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ROSS WILBANKS, IN MOTION By Jeff Jackson Charlotte is an unlikely city to develop a thriving underground film scene. But with no media exposure or outside attention, this North Carolina banking town has quietly become a hothouse for compelling experimental films and unusual cinematic happenings. And it’s no mistake that many of them revolve around avant garde filmmaker and impresario Ross Wilbanks. There are so many stories circulating around Ross that it’s hard to untangle the facts from the myth. He’s made a name for himself with his massive film library, his infamous movie screenings, and his unorthodox filming methods. There are tales about prestigious critics blackmailing him for rare copies of movies, his film presentations ending in knife fights, and him hypnotizing cast members to achieve specific line readings. Ross sighs and throws up his hands. “I don’t know how these stories got started,” he says. “But I’ve found that if you spend too much time denying them, it only makes them seem more plausible.” He’s standing in his modest apartment-cum-studio in Charlotte. “As you can see,” he says, “I live a quiet and normal life.” Actually, it’s difficult to see that. His apartment is crammed with a dizzying array of samplers, cameras, video monitors, wind-up toys, anatomically correct manikins, homemade lighting rigs, glass window panes, gutted classical guitars, and wheelchair parts. Not to mention over 20,000 rare and contraband films. But more on that later. Ross cut his teeth artistically in Lexington, Kentucky. He was a prime mover in the city’s nascent noise scene, promoting concerts and playing in countless groups with local luminaries such as Ross Compton, Todd Dockery, and Matt Minter. Typically, the stories people tell about Ross from this time don’t add up to a coherent portrait. To some, he was an art-drunk incarnation of GG Allin, a tireless instigator of shit-hurling mayhem. To others, he was a professorial LaMonte Young type who patiently explored process-oriented music involving clarinets and car engines. But there’s no confusion about the impact this period had on Ross’s future film activities. As the Lexington music scene ballooned in popularity, it began to lurch out of control. Participants describe the community’s confrontational antics as similar to the Vienna Aktionists. The Aktionist films, directed by Kurt Kren, would later become an important editing touchstone for Ross. But at the time, the reality of the situation was too much. After a particularly brutal concert, Ross drove out of Lexington without a word of goodbye. He left behind a half-charred rehearsal space, a roommate with a black eye, and a thoroughly gang-raped bicycle. His back was paved with shards of broken glass. Clearly, it was time for a change. Ross relocated to Charlotte and began working at a video store. His interest in movies was fairly new. A few months before leaving Lexington, he had an epiphany while watching David Lynch’s Lost Highway that films could be abstract and actors didn’t need to have a realistic grounding. Soon he was consuming movies at an astounding clip, watching five or six per day. He began trading over the internet and through the mail with people on five continents, tracking down rarities and contraband bootlegs, amassing a huge library. Copies of Freak Orlando, Joan at the Stake, and Out 1 arrived in the mail via cryptically marked packages. This crash-course in cinephilia led to him and Daniel Stuyck launching the first website dedicated to French New Wave director Jacques Rivette. It was also during this time that an idea for making his own film began to percolate. It wasn’t long before 2 Julies was born. This first movie holds an unusual place in his filmography. Where most directors begin with short films then move into features, Ross has followed the opposite route. He leapt into movies with the 110-minute 2 Julies, then followed it up with a series of short films dubbed Baloos that constitute the main body of his work. A collaboration with KD Tolliver, the serene chamber drama of 2 Julies initially seems far removed from both Ross’s roots in the noise scene and the visually abstract work that followed. But seen from another angle, the film finds Ross pushing cinematic boundaries as aggressively as he pushed sound in Lexington, albeit in a quieter mode. The film also bears the most important hallmarks of his style: An emphasis on light and movement. These factors play a bigger part in 2 Julies than more conventional staples like plot, character, and performance. Ross subscribes to Douglas Sirk’s quote: “The angles are the director's thoughts. The lighting is his philosophy. Even to this extent: long before Wittgenstein and some of my contemporaries learned to distrust language as a true medium and interpreter of reality. So I learned to trust my eyes rather more than the windiness of