Perceptions of Light

Production still from Midsommar 2019 / Dir: Ari Aster / Image courtesy: Roadshow Entertainment

Production still from Midsommar 2019 / Dir: Ari Aster / Image courtesy: Roadshow Entertainment / View full image

When

9 Jan – 26 Apr 2026

Where

Gallery of Modern Art, Cinema A

Accessibility

  • Wheelchair Accessible

Admission

Free

About

The very essence of cinema is light. Screening alongside the exhibition 'Olafur Eliasson: Presence' at GOMA, ‘Perceptions of Light’ explores the ways in which light is harnessed by filmmakers to craft meaning, character and setting.

A strike of a match illuminating a darkened room, the dappled light of a cool forest or the oppressive baking noonday sun – like a music score, light is carefully crafted to convey the emotional register of each scene and direct the eye across the frame, making bold symbolic statements or subtly altering the impact of the narrative. From the early days of celluloid to the digital era, the technological tools of the cinematic craft – the camera’s lens, film stock and digital sensors – have been continually refined to draw in and register light in order to reflect the world back on to a cinema screen.

From the mysterious shadows of Film Noir to the French New Wave’s drive for authenticity with its use of natural light, to the technicolour lens flare in a surfing film, the way light is rendered is intrinsic to the techniques directors and cinematographers use to tell a story.

This program illuminates how filmmakers utilise lighting techniques to engage in light-focussed storytelling. Films include a painter’s passionate pursuit to capture sunlight with his brushstrokes (The Quince Tree Sun 1992), to the shadowy figures and tightly calibrated electric light in German Expressionist masterpiece Nosferatu 1922 through to the chilling Midsommar 2019 which subverts the horror genre with its relentless use of broad daylight to build tension.

Upcoming

Perceptions of Light

‘Perceptions of Light’ is presented across four interconnected thematic strands: ‘Into the Realm of Shadows’, Chasing the Sun’, The Liminal Space of Twilight and Dappled Light’ and ‘Painting with Light’.

Into the Realm of Shadow

From the hugely influential German Expressionist film movement to iconic Film Noir these films are shot in a heightened, dramatic register of stark black and whites. Throughout these films characters roam in dappled light which alludes to an in-between state, criminals lurk in a darkened underworld, a vampire’s shadow stalks across a blank white wall and faces are mysteriously obscured by moody lighting.

FW Murnau Nosferatu 1922
John Ford The Long Voyage Home 1940
Boris Ingster Stranger on the Third Floor 1940
Orson Welles Citizen Kane 1941
Jaques Tournier I Walked with a Zombie 1943
Edgar G Ulmer Detour 1945
Carol Reed The Third Man 1949
Orson Welles The Trial 1962
Akira Kurosawa High and Low 1963
Abel Ferrara The Addiction 1995
Robert Eggers The Lighthouse 2019

Chasing the Sun

‘Chasing the Sun’ features stories set in set in a bright, sun-baked register. While darkness and shadow often take centre stage in discussions of cinematographer’s use of lighting in film, this strand considers the counterpoint of stories shot in stark daylight. Films in this strand include the hauntingly beautiful, bleached landscapes of salt mines to the setting of dry desert conveying the unforgiving lawlessness of the American frontier alongside golden sunlight sparkling on ocean waves and bronzed bodies evoking a sense of paradise.

Margot Benacarraf Araya 1959
Bruce Brown The Endless Summer 1966
Sergio Leone Once Upon a Time in the West 1968
Albie Falzon Morning of the Earth 1972
Claire Denis Beau Travail 1999

The Liminal Space of Twilight and Dappled Light

The films in this selection use lighting states that sit between hard daylight and the dark of nighttime to signal ambiguity and the threshold between what is known and unknown. Famously referred to in the film industry as the golden hour, three of these films harness the allure and the otherworldly quality of sunset. A sumptuous lighting palette, twilight affords characters not only a beguiling beauty but a space outside of time and holds the promise of intrigue. Within two more films – Rashomon 1950 and Pather Panchali 1955 – these film’s characters roam in dappled light which alludes to an in-between state either of murky truth or, in the case of Pather Panchali a possible realm of sacred release.

Akira Kurosawa Rashomon 1950
Satyajit Ray Pather Panchali 1955
Terrence Mallick Days of Heaven 1978
Rainer Werner Fassbinder Querelle 1982
Albert Serra Pacifiction 2022

Painting with Light

‘Painting with Light’ features films that craft character, meaning and emotion with their thoughtful engagement with cinematic lighting conventions alongside stories that directly engage with light as a subject. Within this selection of films, a woman is driven to madness by her husband's manipulation of their house lighting, an American rural landscape dramatically elevates its story by shooting in high contrast, and an Australian film is shot using only the light of the full moon.

George Cukor Gaslight 1944
Jean-Luc Godard Breathless 1960
Bernado Bertolucci The Conformist 1970
Francis Ford Coppola The Godfather 1972
Stanley Kubrick Barry Lyndon 1975
John Hanson, Rob Nilsson Northern Lights 1978
Arnold Glassman, Todd McCarthy, Stuart Samuels Visions of Light 1992
Victor Erice The Quince Tree Sun 1992
Bela Tarr The Turin Horse 2011
Ari Aster Midsommar 2019
Reese Cleveland Sword of Silence 2024