Now Available: Jean Sousa’s Jane and Pattern Impulse + Additional Digital Files
Posted October 15th, 2026 in Announcements, New Acquisitions, New Digital Files, News / Events
Canyon Cinema is pleased to announce that digital exhibition files of Jane (1977/2025) and Pattern Impulse (1979), by the Chicago-based artist Jean Sousa, are now available. Along with these two titles that are new to the catalog, we’ve added new digital files of Sousa’s The Circus (1977), What Am I Doing Here (1978), Swish (1982), and Today is Sunday (1987), previously available on 16mm film, to the collection.
In addition, we’re delighted to relay the news that Chicago Film Society has embarked on a new project to restore five of Sousa’s films on their original 16mm format, including Summer Medley (1977), Ellen on the Rope (1978), Pattern Impulse, What Am I Doing Here, and Swish, with support from the National Film Preservation Foundation.
For more information on Sousa’s work, visit: jeansousaart.com/
Jane (1977/2025, 3 minutes, color, sound, digital file)
Jane was filmed in the woods while at the MIT Summer Film Institute for Film, Photography & Video. The inspiration for the film was finding a pit in the woods with a rope hanging from a tree, a readymade film set. The title is a reference to both my mother’s name and to Tarzan & Jane, a popular 50’s tv series. The visual effects involved processing the film at rising developer temperatures combined with optical printing.
Today is Sunday (1987, 20 minutes, b&w, sound, 16mm or digital file)
Today is Sunday is both a still life and a landscape film in which the characters are described by nature. The relationship of the man and woman is articulated in dialogue with the external environment of clouds, wind, and waves.
Swish (1982, 3 minutes, color, silent, 16mm or digital file)
This film deals with the physical properties of the film medium, and pushing those distinctive features to their limit. The subject of the film is motion, and it is an attempt to get inside of it. It was made with a moving subject and a moving camera with an open shutter, the result being that each frame is unique, without the smooth continuity that is expected in film. The subject, a female body at close range, provides an intimacy and eroticism. At the same time it can be seen as a modern version of Futurist simultaneity.
Pattern Impulse (1979, 3 minutes, color, sound, digital file)
Originally this handmade film was a score for musicians to play. Each graphic symbol represents a particular instrument, establishing an image-sound relationship that combines and alternates to create a variety of rhythms and instrumentation. The sound track is from a recording of a live performance and reveals the anticipation of the performers.
What Am I Doing Here (1978, 15 minutes, color, silent, 16mm or digital file)
What Am I Doing Here is a reworking of a performance piece that involved all the permutations of five words, five notes, and five movements. The film puts flesh on the bones of the performance. Acting out various scenarios using footage from my private life, I answer the permutations of the questions. Within the film is documentation from the original performance, myself in black leotard enacting the five positions with their corresponding word.
The Circus (1977, 6 minutes, color, sound, 16mm or digital file)
“Sousa begins with the footage of performers in the midst of their activities. She then alters the choreography (via optical printing and extensive processing) into a slower, sometimes nearly still, dance of colors and shapes freed of lifelike requirements. Her concern with physicality divides its targets equally between the performing bodies and the film within which they are activated. The Circus flattens the flamboyant action into graphic details, dissolving those details further into mere traces, striations of color, and the pure movement of film grain.” (B. Ruby Rich, Chicago Reader)
