“A kind of stripped-down Eraserhead, shot in low-contrast black and white in the style of cheap '40s porn loops, the film is set inside a single room that looks like the basic set you'd find in an acting class—a table with a chair at either end and a bed. The room is occupied by a stolid-looking guy and his cat and is visited repeatedly by a pudgy woman who strips off her clothes, gets on the bed, and has sex with the man. Sometimes the sex scenes are so softly focused and underexposed you can't tell what's going on. At other times, you see more than you would want. The woman has a large hideous growth on her back (rather like the phallic growth in Marilyn Chambers's armpit in Cronenberg's Rabid). Soon the man discovers a similar growth on his shoulder. Midway through the film, an exterminator knocks at the door. After that, dead insects and rodents put in an appearance. Inevitably, the corpse of the cat turns up as well. Migrating Forms has a formal purity and obsessive power that's all too rare these days.”
– Amy Taubin, The Village Voice
“Reminiscent of early Lynch and Scorsese escapades, Fotopoulos's exquisitely minimalist black-and-white experiment is a surprising treat that leaves us holding a messy array of enigmas in our laps. It's a weird, disturbing work of elemental cinema made by a particularly obsessive ‘independent filmmaker’—a breed that has become increasingly rare and less pure in America.”
- Cis Bierinckx, City Pages
"Migrating Forms is as complete a vision as any film has the right to be, and generates more intrigue and mystery than most ever do."
- Walker Art Center
1999,16mm, b/w, 80 min, sound mono (filmed 1997)
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