Eurika!

My current loves of film of late have been Joseph Cornell, Sergei Eisenstein, Nathanial Dorsky (no video available, he is analog only), Stan Brakhage, and the greatest editor/artist of all time: Dziga Vertov! I thought I was the first person to enmesh these giants together and create my art by their guiding voice. But, as it turns out, I was mistaken. There was another...

I was in Virgin today trying to get in on the sales that are going on before the billion dollar rip-off machine finally closes down ($34 dollars for a dvd?), I had intended on buying a Murnau box set that I saw in there the other day for $44.99. When much to my chagrin, it turns out the price had magically shot up to $70. So I began combing the store in search of something more reasonable when I happened upon a little DVD box set hidden amongst the others that caught my eye rather out of the blue.

It sounded interesting. Cut-out animation, non-narrative story, fantasy worlds, everything I've been looking for since I started my trek into the avant garde underbelly of the film world. Also, one of the films was narrated by Orson Welles himself. Pretty hard to go wrong with that.

As I looked at the booklet and stared at the art inside the slip case, I became entranced.






I had found the missing piece to the great puzzle: Les Filmes de Monsieur Lawrence Jordan.


It turns out the man was Brakhage's friend in High School, devoured Eisensteinin college and studied under Cornell after his graduation. Which is really no surprise, since his films look like moving Cornells. They're a dreamscape of stream of consciousness animation in 19th Century woodcuts. He saw his work as a way to re-invent society. The woodcuts inject something we have lost, a reminder of the way we used to be. Interesting fact, the naked man and the toga wearing woman in the video are from two of films earliest works. The man from one of Muybridge's many studies of motion, and the woman from an Edison film. This simple clash between the scientific film and the escapist film is a continuing theme throughout his work. Don't let that dissuade you, his world is very accessible and incredibly inspirational. You can definitely tell he and Brakhage were friends despite the completely different use of the medium.

If you have the time, I highly recommend Netflixing the first disc of "The Lawrence Jordan Album." And just watch "Our Lady of the Sphere." It's a fantastic surrealist journey that takes Mellies, Cornell, Dali and Eisenstein to the next meta-textual level. He may not be my favorite filmmaker of all time, but he is certainly in the top ten.