Excerpts from a Work in Progress (Undesirables)

Excerpts from a Work in Progress (Undesirables)

1999 · 12 min

A rough-cut of selected scenes, edited as a sampler to be used in fundraising towards completion of the film "Undesirables". “The idea started with a casual comment made by Stan Brakhage, must have been way back in the early 1970s. It stuck in my mind. Now that I think about it, Brakhage may have meant this as a joke. He said, “Someday Hollywood will probably make a film about us,” ‘us’ meaning the experimental filmmakers “and I wonder which actors will play us?” Think about that first of all: the idea that Hollywood would make a film about experimental filmmakers is totally ridiculous. The fact that one would think about which actor was going to play me at some time in the future, I think that’s very funny. Eventually it germinated in my mind and I thought it was an interesting idea… A film about experimental filmmakers, especially in the very formative period, approximately 1968 to 1972.

Directed by Owen Land

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Excerpts from a Work in Progress (Undesirables)

On the Marriage Broker Joke as Cited by Owen Land...in the Film 'On the Marriage Broker Joke as Cited by Sigmund Freud in Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious, or Can the Avant-Garde Artist Be Wholed?'

Both from Owen Land.

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On the Marriage Broker Joke as Cited by Owen Land...in the Film 'On the Marriage Broker Joke as Cited by Sigmund Freud in Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious, or Can the Avant-Garde Artist Be Wholed?'

On the Marriage Broker Joke as Cited by Owen Land...in the Film 'On the Marriage Broker Joke as Cited by Sigmund Freud in Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious, or Can the Avant-Garde Artist Be Wholed?' · 2009

On the Marriage Broker Joke as Cited by Owen Land...in the Film 'On the Marriage Broker Joke as Cited by Sigmund Freud in Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious, or Can the Avant-Garde Artist Be Wholed?'

The Land Camera Collective presents a (nearly) shot-by-shot remake of the Owen Land 1977 classic experimental film 'On The Marriage Broker Joke as Cited by Sigmund Freud in Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious, or Can the Avant-Garde Artist be Wholed?'

What's Wrong with This Picture? 2

What's Wrong with This Picture? 2 · 1972

What's Wrong with This Picture? 2

As Landow and his students were testing a new video camera, an elderly man began to talk to them about new technology. This impromptu conversation forms the basis for a comparison of spoken and written language. - Harvard Film Archive

Grand Opera: An Historical Romance

Grand Opera: An Historical Romance · 1979

Grand Opera: An Historical Romance

MovieDocumentary

Grand Opera marks a stock-taking of Benning's work and his life, presenting a personal and artistic autobiography woven together with a series of events dealing with the historical development of the number pi, Benning's travels, and homages to Michael Snow, Hollis Frampton, George Landow (Owen Land), and Yvonne Rainer.

What's Wrong with This Picture? 1

What's Wrong with This Picture? 1 · 1971

What's Wrong with This Picture? 1

A found, utilitarian object, the overtly moralizing educational film “How to be a Good Citizen,” is elevated to the status of ‘art’. First presented unaltered and then in Landow’s color facsimile, the film is further modified by applying an opaque matte that creates a spatial paradox. - Harvard Film Archive

New Improved Institutional Quality: In the Environment of Liquids and Nasals a Parasitic Vowel Sometimes Develops

New Improved Institutional Quality: In the Environment of Liquids and Nasals a Parasitic Vowel Sometimes Develops · 1976

New Improved Institutional Quality: In the Environment of Liquids and Nasals a Parasitic Vowel Sometimes Develops

MovieDocumentary

A reworking of an earlier film, Institutional Quality, in which the same test was given. In the earlier film, the person taking the test was not seen, and the film viewer in effect became the test taker. The newer version concerns itself with the effects of the test on the test taker. An attempt is made to escape from the oppressive environment of the test — a test containing meaningless, contradictory, and impossible-to-follow directions by entering into the imagination. —Canyon Cinema

Diploteratology

Diploteratology · 1978

Diploteratology

A revision of Bardo Follies, Diploteratology suggests that “death (destruction of the original image) is not an end but merely the next stage.” Preceded by longer versions entitled "Bardo Follies."

