''Lemon'' is a 1969 American experimental short film directed by Hollis Frampton. It shows a lemon under slowly changing lighting conditions.

Description

''Lemon'' shows a single lemon in a fixed position, with lighting that changes over the course of the film. At the beginning of the film, the yellow surface appears against a black background, with one end protruding on the right. As the light becomes brighter, more of the lemon becomes visible. The left side of the lemon becomes covered in shadow until only the outline of the right side of the lemon can be seen. After the image briefly

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s to black, a

back light In lighting design, backlighting is the process of illuminating the subject from the back. In other words, the lighting instrument and the viewer face each other, with the subject in between. This creates a glowing effect on the edges of the ...

appears. The lemon becomes a dark silhouette against a bluish background. The film ends with a dedication.

Production

Frampton spent an hour and a half selecting a suitable lemon. He wanted one that would be the "most breastlike, most splendidly citroid." A confused produce manager watched what he was doing, and Frampton ended up purchasing half a dozen lemons. Frampton shot the film using a Bolex camera. To keep the light source at a fixed distance, he tethered it to a taut wire. He filmed at a higher speed, manually moving the light. Between each take, he had to wind the camera and move the light back slightly. Five dissolves were needed to join the shots into what otherwise resembles a single continuous take. ''Lemon'' is dedicated to artist Robert Huot. Frampton had discussed James Joyce's 1922 novel ''

Ulysses Ulysses is one form of the Roman name for Odysseus, a hero in ancient Greek literature. Ulysses may also refer to: People * Ulysses (given name), including a list of people with this name Places in the United States * Ulysses, Kansas * Ulysse ...

'' with Huot and told him about a statistical study performed on the text. He said an unusually large number of ''

hapax legomena In corpus linguistics, a ''hapax legomenon'' ( also or ; ''hapax legomena''; sometimes abbreviated to ''hapax'', plural ''hapaxes'') is a word or an expression that occurs only once within a context: either in the written record of an entire ...

'' appeared in it, such as the word ''lemon'' appearing in a mention of lemon plait. Huot proposed that Joyce had begun with the set of words that were used only once and then added language surrounding them. Frampton considered ''Lemon'' "a film that points toward painting", so he included a prominent dedication to Huot, remembering Huot's explanation as a painter's conception of working in a different medium.

Release

Frampton was financially successful with ''Lemon'', in part because of the low cost to produce the film. In a review for the ''

Chicago Reader The ''Chicago Reader'', or ''Reader'' (stylized as ЯEADER), is an American alternative weekly newspaper in Chicago, Illinois, noted for its literary style of journalism and coverage of the arts, particularly film and theater. It was founded by a ...

'', Fred Camper called the film "elegant and humorous", comparing the lighting effects to

lunar phase Concerning the lunar month of ~29.53 days as viewed from Earth, the lunar phase or Moon phase is the shape of the Moon's directly sunlit portion, which can be expressed quantitatively using areas or angles, or described qualitatively using the t ...

s. It has become one of Frampton's most famous films. ''Lemon'' was released for home media in 2012, as part of the Criterion Collection's ''A Hollis Frampton Odyssey'' on Blu-ray and DVD. British artist Simon Martin has made reference to the film in his work. His 2010 ''Untitled'', shown at the British Art Show, recreates ''Lemon'' as a digital animation. Martin's "Lemon 03 Generations (Turn It Around version)" used a projection of ''Lemon'', reprocessed digitally to deliberately compromise the image quality.

References

External links

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''Lemon''
at the Film-Makers' Cooperative {{Hollis Frampton 1960s avant-garde and experimental films 1969 short films American silent short films Films about food and drink Films directed by Hollis Frampton Lemons One-shot films Silent films in color 1960s American films