16mm, silent, 1975-78
This is my first film, inspired by something my mother told me on my 19th birthday. She said that the Ancients recognized that the sun and the moon took 20 years to return to the same position relative to the earth and that this is reflected in myths such as the Odyssey, where Odysseus, a sun hero, takes 20 years to return to his wife, Penelope, who has been fending off suitors by weaving his death shroud by day and unraveling it at night, just as the moon waxes and wanes. Mom concluded by saying that I was beginning the return journey to the place I had been the day I was born.
The original version of this film was drawn directly on 16mm in my sophomore year of college. The same year, I redrew it on index cards and shot it, and I shot it again before graduating to correct mistakes I'd made the first time around.