9/6/2013 – 9/10/2013 – Lawrence Jordan retrospective at Anthology Film Archives, co-presented by Canyon Cinema Foundation
Posted September 7th, 2013 in Events and Screenings, News / Events
LAWRENCE JORDAN IN PERSON FOR THE 7PM SHOW ON FRI, SEPT. 6 & THE 11AM SHOW ON SUN, SEPT. 8!
for more information visit: http://anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/series/41431
The ceaselessly prolific, still-vital filmmaker and animator Lawrence Jordan (b. 1934) has been active in the West Coast experimental film and art scenes since 1952. Jordan was a crucial part of the San Francisco experimental film scene in the 1950s & 60s, not only as a filmmaker but also as the founder of the film society Camera Obscura (co-founded by Bruce Conner) and the 16mm screening space The Movie, and the co-founder of Canyon Cinema (which continues to distribute experimental cinema today). In 1969, he started the film department of the San Francisco Art institute, where he taught for over thirty years. He also worked for a period as an assistant to Joseph Cornell, for whom he assembled six films (and also made, covertly, a portrait of the artist, CORNELL, released in 1979).
Over the decades Jordan has created a dazzling array of works in a multitude of styles but is most widely recognized for the cutout collage films he began making at the end of the 1950s. Assembling nineteenth century Victorian engravings, Jordan made surrealist films in the tradition of Max Ernst. Following in Ernst’s footsteps in particular, Jordan used Gustave Doré engravings in his film THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER (1977), in which the eponymous Coleridge poem is read by Orson Welles. In his cutout films (notably ONCE UPON A TIME and ORB), Jordan reorganizes the images within the frame, with what he calls “alchemical” methods. Lesser-known perhaps are his non-animated films, such as VISIONS OF A CITY, BIG SUR: THE LADIES, and the epic 720-minute CIRCUS SAVAGE, completed in 2009, which we’ll be screening in its entirety!
This extensive, 7-program series, comprising 41 films, showcases Jordan’s extraordinary creativity and range, and features the first public screenings in New York of many of the 26 Jordan films preserved by Anthology between 2003-2006.
