SBIFF: Enchanted Matter: A Seductive and Sensual Self-Portrait
ART MAY IMITATE LIFE, but life also reveals nature’s artistry in the spellbinding last artistic statement of Robert Powell, captured in the genre-bending Enchanted Matter: The Art of Robert Powell documentary. With the Himalayas as backdrop, a world renowned artist casts an almost feverish lens on his final self-portrait that spans a life from grad student activist to young architect, from ethnographic draftsman to visionary artist.
Resonating with social anthropologist Alfred Gell’s theory that art is a technology of inspiration, Powell stated that “shamanism was the first technology of enchantment.” He was drawn to the Himalayas, its powerful landscapes, and the cultures of its people. His contributions, from his technical draftsmanship and meticulous documentation to his passion for shamanistic learning, has led his work be exhibited worldwide, included at the Smithsonian.
Enchanted Matter, however, was a work in progress he would not be able to finish before his passing, so he asked Tom Poizot and Geoff Rockwell to complete the work. “Geoff lived in Nepal and owned an art gallery during the 80s and 90s and knew Rob well,” said Piozot. “I regularly spent time in Kathmandu and the Himalayas during that period, making various documentary shows including the wide theatrical release Tibet: Cry of the Snow Lion.”
Both Santa Barbara residents, they rounded off their team with LA editor Kathryn Himoff. With a filmography that includes biopics of Georgia O’Keefe and Jackson Pollock in her CV, her addition helped their vision to take shape.
“The images have an almost hallucinatory impact. A viewer cannot help but react to the lucidity are stunningly strange, almost apparitional,” stated a Washington Post review of Powell’s exhibition at the Smithsonian.
Enchanted Matter is a celebration of Powell’s life work, using 2D motion graphics to bring to life his art in stunning 4K+, rendering his naturalist eye and anthropological attention to detail into more subtle and sacred spaces. His mediums were ink, watercolors, and acrylic, but they spring to life in this documentary.
According to the Enchanted Matter website, “Robert believed that after the European Enlightenment brought rationality and scientific explanation to the world, it became an essential function of art to ‘make the world strange again’ and to allow people to view the world with the type of enchantment that one experiences as a child.”
A world premiere, Enchanted Matter (59 mins) shows at 5:20pm, Sat, 2/8, at the Film Center, Auditorium 2, & 8:40am, Mon, 2/10, at the Film Center Auditorium 3.
