Pat O'Neill has been deeply involved in Los Angeles culture since the late 1960's. A founding father of the city's avant-garde film scene, an influential professor at CalArts and an optical effects pioneer, he is best known for his short works from the early 1960's onwards which are highly graphic, layered and reflexive assemblages based on a mastery of optical printing techniques.

In O'Neill's films boundaries fade, narrative collapses and layers of imagery draw the viewer simultaneously towards and away from linear meaning. O'Neill has combined found footage with experimental montage and compositing techniques to create a graphic language that deals with how different, often disparate elements assembled together in the frame relate to one another. His innovative optical techniques anticipated our digital landscape well before its time.

HORIZONTAL BOUNDARIES (2005)
The title Horizontal Boundaries refers to frame lines- the boundaries between one image and the next on a roll of motion picture film. These lines, usually hidden by the projector gate, are revealed as subject matter and as a means of dividing the screen into as many as four very wide images, stacked one above the other. They represent many places, and a few people. My intent was to find ways to allow the images to interact in ways not usually possible. The track includes some Irish fiddle solos and intense recycled dialog.

TROUBLE IN THE IMAGE (1996)
TROUBLE IN THE IMAGE is a collection of visual and auditory ideas, many of which seem to radiate a sense of internal conflict, irony and rage. The film has no continuing characters, but is made up of dozens of performances dislodged from other contexts. These are often relocated into contemporary industrial landscapes, or interrupted by the chopping, shredding, or flattening of special-effects technology turned against itself. All is not lost, however. The reward is to be found in immersion within a space of complex and intricate formal relationships, where subject matter is almost irrelevant. The film was accumulated over a seventeen-year period by a filmmaker who continues to insist that film can be an art form independent of storytelling.