Against the Slope of Social Speech

A film by Ed Bowes

Performances by Eleni Sikelainos, Ambika, Laura Wright, Sojourner Wright, Michelle Ellsworth, Laird Hunt, Steven Taylor, and Satchel

Written, directed, shot & edited by Ed Bowes

Consultation: Nathaniel Dorsky

Poetry by Gertrude Stein, Anne Waldman, and Laura Wright

1 hour, 20 minutes
2008

Constance, who may or may not be dying, writes letters to her friend Elizabeth. Each has ties with other friends who are involved in complex relationships of their own, and who sometimes meet. Against the Slope of Social Speech is about death, about our ideas of death, about language and speech, about sexual intimacy, about the way we encounter narrative and create it out of the things we observe. About imagination. This is Ed Bowes’ ninth film. In it he continues his ongoing investigations into what and how we know. The shape of our thinking. Into the content, weight, light, and event of pictures. Into the rhythms and meters, words, place and placement of language. Of people who it might be interesting to know.

“It  is a new suspension and elongation of vision. In it I saw colors I had never seen before, and I heard language arranged in ways I had not known. I also saw suggestions of how boundaries among people, are crossed, or not, unlike in any film had ever before. The gorgeous strangeness of this film reminds me of Lucretius, who also wanted to know — of what the mind, of what the soul is made, and what is so terrible that breaks on us asleep.” —Bin Ramke

“The film Against the Slope of Social Speech (2008) is focused on a woman named Constance (Eleni Sikelianos), who is married to a character named Reason (Laird Hunt) and writes obsessively to a character named Elizabeth (Michelle Ellsworth) about the evolution of language and how she may or may not be dying. Whether she actually dies or not seems unimportant. It’s the thinking and gesture around this idea. The movie plays out in relationships of images and language nuances.” —Anne Waldman, Vanitas magazine, Issue 5, 2010