Animation. The theme is weightlessness. Objects and characters are cut loose from habitual meanings as well as tensions and gravitational limitations. A lyric Erik Satie track accompanies the film. Such a portrait seems necessary from time to time to remind us that equilibrium and harmony are possible and that we will not dissolve into a jelly if we allow ourselves to relax into them: a horseman rides through the landscape, through the town, but never arrives anywhere in particular. An acrobat swings on a rope above a canal in Venice and is content just to swing there. Nothing threatens to disturb them. This film is a total contrast to the Kafka-like oddities of Eastern European animation.
"It is impossible not to hallucinate on your own while watching it." - Lita Eliseu, East Village Other
The strangeness of HAMFAT ASAR is laced with carefully molded apocalypses as the filmmaker explores a vision of life beyond death. A moving single picture. Evolving the structure or script for the film involved a process of controlled hallucination, whereby the filmmaker sat quietly without movin...
For the first time, Lawrence Jordan animated hand-painted engraved cut-outs on a full-color background. The film is mood-filled: a duel scene in a snowy forest, obviously the morning after a masquerade ball. Harlequin lies dying, while Red Indian walks away with the wings of victory. The woman be...
From a central pivotal position, the camera eye (in this case, the hard and inflexible eye of Minerva) looks out upon twelve passing scenes. None of the scenes are necessarily associated with specific signs of the Zodiac. Lawrence Jordan instead assembled twelve of his collages and passed them in...