Visionary Landscapes

This is the first book on the widely celebrated filmmaker Nina Danino. Visionary Landscapes includes detailed documentation and analysis of Danino's seminal films, such as First Memory, 1980, a haunting re-visiting of a strange and isolated childhood, Close to Home, 1985, an implicitly political narrative on Danino's personal journey and Stabat Mater, 1990, one of the most important expressions of the British avant garde. Danino's in-depth exploration of the religious experience, a theme that permeates the majority of her films, is unlike that of any other artist. In these works, she skillfully subverts a strictly Catholic interpretation by her use of close-up shots to suggest a narrative of sexual ecstasy. Essays on cinema, sound and the sacred are accompanied by striking images from her films. The book also closely examines the relationship between image and sound, exploring Danino's collaborations with New York vocalist Shelley Hirsch, Russian diva Sainkho Namtchylak and English soprano Catherine Bott.