With Dennis Benson, Irene Fizer and Andrew Daddio. Music composed by Michael Nigrin. Performed by the Carnegie-Mellon University Woodwind Ensemble.

"GRADIVA deals with a man who constructs/creates an idealized image of a woman, seductive but false. However, there also exists a real Gradiva, a person, who, seeking to slowly wean the hero from his obsession, consents to play at the ideal for a time so as 'not to awaken the dreamer too abruptly; gradually to unite myth and reality.' For Freud and Barthes the amorous experience stimulates the analytic cure. In Nigrin's film, Gradiva soon tires of the game. The film deals with the point of loss. Gradiva is intangible, fading in and out, always a step away, no matter the speed of approach. Gradiva is ambiguous, a mirror image, kind and gentle, false and deadly. The hero is caught in a web and is not as sympathetic as he may at first appear. He has consented to spin the web; he creates the scenario in which he is forced to act." - Dennis Benson

Awards: Cash Prize, First Festival of Experimental Film, Experimental Film Coalition, Chicago, 1984; First Prize, Athens Int'l Film Festival, Ohio, 1985.