Absence of Satan

A beautiful woman screams at something unseen off camera. Paul Newman appears eating salad and soon the famous sequence of Paul Newman closing a car door cut with a helicopter takes place. Absence of Satan is probably one of George Barber's best Scratch works and is a deft reworking of cinematic narrative and cliché. 

In this film George Barber shows off his 'Scratch video' skills. Which came about in the mid 1980's in the UK. He found films and television programmes and cut them together to make a new meaning. Its done to a beat and has been referred to as the video version of DJ scratching which was commonly used in Hip-Hop music. I liked the way the clips  made sense and moved in a rhythm, this is something that I would have liked to put in my experimental film. I didn't quite understand the images on the boat, but neither the less it complimented the video scratching.