Robert Fulton

"I traveled to Albany, NY, and called Robert Fulton and stated that I wanted to come and visit him in Newtown, CT. 'You can’t get here from there, look out the window and tell me what the clouds look like,' he said. I described them the best I could and he said, 'Meet me at Butler Aviation at the Albany airport, I will fly there in my plane and pick you up.' This film is a short homage to Bob and his family during the weekend I stayed at the Fulton Estate in Newtown." — DA

An unfinished examination of life by Robert Gardner

A documentary about a legendary American film maker/aviator Robert Fulton who was contracted by the BBC to film aerial cinematography throughout South America.

Robert Fulton asked me to join him to do aerial photography in the Southern Chilean Andes. We rigged microphones to record what we were saying to each other as we flew among these extraordinary formations.

Fulton made the film during his brief time at Harvard, where he had been invited to teach by Robert Gardner, his friend and collaborator (Fulton would later serve as a cinematographer on Gardner’s 1981 documentary Deep Hearts, among others). Reality’s Invisible could be described as a portrait of the Carpenter Center, yet it is a portrait of an extremely idiosyncratic and distinctive sort. Fulton moves us through the concrete space of the Center’s Le Corbusier-designed building—the only structure by the architect in North America—but, more centrally, presents us footage of students making and discussing their work alongside figures like Gardner, theorist Rudolf Arnheim, artist Stan Vanderbeek, filmmaker Stan Brakhage, and graphic designer Toshi Katayama.

Rapidly changing images of natural objects, scenery, animals, plants, and people flicker, flash, tumble, and cascade across the screen.

Fluidity of stone. Subatomic motion asserting a surface. Mind loop wandering. Visitation of sound matrix. Liquid solid. Nature transforms a planetary cycle. Relations of a timeless void.