ALLURES (1961) by Jordan Belson
Saturday, September 27, 2025, 12:00 pm
Jordan Belson: COSMOGENESIS (Day 2)
A Symposium of Transcendental Films, Lectures, Performances and Visual Arts
Presented in association with Gray Area and BAMPFA
Festival passes and individual event tickets here
Float into COSMOGENESIS, a weekend-long journey of transcendental films, lectures and live performances celebrating the visionary art and cosmic cinema of Jordan Belson.
Jordan Belson (1926-2011) was a San Francisco-based artist and abstract cinematic filmmaker. Over six decades he created sublime, spiritually oriented films, referred to as “Cosmic Cinema” by theorist Gene Youngblood in his 1972 book Expanded Cinema. His films are influenced by many subjects including yoga, Buddhism, mandalas, Indian holy men, Tibetan mysticism, theosophy, Egyptology, Rosicrucianism, Kabbalah, Jung, magic, Tantra, alchemy, symbolism, astronomy, Japanese mon design, Arabic patterns, optical phenomena and science imagery.
From 1957–59, Belson collaborated with electronic music pioneer Henry Jacobs on the late night series Vortex: Experiments in Sound and Light at San Francisco’s Morrison Planetarium, an early antecedent of today’s “immersive experiences,” using 30-channels of projection and surround sound.
This program includes screenings of rarely seen, newly preserved 16mm films and selected digital preservations from the archive in collaboration with the Belson Estate and curator Raymond Foye.
Day 1 · Day 2 · Day 3
festival passes and individual event tickets here
Day 2: Saturday, September 27
Listening Room
12–1:30pm
Tickets here
Belson autoharp music and sound compositions, Belson taped interviews (by Paul Fillinger), and immersive visual projections. (Note that this is a different Listening Room program from that presented Sunday.)
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Light Structures with L u m i a
2:30–4pm
Tickets here
Lecture and screenings on Belson’s major 1970s works with archivist L u m i a.
A lecture and screening focused on several of Belson’s major works from the 1970’s including World, Music of the Spheres and Infinity. L u m i a will also present an overview of and discuss the filmography of Jordan Belson. L u m i a is an independent archivist and filmmaker and an advisor to the estate of Jordan Belson. They have assisted in organizing and cataloging Belson’s papers and working materials left behind in his studio.
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The Archival Impermanence Project
5–6:30pm
Tickets here
Ross Lipman & Isabella Scaffidi on restoring Belson’s films in the digital age.
This illustrated lecture doubles as an introduction to our newly commenced project to restore and remaster the cinema of Jordan Belson in contemporary digital cinema formats and 35mm film prints, and as a Bay Area launch for Ross Lipman’s new book, The Archival Impermanence Project. In tandem with our colleagues at the Pacific Film Archive and multiple funding partners, the Jordan Belson Estate is proud to announce an ambitious restoration agenda addressing as many of his films as possible in the coming years. Isabella Scaffidi will begin with a short talk on the current state of the Belson film archive. Ross Lipman will then look at the current state of independent film restoration through the prism of his unique book, beginning with a discussion of some of the classic films he’s previously worked on that bear relevance to our project, including Bruce Conner’s CROSSROADS. From there, Lipman will present an overview of the work we’ll be undertaking.
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The VORTEX Legacy with Doug McKechnie
7:30–9:30pm
Tickets here
Moog pioneer revisits Belson’s iconic VORTEX concerts with live sound and film.
Doug McKechnie is one of the last people alive who attended the VORTEX concerts (1957–59) and he later revived a version of VORTEX in 1973 with Belson’s permission and consultation. A pioneer of the Moog synthesizer, he performed on the Grateful Dead album Aoxomoxoa (1969) and appeared live with the band. Also in 1969 McKechnie used the Moog synthesizer for a performance of Terry Riley’s In C at the San Francisco Opera House. Other performances included The Family Dog concert hall, the opening of Frank Oppenheimer’s Exploratorium and the first ever concert at the Berkeley Art Museum. McKechnie will lecture, screen films and perform live soundtracks.
SCREENING (subject to change):
RAGA (1957) (7 min). Screened as digital video.
SÉANCE (1959) (3.5 min) Screened as digital video.
ALLURES (1961) (9 min) Screened as digital video.