Studio Films
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Cornell, 1965
I worked as Joseph Cornell's assistant during the summer and fall of 1965, during which time I shot four rolls of Kodachrome 16mm film in and around Cornell's house. The scenes included a brief biographical glimpse of Cornell and his work, as well as his working environment, which is perhaps the...Watch Movie
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The Sacred Art of Tibet
The making of THE SACRED ART OF TIBET was a long and arduous process. And, it made a deep impression in my life. The film culminated a long period of research into Northern Buddhist philosophy. I met an extraordinary lama from a land that has caused Westerners so much romantic...Watch Movie
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Gymnopédies
Lawrence Jordan took not only the music but the title from Erik Satie. These three pieces are probably the most famous of Satie's musical series. The precise sense of the word "gymnopédies" is unknown. Etymologically it denotes the goings on of named (gymno) children (paidos); yet here the word...Watch Movie
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The Apoplectic Walrus
Joanna wanted a film on the collages of Max Ernst, and I wanted to make a tribute to the two men who most influenced my film work at the beginning: Max Ernst (collage) and Luis Bunuel (surrealism in cinema). I had written a book of about one-hundred pages in the surrealist...Watch Movie
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Big Sur
In describing the process of BIG SUR, artist Lawrence Jordan writes, "As with RODIA-ESTUDIANTINA only one shot, which probably was the result of lapse in concentration, was deleted from the original camera roll. This film was intended to extend my experiments with the 'in-camera' film, and is...Watch Movie
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Night Light
This is a classic Jordan animation, primarily in B/W, with touches of color. Actually, the engraved art work was filmed on color negative, so that subtle variations in tone are recorded. The mood—enhanced by John Davis' original music—is dream–like. It is both lyric and crackling, producing a...Watch Movie
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Our Lady of the Sphere
Of all my films, this is the most popular to date. Unfortunately, it is also the most cartoon-like and has an almost visible storyline: the young boy's travels through terror, death and the Underworld. My own conception of the circus sequence in the film connotes the world's...Watch Movie
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Cosmic Alchemy
On ancient star maps of magnificent color quality, experimental animator Lawrence Jordan takes the viewer out of this world into a world of cosmic imagination. COSMIC ALCHEMY is thematically and visually consistent with Jordan's earlier shorts and yet, set to an evocative score by John Davis, the...Watch Movie
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Pink Swine
One of Lawrence Jordan's earliest animated films, PINK SWINE is an energetic and playful mix of various animation styles. Described as "an anti-art dada collage film," this free-form short presents cut-out images animated across old photos (a style picked up by Terry Gilliam a few years later)...Watch Movie
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Adagio
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 inhibition. Parisian fountains and classical statues signal the deep cultural bedrock...Watch Movie
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Moonlight Sonata
After GYMNOPEDIES, I had long wanted to animate a film specifically for a pre-selected piano piece by Eric 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...Watch Movie
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Duo Concertantes
DUO CONCERTANTES has two parts, THE CENTENNIAL EXPOSITION and PATRICIA GIVES BIRTH TO A DREAM BY THE DOORWAY. Both PATRICIA and HAMFAT ASAR (made the following year), the two most spectacular of Lawrence Jordan's animated works, operate against the backdrop of a fixed scene....Watch Movie
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Solar Sight
In describing the foundations for SOLAR SIGHT, artist Lawrence Jordan writes, "A question I had in mind was: what's the place of the human being in the cosmos? More and more we think about what is 'beyond.' Less and less is art concerned. I don't know why. The question seems a bit grandiose but I...Watch Movie
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The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
I wanted to depict the complete [Samuel Taylor Coleridge] poem via [Gustave] Doré illustrations, yet infuse with dream-irrelevancies that would carry the film at least one step out of the realm of the merely filmic illustrations of a poem. I tried to infiltrate the world of...Watch Movie
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Visions of a City
Sepia toning lends a romantic (even wistful) quality to Larry Jordan's film VISIONS OF A CITY, which he shot in San Francisco in 1957 and edited in 1978. The pace is unirritating, in contrast to the San Francisco of today; but unlike the equal weight Helen Levill gives to all...Watch Movie
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Orb
A compact, full-color cut-out animation as ephemeral as the colors swimming on the surface of a soap bubble. The eternal round shape, the orb (sun, moon, symbol of the whole self) balloons its inimitable and joyous course through scene after scene of celestial delight, fixing at last as the...Watch Movie
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Poet's Dream
The poet dreams a maiden's bubbles through edifices of forest and eclectic contagion. Yet another extraordinary work from filmmaker/animator/artist Lawrence Jordan that cleverly repurposes and rearranges pre-existing materials, crafting a compelling (albeit brief) narrative out of otherwise...Watch Movie
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Trumpit
Lawrence Jordan shot TRUMPIT in the basement of a house on Baker Street in San Francisco that he shared with Stan Brakhage in the mid-1950s. Brakhage himself stars in the film (along with Yvonne Fair). Featuring a card game played on the body of a naked woman, Jordan portrays male sexual...Watch Movie
