In 1965, Lawrence Jordan worked as an assistant to Joseph Cornell on his boxes and films. Jordan filmed his work extensively and as much as he could of the artist (and it is the only film-footage that exists of Cornell). Jordan edited the film in 1978 when he determined that it would be a kind of...

On ancient star maps of magnificent color quality, Lawrence Jordan takes the viewer out of this world into the realm of cosmic imagination. COSMIC ALCHEMY is thematically and visually consistent with his earlier shorts and yet, set to an evocative score by John Davis, Jordan has crossed into an u...

A doctor in a small town leaves his ill daughter to attend to another patient. His wife seeks his return before the health of the condition of their daughter deteriorates.

"The subject is one of impressive realism and sure to strike deep into the hearts of the spectators." — Biograph Films adver...

One of the liveliest of Mary Ellen Bute's abstract films. DADA was intended to be part of a Universal Newsreel segment, showing Bute and her partner Ted Nemeth at work in their tiny New York studio. No copies of the newsreel itself are known to exist at this time. — Cecile Starr

Sergei Eisenstein's ill-fated trip to Hollywood and then Mexico influenced many American film enthusiasts. Of all the beautiful images captured by Eisenstein in Mexico, some of the most fascinating involved rituals and dance. In the DANCE OF THE HEADS excerpt, dancers are portrayed in ecstasy. — ...

Sergei Eisenstein's ill-fated trip to Hollywood and then Mexico influenced many American film enthusiasts. Of all the beautiful images captured by Eisenstein in Mexico, some of the most fascinating involved rituals and dance. The DAY OF THE DEAD images mix masks with machine movements. — Bruce Po...

We are faking, lying, performing, stretching, translating, doctoring, manipulating, mistaking, working, earning, trying, reporting, deceiving, interpreting, demonstrating, sinking.

"We're surrounded by images. Most art is in a frame, you know it isn't real, it's in a frame. But in addition to ju...

There is a hint of an underwater circus since many of the performers are acrobats. The sea water—if that is what it is—is yellowish brown. A full-faced sun rises from the Sun King's cradle while a moon of Saturn circles the planet. The cut-out animation moves airily through a time-distorted world...

Anti-war demonstration, New York City march to Sheep Meadow. Veterans against the war, Yippies, arrests and flags of a half-forgotten revolution. Photographed in 1968; completed in 1974.

A dance of eclectic objects. A play of demented dolls, wheels and geriatric clocks. Cut-out and stop-motion animation at its formative stage, Jordan-wise.

Sachs spends a winter morning in Central Park shooting film in the snow. Holding her Super-8mm camera, she takes note of graphic explosions of dark and light and an occasional skyscraper. The stark black lines of the trees against the whiteness create the sensation of a painter's chiaroscuro. Wov...

A "found-footage" film with the original materials too shrunk to print on 16mm. The film was one of four made for the GRAVITY SPELLS project, an album of film and new music by John Davis. The title derives from text in the footage—"These Driving Demons Start Young"—and proceeds to show soap box d...

DROP CITY is a portrait of a computer desktop community. It takes its name from the first rural hippy commune in America, a settlement in southern Colorado that formed in 1965 constructed of discarded junk, salavaged car tops and other detritus fashioned into inventive living structures. A decade...

An established classic. Steel engravings form a surrealistic dream-world. It can be shown to any adventurous audience, young or old, and has never disappointed. The theme (resurrection, rebirth, flight into higher spheres) was thought to be outmoded in the art of this century. Evidently not, judg...

Objects and sounds collected on an early morning walk through Brooklyn, New York, billow against a sun-struck floor. The smallest parts of the city are up for grabs.

The Villa d'Este sculpture gardens frame the nocturnal exploits of a Baroquely-dressed masked figure darting about a waterworks of gushing fountains. Jets of water form a mesmerizing erotic fantasy paying homage to abstract visual music, early silent cinema and Sergei Eisenstein's spectacular "cr...

Arguably the most celebrated "found footage" film in existence, Joseph Cornell found a second-hand 16mm print of the early-1930s Pre-Code adventure epic EAST OF BORNEO and re-edited the footage to showcase the splendor of its star, Rose Hobart. Slowed to 18fps and commingled with documentary mate...

Motion studies of eggs which break and fall. Vulnerably, helplessly propelled into life and fleeing hordes of stampeding sperm, they generate a vision of Eden and exact revenge on the chickens.

Lawrence Jordan used forty-six Gustave Doré engravings from IDYLLS OF THE KING as settings for this 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 archetypal fo...

A series of vaudeville acts inserted between the lines of reality, meant to demonstrate the ephemerality of all things.

The walls come tumbling down. The wheels come off the wagon: thunder, lightning, explosive meditations. Everything seems to be happening all at once. Then, before you can catch your breath, it is over.

An exquisite 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.

Based upon mathematical calculations proposed by Joseph Schillinger and meticulously drawn-out by Mary Ellen Bute on animation cels, ESCAPE [SYNCHROMY NO.4] reveals Johann Sebastian Bach's TOCCATA (transcribed by Leopold Stokowski from the TOCCATA AND FUGUE IN D MINOR) as a series of pulsating li...

Suddenly, the last time in a home.