French Windows

French Windows is a visual interpretation of the song 'One of These Days' – an instrumental track, containing a single dark-humoured lyric: "One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces" (a rare vocal from Pink Floyd’s drummer, Nick Mason). The film opens with a silhouetted figure, in a bare monochromatic room, seated next to a set of French windows from which the piece takes its name. Emes then takes the viewer through these windows, into a world that erupts with colour and four dancers against ever changing backgrounds full of abstract architecture, geometric patterns and surreal spatial perspectives. Eventually the opening silhouette falls through these psychedelic patterns into a cloudy night sky. The powerful opening and closing imagery appear to be a clear visual nod to both The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland.

The striking visual imagery of French Windows encapsulates the psychedelic trends of the early 1970s in popular culture, and a wider legacy from historical artworks and movements. Emes studied Surrealism and Dadaism at university, inspired by the works of Magritte, Dali, and De Chirico. Emes’ art, including French Windows, incorporates ideas from these artists, as well as the optical illusions and contradictory spaces of Escher. Emes’ experimental practice also looked to novel visual effects at the time, including Douglas Trumbull’s recent invention of the slit-scan in 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968) to create futuristic, abstract landscapes of transcending time.