The source footage for “Sweep” was taken during a walk Street took with his 18-month-old daughter through their Brooklyn neighborhood. Even though every image was of a scene intensely familiar to me (Street lives just a few blocks away from me), it was difficult for me to recognize the specific locales, because all of the footage is heavily hand processed with a variety of streaks, splotches of a wide range of colors, scratches, cracks, and tints. The frame rate of the images ranges from the jumpy, high-energy surge of 24fps to the slide-show-like 3fps, in which you can clearly contemplate each crack and splotch. This surface detail makes one constantly aware of the flat surface of the movie screen, never allowing one to disappear entirely into the illustionistic space of the filmed images. The playful energy of these colorful surface details adds a sense of lively commentary, and jazzy improvisation. The soundtrack consists of domestic sounds plus the father and daughters conversations (mostly the father’s). “Sweep” is a portrait of a middle aged artist regaining a sense of seeing the world through entirely new, fresh eyes, by spending time with his young child.
