Movies: Lawrence Jordan

This wacky prequel to the 1994 blockbuster goes back to the lame-brained Harry and Lloyd's days as classmates at a Rhode Island high school, where the unprincipled principal puts the pair in remedial courses as part of a scheme to fleece the school....

The young man, played by Stan Brakhage, gets himself into a seriously comic mix-up by indulging in semi-sexual fantasies, and allowing the fantasies to take over. This is the best of my very early films and includes my first footage....

Four young men and a young woman sit in boredom. She smokes while one strums a lute, one looks at a magazine, and two fiddle with string. The door opens and in comes a young man, cigarette between his lips, a swagger on his face. The young woman laug...

First shown on January 30, 1967, FOR LIFE AGAINST THE WAR was an open-call, collective statement from American independent filmmakers disparate in style and sensibility but united by their opposition to the Vietnam War. Part of the protest festival W...

Wedding gift from Maya Deren to Geoffrey Holder; Stan Brakhage and Larry Jordan made film of wedding at Maya Deren’s invitation, told to be “as free as possible”...

The Extraordinary Child applies his developing style to broad slapstick. His friends from the previous films and the director himself play out a riotous farce about an overgrown baby who steals his father’s cigars. Everyone mugs hilariously. The movi...

An anatomy of violence. Four young men and two young women are on a drive. There's a rivalry between two guys for one of the girls. On a remote road, the car stalls. The driver hitchhikes for help. Led by the intrepid girl, the others walk toward aba...

Featuring a card game played on the body of a naked woman, Lawrence Jordan portrays male sexual frustration while slyly satirizing Hollywood reaction shots....

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...

Five years in the making, Lawrence Jordan's feature-length "alchemical autobiography" Sophie's Place takes as its inspiration the story of the Greek goddess of wisdom, Sophia. Writes Jordan, "I must emphasize that I do not know the exact significance...

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...

An accurate depiction of the basic tenets of northern Mahayana Buddhism, cast into living or "experiential" form, consistent with powerful mantras heard on the soundtrack of the film. Tarthang Tulku, a Tibetan Lama, was the advisor....

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 co...

A dance of eclectic objects. A play of demented dolls, wheels, and geriatric clocks....

A full production: sync-sound drama with cast, crew, color neg., and 16mm wide screen cut-off (normal projector and lens). My intention was to follow James Agee's idea to present "an imaginary story against a background of reality." The imaginary sto...

Cut-out animation alternated with text collages....

A ghost story with an unstructured plot set amidst the mysteries of an old house. Mood is dominant over plot, and heightened by musical accompaniement....

Painter and collage artist, Jess (Collins) performs 41 (now lost) collages to (his) selected sound bits in the manner of a turn-of-the-century nickelodeon....

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 ...

Dante's fantasy of hell, and his yearning after the Epic Poetry form of Virgil, the Latin poet. Again the magnificent illustrations of Gustav Dore, the actual inspiration for the film. Presented on each of the seventy-six illustrated first edition pl...