Migrating Forms
2000, NR, 80 min.
Directed by James Fotopoulos, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Preston Baty, Rebecca Lewis, Kiele Sanchez.

The inspired pairing of this short film and feature is the work of Bryan Poyser, the director of “Pleasureland” and the co-founder of the CinemaTexas Short Film Festival. Eerily similar in theme, both films deal with the darker side of sex and fantasies. Both films are grounded in artistic aesthetics that emphasize compulsively repetitive actions and combine the mundane with the utterly fantastic. Both films deal nakedly with sexual content. In “Pleasureland,” the porn videos taken home from the store by the protagonist come to life and interact with him. Each return trip to the video store ups the ante. In Migrating Forms, a couple repeatedly makes small talk before sex and then act out provocatively during sex. Fotopoulos’ film has won numerous awards, including Best Feature at the New York Underground Film Festival, and Top 10 runner-up in Amy Taubin’s year-end list in The Village Voice.

This article appears in April 6 • 2001.

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Marjorie Baumgarten is a film critic and contributing writer at The Austin Chronicle, where she has worked in many capacities since the paper's founding in 1981. She served as the Chronicle's Film Reviews editor for 25 years.