CIRCUS SAVAGE Chapter VIII
EUTERPE
•
59m
At the close of the first decade of the 2000s, Lawrence Jordan wove together a vast river of image and sound from unused film material piled-up in his studio since 1952. In essence, this is his visual autobiography, including clips from strange and unusual appropriated footage, outtakes from many of his films as well as material from uncompleted projects.
In this eighth chapter, consisting of reels twenty-two to twenty-four, we have arrived at an off-the-rails kaleidoscopic cacophony. Jordan draws deep on his apprenticeship with Joseph Cornell in the first-half, combining material from newsreels, serials, assorted silent films—with a guest appearance by the incomparable Buster Keaton from COLLEGE (1927)—and a few projects from his years teaching at the San Francisco Art Institute, all interspersed with title-cards designed by artist Jess Collins, inverted, from FINDS OF THE FORTNIGHT (1960 / 1980). Thereafter, a handful of colorful sequences from an undated, unfinished project involving the bust of a Greek goddess, presumably entitled (if the bookended credits accurately indicate) PASSION FLOWERS OF THE MOON (1960), prefiguring his live-action THE APPARITION (1976). A notional third act opens with the "exquisite corpse" DIRECTLY TENDS, combining individual sequences by ten student animators, followed by non-fictional footage of a spider (featured earlier in Chapter III), a Tibetan art exhibition, a printshop, a Buddhist ceremony and, lastly, a return to the outdoors with a picturesque rainbow.
Musically, we are everywhere and nowhere-in-particular all at once: opening with the Flatlanders' "Baby Do You Love Me Still?" then careening into Ensemble Project Ars Nova's wonderful "Tels rit au main qui au soir" with snippets of Balinese gamelan and Indian raga interspersed with environmental found-sounds (of a lawn mower, in particular), concluding with the Balfa Brothers' "Drunkard's Sorrow Waltz" appropriately enough, a Cajun classic (albeit with an abrupt full-stop).
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