Music by Teiji Ito.
A combination of animated line drawings with live photography of a nude model. A play on the title (living lines, life model, procreation and hand life line).
Award: Award of Distinction, Creative Film Foundation
1960, 16mm, color/so, 7m, $20
With Becky Arnold and Mac Emshwiller.
An expression of internal anguish. The confrontation of a man and his torment. Juxtaposed against his external composure are images of a woman and lights in distortion, with tension heightened by the sounds of power saws and a heartbeat.
Award: Special Award, Brussels Experimental Film Festival
1962, 16mm, b&w/so, 5m, $20
Made in collaboration with Alvin Nikolais, featuring Murray Louis and Gladys Ballin with the Nikolais Dance Company. Electronic score by Nikolais.
A filmic interpretation of a modern dance ballet by Alvin Nikolais. Earth, fire, water and primordial mysteries in a cine-dance.
Award: Festival of Two Worlds, Spoleto, Italy
1963, 16mm, color/so, 16m, $45
Music by Stuart Scharf.
George Dumpson was a scavenger. He created a small universe with what he found and could carry on his homemade wagon. To me he epitomized the soul of the artist. He put together what things he could in such a way as to satisfy some inner need, just as I had to make this picture of him and his place.
1965, 16mm, color/so, 8m, $25
A man wonders, measures, views relationships, people, places, things, time, himself. A sensual journey through a series of subjective reflections.
"[A] beautifully photographed color montage of shots; insect, animal, man and galaxy; a sobering antidote to the orgy of subjectivism going on elsewhere." -Vincent Canby, The New York Times
"The artist's search for the meaning of his own existence is never-ending and takes many forms. Ed Emshwiller's remarkable epic, RELATIVITY, continues this exploration with extraordinary frankness and rare technical skill. The sequence which symbolically portrays a woman at the moment of sexual climax is one of the most beautiful in the literature of film." - Willard Van Dyke
"RELATIVITY is a marvelously sensual film ... it is, I have no doubt, a masterpiece." - Richard Whitehall, LA Free Press
Awards: Special Events program selection, NY Film Festival; London Film Festival; Special Jury Award, Oberhausen Film Festival.
1966, 16mm, color/so, 38m, $110
Featuring dancers Carolyn Carlson and Emery Hermans.
This is a film about Images (visual and psychological). Flesh (sensuality), and Voice (as a revelation and as a textural element in the film). The pictures range back and forth from the completely spontaneous to very formal choreography. The voice track, a collage edited into thematic sequences from a mass of interviews and informal discussions, gives an inner portrait of men and women candidly revealing their relationships. It is a non-story-telling feature film, a structured interplay of sound, image and sensual tensions.
"... the mind is subtly lured to make personal associations between visual and aural elements, and the viewer becomes a third element to the interplay. For those for whom the chemistry works, IMAGE will be a psychologically fascinating film." - Rich, Variety
Award: Most Original Film, Mannheim Festival
Exhibition: Cannes Film Festival; Edinburgh Film Festival.
1969, 16mm, b&w/so, 77m, $135
Off and on, Carol and I spent a few days in the woods filming. We got some images of her, some of trees, leaves, twigs and logs. These I combined with sounds from a thumb piano, which were sometimes modified electronically. The results: what seems to me to be a gentle, lyrical film.
Exhibition: Sorrento Film Festival
1970, 16mm, color/so, 6m, $20
A cine-dance film featuring the dancers Carolyn Carlson, Emery Hermans and Bob Beswick. The trio, first in leotards, then in blue jeans, then naked, pass through rituals of movement. They are shown in stylized, "naturalistic" and abstract images accompanied by stylized, naturalistic and abstract sounds. A series of ways of seeing the dancers. "Best (underground) picture of the year." - Camille J. Cook, Chicago Sunday Sun-Times
Exhibition: Sorrento Film Festival; Whitney Museum of American Art.
1970, 16mm, color/so, 20m, $60
Made in collaboration with Alvin Nikolais, featuring the Nikolais dance company. CHRYSALIS is the result of structuring a series of cinematic and dance ideas Nikolais and I had. The film involves the dancers in improvised choreography, varied costumes, and cinema techniques from slow motion (400fps) to pixilation. I did the sound score, using the voices of the dancers.
1973, 16mm, color/so, 21.5m, $60
A film version of computer animation done using a digital paint program at New York Institute of Technology. Originally released as a videotape.
1979, 16mm, color/so, 3m, $20