The Silver Cord: Notes on the development of an experimental film
Captions
Sabina Maselli, Creature Comfort: Pyramid Room Exit, 2019. Music video still. ID: Colour image of a woman in a white dress, lying down, facing her levitating subtle body of red, green and blue light, black background.
Sabina Maselli, untitled, 2024. 16mm film still. ID: Colour image of a lens flare against solar eclipse, blue/grey background.
Sabina Maselli, Latent image, 2021. 16mm film still. ID: Black and white image of feet in space, with handmade scratches on film, developed with light leak.
Alessandro Cavadini, Carolyn Strachan and the Borroloola Tribal Council, Two Laws, 1982. Film still. ID: Colour image of a man in blue shirt standing by a pipe at a waterhole. Caption reads ‘Right in the dreaming place’.
Sabina Maselli, untitled, 2019. Digital photo. ID: Black and white self portrait of filmmaker on the beach holding 16mm camera with round mirror attached.
Sabina Maselli, 3 attempts to contact Maya, 2019. 16mm film still. ID: A woman’s face upside down in a broken mirror, held by another woman’s hands. Colour image with black and white negative still.
Sabina Maselli, Landing, 2019. 16mm film still. ID: Colour image of hands, disembodied, holding a round mirror reflecting white light, black background.
Sabina Maselli, Melting Point, 2014. Video still. ID: Colour image documenting the burning of a photo. The photo depicts a woman lying down on a bed covered in a white sheet.
Sabina Maselli, untitled, 2026. 16mm film still. ID: Colour image of eclipses and perforations superimposed on image of celluloid film.
Sabina Maselli, Geometry of Faith, 2023. 16mm film still. ID: Colour film still of solar eclipse, night sky, double exposure using flat contact printing.
Sources
Abrahams, Brad, dir. Love and Saucers: The Far Out World of David Huggins. Curator Pictures, 2017. eVideo.
Barrett, Frederick S., Matthew W. Johnson, and Roland R. Griffiths. ‘Validation of the Revised Mystical Experience Questionnaire in Experimental Sessions with Psilocybin.’ Journal of Psychopharmacology 29, no. 11 (2015): 1182–1190.
Besant, Annie, and C. W. Leadbeater. Thought Forms. Quest Books, 2015.
Björk. ‘Come to Me.’ Recorded 1991–93. Track 9 on Debut. One Little Indian Records/Elektra Records, compact disc.
Borroloola Tribal Council, Carolyn Strachan, and Alessandro Cavadini, dirs. Two Laws. 1981; Kanopy Streaming, 2015. eVideo.
Carson, Anne. Men In The Off Hours. Random House, 2011.
Cox, Simon. The Subtle Body: A Genealogy. Oxford University Press, 2022.
Gutting, Gary. Talking God: Philosophers on Belief. W. W. Norton and Company, 2016.
‘I Accidentally Became A Meme: Have You Ever Had A Dream.’ BuzzFeed Video. December 12, 2021. Video, 5:29. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3U9P4-ac0Lc.
‘Indigenous Law in Dialogue with Australian Labor: Marcia Langton and Aaron Corn.’ Labor Academy Victoria. September 14, 2023. Video, 1:23:35. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtotHVotKf8.
Janke, Christopher. ‘Using a Net to Catch the Air: Poetry, Ineffability, and Small Stones in the Shoe: A Lecturish.’ In Ineffability: An Exercise in Comparative Philosophy of Religion, edited by Timothy D. Knepper and Leah E. Kalmanson, 169–186. Springer, 2017.
Jung, Carl. Psychology and Religion: West and East. Routledge, 1970.
Jung, Carl. ‘13 March 1935.’ In Nietzsche’s ‘Zarathustra’: Notes of the Seminar given in 1934–1939,edited by James L. Jarrett, 441–54. Princeton University Press, 1988.
Keats, John. Selected Letters of John Keats: Based on the Texts of Hyder Edward Rollins. Edited by Grant F. Scott. Harvard University Press, 2009.
Langton, Marcia, and Aaron Corn. First Knowledges Law: The Way of the Ancestors. Thames and Hudson Australia/National Museum Australia, 2023.
Law Commission of Canada. Indigenous Legal Traditions. UBC Press, 2011.
Lerner, Ben. Mean Free Path. Copper Canyon Press, 2012.
Lynch, David, dir. Lost Highway. 1997; The Criterion Collection, 2022. eVideo.
Moreton-Robinson, Aileen. ‘The Possessive Logic of Patriarchal White Sovereignty: The High Court and the Yorta Yorta decision.’ Borderlands E-journal 3, no. 2 (2004): 1–9.
Naimon, David. ‘Mary Ruefle: An Incarnation of the Now.’ Produced by Milkweed Editions. Between the Covers. June 6, 2015. Podcast, MP3 audio, 1:01:47. https://milkweed.org/between-the-covers/mary-ruefle-an-incarnation-of-the-now.
Nunn, Kenneth B. ‘Law as a Eurocentric Enterprise.’ Law & Inequality 15 (1997): 323.
Rutt, Jim. Yunkaporta, Tyson. ‘282: Tyson Yunkaporta on Indigenous Law, Lore, and Learning,’ The Jim Rutt Show.February 6, 2025. Podcast, MP3 audio, 1:34:26. https://jimruttshow.blubrry.net/tyson-yunkaporta-3/.
Silverblatt, Michael. ‘Mary Ruefle: Madness, Rack, and Honey.’ Produced by KCRW. Bookworm August 30, 2012. Podcast, MP3 audio, 28:49. https://www.kcrw.com/shows/bookworm/stories/mary-ruefle-madness-rack-and-honey
Tarkovsky, Andrey, and Kitty Hunter-Blair. Sculpting in Time: Reflections on the Cinema. University of Texas Press, 1989.
Tzu, Chuang. The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu. Translated by Burton Watson. Columbia University Press, 1968.
Wang, Jackie. ‘Oceanic Feeling and Communist Affect.’ Friendship as a Form of Life (blog). June 26, 2017. https://www.tumblr.com/friendship-as-a-form-of-life/162299769012?source=share
Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass. Edited by David S. Reynolds. Oxford University Press, 2005.
Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. Lerner Publishing Group, 2015.
Woolf, Virginia. Virginia Woolf: A Writer’s Diary: Enriched Edition. DigiCat, 2023.