There is a hint of an underwater circus since many of the performers are acrobats. The sea water—if that is what it is—is yellowish brown. A full-faced sun rises from the Sun King's cradle while a moon of Saturn circles the planet. The cut-out animation moves airily through a time-distorted world...

A dance of eclectic objects. A play of demented dolls, wheels and geriatric clocks. Cut-out and stop-motion animation at its formative stage, Jordan-wise.

A "found-footage" film with the original materials too shrunk to print on 16mm. The film was one of four made for the GRAVITY SPELLS project, an album of film and new music by John Davis. The title derives from text in the footage—"These Driving Demons Start Young"—and proceeds to show soap box d...

An established classic. Steel engravings form a surrealistic dream-world. It can be shown to any adventurous audience, young or old, and has never disappointed. The theme (resurrection, rebirth, flight into higher spheres) was thought to be outmoded in the art of this century. Evidently not, judg...

Lawrence Jordan used forty-six Gustave Doré engravings from IDYLLS OF THE KING as settings for this extravagantly romantic saga. As Enid, the protagonist, is seen in a vast array of scenes from deep forests to castle keeps, her champion is sometimes with her, sometimes away fighting archetypal fo...

A series of vaudeville acts inserted between the lines of reality, meant to demonstrate the ephemerality of all things.

The walls come tumbling down. The wheels come off the wagon: thunder, lightning, explosive meditations. Everything seems to be happening all at once. Then, before you can catch your breath, it is over.

An exquisite animation which lifts off and proceeds with the delicacy of a soap bubble. Conceived as a tiny interlude between longer films: a chance to catch one’s breath after and before more aggressive works; a "time out" period for the mind to float effortlessly and free of gravity.

A seraphic exploration of the unreal in a cut-out collage, where the fairies frolic amongst butterflies and other interlopers in their two-dimensional realm.

The title tells the tale: behind-the-scenes during the filming of the legendary live-action feature-length film by Lawrence Jordan. Transferred from the original 8mm footage and presented sans soundtrack (as the initial material was photographed without sound). Filmed during the mid-1970s in Layt...

A series of surreal titles are rapidly alternated with cut-out animation. The titles are often simple and the words and images combine easily into an eerie flickering superimposition. Lawrence Jordan was interested in pressing this technique to the limit of informational overload. Sometimes the e...

In the THE FORTY-AND-ONE NIGHTS, painter and collage artist Jess (Collins) performs his "Didactic Nickelodeon" of forty-one (now lost) collages to (his) selected sound bits in the manner of a turn-of-the-century cinematic jukebox.

The second—albeit completed first—of the H.D. TRILOGY (consisting of THE BLACK OUD, this film and STAR OF DAY). Adapted from THE GROVE OF ACADEME, the second part of HERMETIC DEFINITION.

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 pos...

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...

A repository of fashion, pleasure and instruction, HARPER'S BAZAR first appeared in 1867 as a weekly publication showcasing European fashion for prosperous women on the opposite side of the Atlantic. Lawrence Jordan uses these nascent materials (before the magazine expanded to an additional "A" t...

A foolish magician concocts a potion which fails to do its intended job. A fairy queen turns into a mortal woman and must confront the dazzlement of the world of humans. A gnome steals a princess and a wicked queen traps them all. Who can help them? Who can untangle the web?

"A group of Californ...

Everything new is old again (with Lawrence Jordan and Erik Satie in another visual-and-audible collaboration across the decades).

A celebration of the filmmaker's daughter's birth. The blazing garden as metaphor for the cycle of life.

The fantasy of hell from Dante Alighieri and his yearning after the Epic Poetry form of Virgil, the Latin poet. Once again, featuring the magnificent illustrations of Gustav Doré, the actual inspiration for the film. Presented on each of the seventy-six illustrated first-edition plates, a fast-mo...

Famous assemblage artist George Herms displays drawings on butcher paper while Lorna Star, the daughter of the filmmaker, plays with colors of light.

A little boy swings, breaks sticks, looks up into the sky, himself a cherub, while on the soundtrack Chad and Jeremy sing, "...and if a hundred boys should die, we can send a hundred more." An anti-war film made in the Vietnam era. Apt then and apt always.

A woman reads Philip Lamantia's poem (from which the film gets its title) which evokes masculine angst as a hand acts out the scenario of the poem.

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...