Gary J. Shipley

When Mr. Shipley first shared with me his desire, to lock himself in a room with nothing but "Begotten" playing in a loop cycle, watching its images over and over again for two weeks, isolating himself from any outside influence, taking no interruption or break except to sleep, it seemed like a recipe from the writers of the old testament prophets manipulating and isolating all sense so they may unfettered by the noise of the everyday unearth their experience of the divine; Gary's approach to making "Begotten" his own in a ritual of creative-conscious engagement is a decision to no longer passively "watch" "Begotten" but to enact and digest within his own being a ritual which would remake the film inside his very temple of earth, his body. I always secretly hoped "Begotten" to be more than a movie, to be in fact an initiation for those willing to go that far. So I can only admire Gary for finding the necessary map to what makes this film belong only to those willing to unlock it. -E. Elias Merhige

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