This short piece is somewhat romantic, despite its title. We do see the ogre however. He inverts himself into the action throughout the film. As usual, the action is partly symbolic, partly surreal.
I have continued the dream-like form of disparate animated scenes, each with its own "romantic-with-an-edge" slightly surreal flavour. Scenes are sometimes run-on, sometimes separated by brief periods of darkness to relax, as in breathing, the viewing eye. There are no fancy superimpositions now,...
The Black Oud represents a subtle new direction in documentary. I have used the term 'bio-documentary' to describe this slight, though essential, difference between my film and the majority of personal or experimental documentaries made in the last decade.
In describing the basis for TRIPTYCH IN FOUR PARTS, artist Lawrence Jordan writes, "Part one is the Portrait of a North Beach artist, John Reed. Part two and three take place in the desert of the Southwestern United States and Mexico, where I went in quest of, and found, the natural habitat of the...
Against the coastline of the Big Sur country the camera catches swiftly shifting fragments of the nude women at the baths, playing the guitar, cutting the hair, sleeping. The camera movement is used to slightly smear the images onto the film emulsion in a manner parallel with the use of broad...
Lawrence Jordan used forty-six engraved Gustave Doré illustrations from "Idylls of the King" as settings for his extravagantly romantic saga. As Enid, the protagonist, is seen in a vast array of scenes from deep forests to castle keeps. Her champion is sometimes with her, sometimes away fighting...
A kinetic collage of superimposed warm, soft-colored 16mm film set to percussive jazz, Lawrence Jordan's PORTRAIT OF SHARON features beat poet Kirby Doyle on a motorcycle and Sharon "Didi" Morill, poet and onetime girlfriend of the saxophonist Gerry Mulligan, blinking her big eyes and sharing her...
Subtitled “Eros in Psyche” and set to a composition by Tomaso Albinoni, Lawrence Jordan’s rapturous live action short contemplates two nude figures in California idyll. They remain physically separated but Jordan’s spellbinding cutting and tactile camerawork suggest a loosening of...
An animation which lifts off and proceeds with the delicacy of a soap bubble. Conceived as a tiny interlude between longer films: a chance to catch one's breath after and before more aggressive works, a "time out" period for the mind to float effortlessly and free of gravity.
We are presented on the screen with a sequence of Arcadian images, the intent of which is to raise consciousness one full octave, and to give the viewer a strong hint that a stream of brightness runs through the universe. One morning, when spring was breaking in the trees, I had a euphoric...
Ancestors is a film about spiritual forefathers and mothers in a purely fanciful sense. These are classical figures, anatomical figures, fairy tale figures and romantic figures all thrown in together - all my creative root-sources, in a kind of playful tribute. Like part 2 of Duo Concertantes, it's...
The Visible Compendium constructs bits of unnamed meanings, fragments of light. Photography is, to me, not about things, but about light. Light is our primary reality when we are at the movies. Light which suggests things, the secondary reality, a construct by the mind.
Though best known for his collage films, Lawrence Jordan here makes exquisite study of the different aspects of light lilting through the early morning fog of California winter. Painterly gradations of color and juxtapositions in scale are beautifully arranged to music by Antonio Vivaldi.
The scene is set in front of a French chateau. The camera chases improbable incidents across the screen. Many are constructed out of one of Jordan's favorite engravings illustrators: Poyet. Duels occur on a tight rope. Heavier-than- air machines fly (and sometimes crash). Below guns spear exploding...
"Human qualities migrate through light and shadow... Like flames and waves, the dead and the living course through this world... without weight through space and time."
"After GYMNOPEDIES, I had long wanted to animate a film specifically for a pre-selected piano piece by [Erik] Satie. MOONLIGHT SONATA is that film. It was totally designed for the 'Gnossienne V' and the movements of the animation are timed to the overall rhythms as well as the specific beats of the...
From a central pivotal position, the camera eye (in this case, the hard and inflexible eye of Minerva) looks out upon twelve passing scenes. None of the scenes are necessarily associated with specific signs of the Zodiac. Lawrence Jordan instead assembled twelve of his collages and passed them in...
