rule follow an interview-style format, in which Weinbren's many collaborators, including artists, architects, live actors, and musicians, comment upon his work. The most touching scenes are those of the creative interaction between Weinbren and his son Cas, who writes the music score for Tractatus. The most humorous sequences consist of Weinbren, dressed in tie and jacket, interviewing himself, dressed in opposing frames in a t-shirt. To underscore in visual terms Weinbren's ever-present consciousness of the densely layered narratives that can be built across the frames of film, the filmmakers utilize such visual strategies as installation documentation of Weinbren's multi-screen pieces, digitally embedded images, split-screen effects, and the presence of actual picture frames within the body of many shots.

Directed by

Henry Corra