Log in
Peter von Ziegesar

Directing

Peter von Ziegesar

Franz Peter von Ziegesar (born October 1, 1952) is an American writer and filmmaker. In 2013 he authored the memoir The Looking Glass Brother.

Known For

ArrifleshArriflesh · 1974
Arriflesh
1974
Movie
Arriflesh is a diary film recording a period I spent, very much at loose ends, dividing my time between Vermont and New York City. During those months I was also filming Horseflesh, so they are companion films. Various friends filled my universe in that confused, interim period: Cindy Revel, Margery Cohen, Tony Heath, and a bearded neighbor who was perpetually collecting scrap wood and who eventually made me a very complete astrological chart. In imitation of Jack Kerouac's Ray Smith in The Dharma Bums, I would walk up into the snowy hills every afternoon to meditate alone among the trees, with the same results as Kerouac…nada and a sense of the stony muteness of nature. This whole period was colored by memories of a teenage cousin who’d shot himself in a house just a few miles away, two years before. Like my bearded neighbor I was collecting scraps in the hope that they would someday come together into a cohesive whole.
AlaskaAlaska · 1980
Alaska
1980
Movie
Alaska is the visual artifact of a two-week trip, in 1976, to Homer, Alaska, where my sister was marrying the son of a homesteader. Many of the issues that drove Concern for the City are present in this film, which preceded and inspired it. As compared to New York City, the setting for Concern, Alaska is a place where nature still overwhelms and has to be respected, where man and his works remain just a tiny dot on the rugged landscape. This is changing, of course, and the Alaska mindset is to try to control, vanquish and feed from the natural environment. Yet it is a far more even contest in the north.
Luella LuellaLuella Luella · 1975
Luella Luella
1975
Movie
A diary film, recording the summer weeks I spent with Robin Hill at her cousin’s house in Vermont where she’d been hired as a baby-sitter.
FacesFaces · 1977
Faces
1977
Movie
Influenced by Andy Warhol’s “Screen Tests” I set about recording some of the artists who populated my world in Kansas City during the 70s.
WhalesWhales · 1980
Whales
1980
Movie
This is a diary film shot at the same time as my edited sound film, Alaska. The film reflects my awe as I accompanied my sister, Olga, a marine biologist, and her research partner Beth as they conducted whale research in Prince William Sound, among ice floes and cetaceous beasts larger than our small inflated boat.
EmmaEmma · 1976
Emma
1976
Movie
A cat climbs a screen, men squat on the pavement to gamble behind a 7-11, solarized film warbles in and out. A personal, quiet diary film, portraying an early apartment, an early cat, an early relationship in Kansas City. Uses self-conscious Eisenstein cutting to convey the indolent, charged air-before-a-storm atmosphere that pervaded that era.
CircusCircus · 1975
Circus
1975
Movie
I have little recollection of filming this except for reacting with a kind of instinctive horror to the subjugation of these large animals, and to some extent the people, to tawdry entertainment. It was a small, shabby, improvised outdoor circus somewhere in Long Island under harsh lights at night. Even back then, it was rare to find such a display without camp or self-recognition of any kind.
Oh, NoOh, No · 1973
Oh, No
1973
Movie
"...contains a cacophony of visual imagery, taken from personal life and imagination, set to the Mother's of Invention Song which is cynical about love. An early film containing hints fo later imagery and concerns." P.Z.

Filmography

Sort
ArrifleshArriflesh · 1974
Arriflesh
1974
Movie
Arriflesh is a diary film recording a period I spent, very much at loose ends, dividing my time between Vermont and New York City. During those months I was also filming Horseflesh, so they are companion films. Various friends filled my universe in that confused, interim period: Cindy Revel, Margery Cohen, Tony Heath, and a bearded neighbor who was perpetually collecting scrap wood and who eventually made me a very complete astrological chart. In imitation of Jack Kerouac's Ray Smith in The Dharma Bums, I would walk up into the snowy hills every afternoon to meditate alone among the trees, with the same results as Kerouac…nada and a sense of the stony muteness of nature. This whole period was colored by memories of a teenage cousin who’d shot himself in a house just a few miles away, two years before. Like my bearded neighbor I was collecting scraps in the hope that they would someday come together into a cohesive whole.

Director

Wheels/TrailsWheels/Trails · 1987
Wheels/Trails
1987
Movie
Wheels/Trails draws inspirations from John Cage’s cut-and-splice sound collage, “Williams Mix,” which he composed using chance operations by throwing I-Ching sticks. Wheels/Trails juxtaposes actors speaking inane commercial dialogue that was randomly gleaned from television by means of a recorder programed by weather statistics, with film projection of native beans, feathers, and squash in slow motion, to make the point that the roads and highways of our urbanized civilization are built over ancient footpaths worn by Native peoples. Ultimately, the performance expresses the idea that we live in a mashup of cultures, where the present is a thin veneer stretched over the past. A droning electronic soundtrack by the band Short-Term Memory also suggests a missing presence. - P. V. Z.

Director

None SavedNone Saved · 1976
None Saved
1976
Movie
Based on the idea of Indonesian shadow puppet plays, which combine popular songs and Hindu mythology with political satire and broad comedy, None Saved satirically plays off of the events and mass emotions surrounding Jimmy Carter’s drive for the presidency in 1976. In the film, a Javanese-style monster rises up through several incarnations until it reaches a kind of shadow-cultural Nirvana. I often made paper shadow puppets based on images of white people I found on Chinese and Japanese toy packaging, thus reversing a trend in American animation to stereotype Asian features. None Saved was strongly influenced by Harry Smith’s Heaven and Earth Magic, which presented similar tactics of disassociation and, according to the artist, a trek to heaven and back.

Director

Just SproutsJust Sprouts · 1976
Just Sprouts
1976
Movie
In Just Sprouts, my goal was to make a film completely divorced from the camera and from such concerns as composition, lighting, camera placement and exposure. To do this, I sprouted alfalfa seeds at stepped intervals on a large piece of glass, made a contact print, then cut the resulting negative into strips and taped the strips onto clear 16mm film stock, always aware of Stan Brakhage’s 1963 film, Mothlight, in which Brakhage glued moth wings directly on film. A second inspiration was Man Ray’s Rayogram film, Le Retour à la Raison, in which pins, salt and pepper and thumbtacks cavorted wildly on the screen and caused a riot when first shown in 1923. In another section I cut negatives of magazine advertisements into strips and taped them onto film stock, thus hugely magnifying the Ben-Day dots with which the ads were printed. - PvZ

Director

Who Shall Remain NamelessWho Shall Remain Nameless · 1977
Who Shall Remain Nameless
1977
Movie
This film juxtaposes extreme close-up film of the activity of ants in the tunnels of an ant farm with a narration by a middle-aged, middle-American male discussing the relation between race riots and the positions of the planets. The narration derives from found tapes I’d discovered in a thrift store that had been recorded by a man named Archie Olson, speaking to his daughter in Minnesota. In other scenes, texts from Joan of Arc and Eldridge Cleaver, patterns of feathers and seeds falling, Harry Partch percussion music, and imagery of multiplying bacteria supply a view of the American political-cultural landscape that continually shifts from the macrocosmic to microcosmic and from practical and conversational to the occult and religious.

Director