Revisits, by Fred Camper
On one idle and lonely night just before Christmas in late December of 2025, I was suddenly possessed by the idea of a new type of film in which I intercut footage originally shot for several different Interactions. Most Interactions to date juxtapose related imagery, almost always from the same or nearby locations, and one attraction of intercutting these works was that I could make edits that crossed space, such as the way Revisits 3 [6 7 8] intercuts Amsterdam, Antwerp, and London. Almost from the moment I began trying this, sparks seemed to ignite. I wasn't sure initially if the idea could work with all the Interactions, but I soon became convinced that it would, and have been "revisiting" all of them in order, combining three at a time. I also decided that I could repeat shots already used in Interactions without worrying about redundancy. Each Interactions is edited down from vastly more footage than constitutes its final running time (example: the original footage for Interactions 6: Amsterdam, which is nine minutes long, is nearly four hours), so inevitably new things will be seen. Additionally, it will virtually always be the case that no take will repeat exactly. Almost every shot in my films is only a portion of the original take, and it is extremely unlikely that I would choose the exact same portion twice — and if so such an instance would be so rare that it would not pose a redunancy problem.
As will likely be evident, the bracketed numbers in the title are the numbers of the Interactions that the work is drawn from. Interactions 0 was originally intended to be the first, but when the editing of it was completed I found the footage I had, of Chicago in winter, inadequate, and thought that I could learn from it without releasing it. Now I am glad to reveal some of it here in Revisit 1.
It is not necessary to view a Revisit together with it sources, but the page for each Intreractions does contain information on the locations and dates of the original shooting.
Comment from a friend who gets at much of what I most care about in these Revisits.
"I loved them all. At first liked #1 best but now all seem great, each in its own way. Each feels like a unit of life, a prism, reflecting the diverse elements of life as one, a continuum, from the roughh-hewn rock to the smooth sculpted arm, from the dog's journey to the journey in #3 to the movements over the snow-covered ground in #1. The boats, bikes and bridges in #3, visual alliteration as well? So often eluding the expected, as the last shot of #4, following the preceding, which seemed like a last shot (the momentary Kyle ending [in #2] too). Moving across the Ucello, then that static symmetric long shot of the Ucello in its frame on the wall. I found the Dutch painting sky intercutting here especially effective (though not on a first viewing). There feels a joy to them, maybe in the sheer beauty of the images?"