words.” Ross considers light in his films first and foremost. In 2 Julies, he and Tolliver used lighting and stylized slowed-down acting to generate mood in various ways, drawing attention to both the unsettling atmosphere of the set and the grain of the digital pixels. There may not seem to be much movement in this static film, but even still objects can radiate. You see this haunting effect throughout Chantal Ackerman’s work and it’s fitfully achieved in 2 Julies as well. Shortly after 2 Julies was completed, Ross and KD Tolliver parted ways. Ross started screening films twice a week throughout Charlotte to attract new collaborators. Against all odds, he began to draw large and enthusiastic audiences to his presentations of Straub-Huillet films, Warhol installations, and obscure political documentaries like Hour of the Furnaces. Young anarchists and eco-activists were regular fixtures at these unruly cinema salons. Through his day job as a social worker, Ross also recruited people from group homes and rehab clinics to his cause. An unlikely community of rabid cinephiles began to brew in the Queen City. There’s debate about how much Ross fostered the aggressive strain of cinephilia that developed. Soon there were cells of dedicated kids who had never seen a Steven Spielberg film but watched Satantango religiously in a loop. They embraced the rhetoric that movies should bleed into life. Two women appeared everywhere dressed as the main characters from Daisies. Several vegans took up hunting after repeated viewings of The Hart of London. The eerie Harry Langdon Halloween Squad terrorized an upper class neighborhood with their bizarre slapstick antics. The Last Transmission film harnessed this manic collective energy. The initial episodes of this ongoing project were shot with Ross as ringleader and others adding ideas, music, and performances. A sense of chaotic enthusiasm is evident throughout. Last Transmission gleefully explores end of the world scenarios and creates a playful post-apocalyptic landscape. These episodes also contain hints of the insular and hermetic tone that was steadily creeping into the scene, along with drafts of paranoia and violence. Charlotte’s underground film scene finally came to a boil during a citywide screening series dedicated to Orson Welles. Factions had developed within Ross’s cineaste corps and aesthetic grudges quickly became personal. During It’s All True, a shot rang out in the theater. Ross was seen outside separating two groups of partisans, several of whom brandished knives. He was shouting things like “John Ford is not a fascist” and “Welles is not counter-revolutionary,” but nobody seemed to listen. The next morning, there were still traces of blood on the sidewalk. As the scene started to splinter, Ross decided to shift gears again. He began the Baloos series out of a desire to create films solely by himself. His apartment was transformed into an elaborate storehouse for various arcane props and costumes. He then rigged together an eccentric analog system for capturing and manipulating images. This retro assemblage of old VCRs, relays, samplers, and computer monitors is almost identical to Jean-Luc Godard’s set-up in the mid 1970s, circa Numero Deux. Ross hates digital editing and embraces the accidents created by older technology. Some of the best Baloos were generated from unaccountably striking glitches and errors. The series is evidence of being able to produce more interesting abstract visuals and effects with less. The are almost 30 Baloos to date and the series continues apace. It’s Ross’s most impressive body of work, a sprawling showcase for his visual preoccupations. The films are full of idiosyncratic and often surprising movement, alternating between delicate rhythms and sharp and jarring contrasts. There are rumors that Ross invented a series of new lens specifically for these films, but that story is probably just a testament to how often he makes the ugliness and harshness of video light look beautiful. As the series finally surfaces to the wider public, Ross himself is starting to come full circle. The Baloos have recently seen more collaborations in the spirit of Last Transmission. Music is starting to play a more important role as the films feature increasingly elaborate soundtracks. There’s also a series of Video Etudes that accompany musical performances by others, including key players from the Lexington scene such as Travis Shelton. It’s highlighted by the exceptional miniature Western Myth. In the future, Ross says he’s interested in using more actors, exploring text beyond whimsical poetry, and finding more ways to incorporate humor. “I’m trying to be more entertaining,” he says. As he tunes a homemade instrument constructed from a wooden piano-top and electric zither, Ross downplays the bizarre stories that have sprung up around him. "The sensationalism is what it is," he says. "Watch the films."