CIRCUS SAVAGE Chapter XI
LAWRENCE JORDAN
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1h 12m
At the close of the first decade of the 2000s, Lawrence Jordan wove together a vast river of image and sound from unused film material piled-up in his studio since 1952. In essence, this is his visual autobiography, including clips from strange and unusual appropriated footage, outtakes from many of his films as well as material from uncompleted projects.
The penultimate chapter, eleventh of the twelve (representing of reels thirty-one to thirty-three), opens with accelerated shaky-cam travelogue footage accompanied by unrelated narration. Within minutes, the scenery shifts to unused and inverted animated sequences interspersed with additional points along the expedition, then collaged with silent-era footage with guest appearances by Conrad Nigel and Mary Pickford (again), a bit of illustrated debauchery, documentary footage of soap bubbles, selected scenes from the roughest stop-motion puppet version of LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD, excerpts from a red-shifted hula, a kinescope from a 1950s celebrity charades game-show—PANTOMIME QUIZ, featuring Hans Conried and others—and concluding with further selections from the bottom-to-top cut-out animation from the archives.
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