Lewis Klahr

A short animation film by Lewis Klahr.

An associative montage with color flicker accents that riffs off the mythology of hedonistic musicians and seedy Hollywood hotels. The song is by my good friend Bryan Senti who performed under the moniker of Ex Mykah for this his pop Lp debut.—L.K.

This ain’t no Pixar. This is ain’t no Disney. This ain’t no foolin’ around. ANXIOUS ANIMATION presents six contemporary film artists who take us into surreal worlds of delirium and paranoia… The reigning proponent of cut-and-paste, LEWIS KLAHR nourishes intensely private visions on the compost heap of collective fantasy through old magazines, comic books, and cocktail iconography.Complex, full of charm, and pervaded by themes of loss, JANIE GEISER simultaneously creates and deconstructs fantasies through doll-like figurines, cut-outs, and found objects in her cryptic narratives.JIM TRAINOR’s handmade animations explore the inner lives of animals that appear strangely self-aware even as they instinctually copulate, feed, fight, kill and die.The Bay Area collective of RODNEY ASCHER, SYD GARON, and ERIC HENRY conjure diabolical visions with digital savvy, accompanied by the manic music of Buckethead and DJ Q-Bert.

A striking elaboration on a signature style, with “story” all but evacuated, Circumstantial Pleasure’s six episodes proceed less like an album of potent recollections and more like a stream of agitated consciousness.

The series begins with Nimbus Smile, which depicts a love triangle in 1960s New York set to the Velvet Underground's 'Pale Blue Eyes.'

"My most comprehensive working through of who this Deep Sea Diver figure is that has periodically haunted my collage animations from the first one I ever created through the last two decades. A mythic investigation of the outsider in American culture. Created as a complimentary counterweight to the series’ title film and finale, Daylight Moon." - Lewis Klahr

A three act (a song an act) melodrama about the coming of age of the American counterculture in the 60's and 70's as a generation moves from innocence to experience; idealism to disillusion to attempted re-integration. Highlights include rephotographed super 8 home movie footage of an alternative high school and a full blown hippie wedding. The climactic film from my feature length series ENGRAM SEPALS (Melodramas 1994-2000) which traces a history of American intoxication from World War 2 to the 1970's.

An amnesiac noir and city symphony, Klahr’s first black and white film in almost a decade, contemplates inner and outer voids; an opaque consciousness and the decaying civilization it finds itself within. The film’s trench-coated protagonist is a walking shadow, a lonely silhouette that traverses painted and photographed cityscapes of 20th century New York City. The impressions and atmospheres invoked recall the late Peter B. Hutton’s NEW YORK PORTRAIT, to whom the film is dedicated.