SFCINEMATHEQUE

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Sunday, May 13, 2007

Bay Area Roots: Risk & Revision

Works of Lawrence Jordan

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts





Lawrence Jordan has been making films since 1952. Most widely known for his animated collage films, of which Jonas Mekas said, “His animated (collage) films are among the most beautiful short films made today. They are surrounded with love and poetry. His content is subtle, his technique is perfect, his personal style unmistakable.” Tonight’s screening sketches out a sampler of Jordan’s films, starting with Trumpit, a 1950s ‘psychodrama’ starring Stan Brakhage, with sound by Christopher Maclaine; Pink Swine an anti-art dada collage film set to an early Beatles track; Waterlight the first of Jordan’s “personal/poetic documentaries” made in the 1950s aboard a merchant marine freighter during his days as a wandering flâneur; and Winterlight, a visual poem of the Sonoma County winter landscape. Lawrence Jordan’s four most recent films will conclude the night: Enid’s Idyll, Chateau/Poyet, Poet’s Dream, and Blue Skies Beyond the Looking Glass. (Jenn Blaylock)

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