If There Be Thorns

13 min / 16mm on SD / 2009

A dark wave of exile, incest, and magic burns across the tropics, forging a knotted trail into the black hole. Three star-crossed siblings wander in search of one another as a storm of purple prose and easy listening slowly engulfs them.

"Michael Robinson continues to make work like no one else. His deft combinations of pop and cultural artifacts are just so intuitively right and never devolve into simple post-modernist pastiche or cultural commentary. They move beyond that to become something deeper, more mysterious, and less fathomable. The word that keeps coming to mind is uncanny: his work feels haunted by a time out of time. His newest video, If There Be Thorns, is his most narratively-bent work yet. He fashions an elusive tale of siblings – with hints of social withdrawal, incest and tragedy – through fragments from horror author V.C. Andrews, William S. Burroughs, Stevie Nicks and others. There is an uneasy quality to Robinson’s work, a vaguely troubling glimpse beneath the surface of things into a dark place he never lets one actually see. Strangely, there is also a simultaneous feeling of euphoria in his work – suggestions of redemption or grace or peace. There is no dark without light, after all." - Patrick Friel, Senses of Cinema