Jerry Orr

"Jerry Orr is an audio-visual alchemist. He does with the two-dimensional image of film and video what Einstein has done to the three dimensions of space and time ... made it relative and so very elastic!" - Mike Kuchar

In 1975, I co-founded (with Gary Adlestein and Jerry Tartaglia) Berks Filmmakers, Inc., a nonprofit media arts center in Reading, Pennsylvania, and in 1977 became administrative director. Berks Filmmakers has attained national recognition as a first-rate showcase for personal, experimental film. I served on the Pennsylvania Council on the Media Arts advisory panel (1977-1980), the Special Projects panel (1978-1979), and the Artist-in-the-Schools panel (1978). I have made numerous Super 8, 16mm films and 8mm videos which have been exhibited throughout the United States, Canada, Great Britain and Europe. Recently, several of my works were included in MoMA's "Big As Life: An American History of 8mm Film." An article about my sculptural screen work was published in the July 1985 issue of Spiral. I have received six filmmaking grants through the NEA/AFI Mid-Atlantic Media Arts Fellowship program, two PCA media arts production grants and two PCA media fellowships. Served as Artist in Residence through BCTV (1994, 1995).

My aesthetic passion is to explore the manner in which moving image arts reveal new profiles of "reality," and to explore how a cinematic world emerges that is constitutive of itself. The intention is to assert the validity of personal visionary work in the face of a cultural climate that undercuts its legitimacy, and to challenge the notion that political correctness is limited to circumscribed film/video genres. It is important to maintain the awareness that from ancient (Confucius) to contemporary (R.D. Laing) thinkers, it has been taught that the first and primary political act is to transform individual human consciousness. For me, the medium of film and video becomes the vehicle to articulate this fundamental tenet.

Films