In a Summer Garden

In the rarely-seen THREE, one begat three became two and then one again.

If there is such an old-fashioned thing as "stream of consciousness" in cinema, I suppose this is it. It certainly felt like a flowing stream or river while I was editing day after day, fitting found-sound to found (out-take) footage accumulated over almost sixty years of filmmaking. All the images and sounds buried on reels and spools in the studio came into the light. I felt singularly blessed to be making a non-linear visual autobiography; for it is a fact that most of my life in film is there. The one guiding principle for the construction of the film was the ancient Russian proposal: "instead of canned plays, see a rose, hear a bomb." - Lawrence Jordan

Orson Welles reads the poem especially for this film by Larry Jordan, which is dedicated to the late Wallace Berman, and is made possible by a grant from The National Endowment Of The Arts.

A sombre day in the city. "A Legend for Fountains" is the 16-minute version, "A Fable for Fountains" the 6-minute version.

First shown on January 30, 1967, FOR LIFE AGAINST THE WAR was an open-call, collective statement from American independent filmmakers disparate in style and sensibility but united by their opposition to the Vietnam War. Part of the protest festival Week of the Angry Arts, the epic compilation film incorporated minute-long segments which were sent from many corners of the country, spliced together and projected. The original presentation of the works was more of an open forum with no curation or selection, and in 2000 Anthology Film Archives preserved a print featuring around 40 films from over 60 submissions.

"Human qualities migrate through light and shadow... Like flames and waves, the dead and the living course through this world... without weight through space and time."

Against the coastline of the Big Sur country the camera catches swiftly shifting fragments of the nude women at the baths, playing the guitar, cutting the hair, sleeping. The camera movement is used to slightly smear the images onto the film emulsion in a manner parallel with the use of broad different medium from music or painting.

The Extraordinary Child applies his developing style to broad slapstick. His friends from the previous films and the director himself play out a riotous farce about an overgrown baby who steals his father’s cigars. Everyone mugs hilariously. The movie could be taken as another example of the Romantic notion of the artist as a monstrous child or misfit, or a parody of the same rather than the personal confessional statement seen so often in these film movements.

Animation. The theme is Weightlessness. Objects and characters are cut loose from habitual meanings, also from tensions and gravitational limitations. A lyric Eric Satie track accompanies the film. Such a portrait seems necessary from time to time to remind us that equilibrium and harmony are possible, and that we will not dissolve into a jelly if we allow ourselves to relax into them: A horseman rides through the landscape, through the town, but never arrives anywhere in particular. An acrobat swings on a rope above a canal in Venice, and is content just to swing there. Nothing threatens to disturb them. This film is a total contrast to the Kafka-like oddities of Eastern European animation. —Canyon Cinema

Jordan’s imagery is exquisite and eloquent, concentrating on simple, repeated use of particularly poetic symbols and figures, a conglomerative effect of old Gustave Dore drawings, 19th century whatnot memorabilia, all fused to a totally aware perception. —Lita Eliseu, East Village Other

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

The film is simply the internal, subliminal (poetic) thoughts of an aging woman poet as she travels the world, alone, probably for the last time, thinking of a friend she has lost. Finally, she returns home to write ("write or die"). These story elements are all included in the last long poem of H.D. when she was in her 80s. - Lawrence Jordan

TAPESTRY, part of Lawrence Jordan's "Odyssey" triptych and filmed much later in Jordan's life, is a charged record of his bachelor life after marriage and child-rearing.

The Grove is the second part of Lawrence Jordan's H.D. Trilogy. It continues what began with THE BLACK OUD (again featuring Joanna McClure as the catalyst) and concludes in STAR OF DAY.

Encounters in Light is the poetic documentation of two artists, friends, and lovers. The film eschews any biographical structure and instead looks at the ways these two artists are bound by time and light. Lawrence Jordan and Joanna McClure have extensive bodies of work between them. The film interweaves Joanna’s poetry, Lawrence’s films, personal interviews, and emotive imagery to produce a sensory engagement with a long lasting friendship and artistic practice. An understanding of mortality is ever present and the film let’s that feeling permeate throughout. How does one relate to years of love, friendship, and art? How does it resonate in the present moment? In the film, there is a sense of boundlessness and understanding that indeed, time dissolves all boundaries until there is only the possibility of light.

A series of vaudeville acts inserted in images of reality, meant to demonstrate the ephemeral nature of all things.