Christopher Harris’s films often examine geographic space as a locus for competing layers of representation and perception. still/here (2000) is a meditation on the vast landscape of ruins and vacant lots that constitute the north side of St. Louis, Missouri, an area populated almost exclusively by working-class and working poor African Americans. The film explores the vestiges of a once-thriving community through evocative imagery of derelict cinemas, fading billboards, and abandoned domestic spaces, asking the viewer to reflect on the causes of this decay.

The cinema is a magical place. In 1975, Roland Barthes mused aboutce noir du cinémaas simultaneously hypnotic and fixative, fascinating and liberating. Sometimes, experimental films seek out the slumber that is distinctive of cinema, then again, they oppose it, celebrate alienation, break through the fourth wall and appeal to the awake spectator, leaving behind familiar film forms, good taste and cultural patterns.