![]() Some of my students are teaching me digital now. Larry Jordan: The ’70s was the high point. We started by reminiscing about meeting as teacher and student.ĬineSource: I thought the Art Institute was beautiful, and it was especially beautiful in the ’70s. ![]() It faces in on a lush garden where he has a small but amazingly well-outfitted and complete film and fine art studio. ![]() I visited Lawrence in his lovely Petaluma home, which faces out on a field (a deer wandered by as I left). Indeed, the Toronto International Film Festival just called: they want to show ‘Cosmic Alchemy’ and ‘Beyond Enchantment,’ his two most recent films – not because he passed the submission review but because the programmers wanted him. A few years later, Cannes invited him, along with other West Coast film artists, and he has shown and lectured throughout North America and Europe. In 1970, he received a Guggenheim Award to make ‘The Sacred Art of Tibet,’ a personal doc, and became chair the Art Institute’s film department. He has created over 40 personal films and “poetic documentaries,” as he likes to call them, and three dramatic features, although he is most known for his animated collages. Since moving to the Bay Area in 1955, Jordan has immersed himself in the region’s art, poetry and mystical inner workings, as well as film scene, helping found the Canyon Cinema Cooperative, among other things. Jordan launched his journey in high school in Denver, which he attended with another personal film master, Stan Brakhage, although they only studied and watched films and didn’t make any together until after graduation. Unfortunately, no term quite hits the art from on the head, often prompting Jordan to explain, “I work with film the way an artist works with canvas,” or “The only relation has to ‘big films’ is the stuff that runs through the projector.” “Personal film” is his preferred term for what is variously labeled avant-garde, underground, alternative, art, abstract, poetic or non-narrative. In 1974, I was an over-ambitious San Francisco Art Institute student trying to shoot a feature called “Sammy Delirium.” Lawrence would calmly and deliberately dissect my scenes, neither adding a fear of the immensity of the project nor subtracting the need for rigor. Hence, he was a great teacher, my favorite at film school. I didn’t get into that.”Īnother thing that saves him: In addition to being utterly artistic and technically adept, he’s mellow and open-hearted. A lot filmmakers get stuck on the type of films they make and everything else is crap. He has also made live action films, narrative features, personal documentaries, and pieces of no discernible genre save that of “Jordan.” When I visited him recently – he looks great at 76 – he said “What saves me is that I like a lot of different things. To provide a richer feel, Jordan animates at one frame per move, as opposed to two or three, despite the doubled work load. Indeed, they are quite precise, technically as well as aesthetically. ![]() Take his 1957 short “Spectre Mystagogic:” How’s that for a Romantic title? But Jordan’s films are hardly spaced out. They suggest what a poet might have made had Edison invented film in the Romantic era. Lawrence Jordan creates handcrafted cinema, notably his dreamy animated pieces made from collages of old engravings. photo: CineSource Jordan’s Animated JourneysĪ titan of personal film, Lawrence Jordan went to high school with Brakhage, formed Canyon Cinema with Baillie, and created masterful 16mm films – and even his own genre Lawrence Jordan, a personal filmmaker, fine artist, and educator, at home in Petaluma. Posted September 14th, 2010 in Announcements, News / Events Interview with Canyon Cinema founder Lawrence Jordan ![]()
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