Judith Poirier

Setting West was made using original printing materials from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, such as wood type, borders and stereotypes of “Cowboys and Indians”, trains and bison. These words and images were printed directly onto 35mm clear film stock at eminent letterpress studios in North America: the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum in Two Rivers, the Center for Book and Paper Arts in Chicago, the Hatch Show Print in Nashville and the Musée de l’imprimerie du Québec & Lovell Litho in Montréal. Judith Poirier printed 1,643 feet of film to produce her abstract western and her technique of printing onto celluloid creates a unique texture on screen, as well as generating an original soundtrack. Setting West reinterprets a classic cinematic genre while exploring a formative period in the history of typography and printing.

An intensely imaginative exploration of the way we interact with the opposing pages of a book, utilising a vast collection of lead and wood type to print directly onto film stock.

From the starting point of the alphabet as a series of abstract symbols, a visual representation of the spoken word, this film explores the acoustic and visual rhythm of type. Working directly onto the surface of 16 mm and 35 mm film stock using letterpress, Poirier utilises an aleatoric approach to animation, generating intuitive compositions governed by elements of chance and surprise. The typographic forms, once translated as a soundtrack, vary from the harmonious to the discordant.