The Evil Faerie

The Evil Faerie · 1966

The Evil Faerie

Following a series of title cards, a man in sunglasses briefly flutters his hands like fairy. Owen Land states that this film was not made by George Landow, and believes it should be credited to John Cavanaugh. "George Maciunas had a number of films which didn’t have titles on them. Then he put them together into his Fluxus reel and tried to remember who made them. It was an intentional Fluxus joke." (Owen Land, interview with Mark Webber, 2004)

Bardo Follies

Bardo Follies · 1967

A shot of a Southern Belle waving to a group of tourists on a pleasure boat ride is looped, multiplied and then melted, creating psychedelic abstract images. “A paraphrasing of certain sections of the Tibetan Book of the Dead in motion picture terms.” - Harvard Film Archive. Originally ran 45 minutes, then was edited down to 30, then 20 minutes. Final version was simply entitled "Diploteratology" and runs 7 minutes, and is the most commonly shown version.

On the Marriage Broker Joke as Cited by Sigmund Freud in Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious, or Can the Avant-Garde Artist Be Wholed?

On the Marriage Broker Joke as Cited by Sigmund Freud in Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious, or Can the Avant-Garde Artist Be Wholed? · 1977

On the Marriage Broker Joke as Cited by Sigmund Freud in Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious, or Can the Avant-Garde Artist Be Wholed?

MovieDocumentary

“Freud established that jokes were structurally akin to dreams in their use of condensation, displacement, representation by opposites, punning and ‘nonsense’. All of these strategies are much in evidence in (Land’s) marvelously duplicitous ON THE MARRIAGE BROKER JOKE… [...] so clever and original a filmmaker as to make most others – not to mention his critics – seem flat-footed by comparison. ON THE MARRIAGE BROKER JOKE harks back to Bunuel’s early work. Not only is it structured like a dream and filled with sexual imagery, but like Un Chien Andalou, it smacks of being an insider’s joke played upon the avant-garde. Where Bunuel used the insights of psychoanalysis to satirize Christianity, Land– with an almost equal perversity – reverses the process and uses Christianity to send up Freud.” – J. Hoberman, American Film

The Film That Rises to the Surface of Clarified Butter

The Film That Rises to the Surface of Clarified Butter · 1968

The Film That Rises to the Surface of Clarified Butter

Two artists create grotesque characters; Two-dimensional drawings which somehow have a life of their own, that exist in the same space as real objects. The film seems to ask, "Isn't every filmmaking venture a series of repeated, once-negative images displayed alongside the real world?"

Film in Which There Appear Edge Lettering, Sprocket Holes, Dirt Particles, Etc.

Film in Which There Appear Edge Lettering, Sprocket Holes, Dirt Particles, Etc. · 1966

Film in Which There Appear Edge Lettering, Sprocket Holes, Dirt Particles, Etc.

MovieDocumentary

Film in Which There Appear... is a six-minute loop of the double-printed image of a "China girl" or "Shirley card", her image off-center, making visible the sprocket holes and edge lettering on the film. According to Land, within the loop, "no development in the dramatic or musical sense" occurs. Fred Camper described Film in Which There Appear... as "a kind of Duchampian found object, a [...] film that focuses attention on the medium and the viewer." There also exists a 20-minute "widescreen version" involving two prints of the film projected side-by-side, with the left print flipped horizontally so that the "China girl" forms an almost complete face in the center.

Thank You Jesus for the Eternal Present

Thank You Jesus for the Eternal Present · 1973

Thank You Jesus for the Eternal Present

A rapturous audio-visual mix that “deliberately seeks a hidden order in randomness.” The film combines the face of a woman in ecstatic, contemplative prayer with shots of an animal rights activist, and a scantily clad model advertising Russian cars at the International Auto Show, New York. - Harvard Film Archive

Remedial Reading Comprehension

Remedial Reading Comprehension · 1970

Remedial Reading Comprehension

MovieDocumentary

Landow rejects the dream imagery of the historical trance film for the self-referential present, using macrobiotics, the language of advertising, and a speed-reading test on the definition of hokum. The alienated filmmaker appears, running uphill to distance himself from the lyrical cinema, but remember, "This is a film about you, not about its maker."

Wide Angle Saxon

Wide Angle Saxon · 1975

Wide Angle Saxon

MovieFantasyHistory

An interpretation of The Confessions of Saint Augustine featuring an ordinary middle-aged man who undergoes a conversion experience whilst watching an experimental film. - Harvard Film Archive

A Film of Their 1973 Spring Tour Commissioned by Christian World Liberation Front of Berkeley, California

A Film of Their 1973 Spring Tour Commissioned by Christian World Liberation Front of Berkeley, California · 1974

A Film of Their 1973 Spring Tour Commissioned by Christian World Liberation Front of Berkeley, California

MovieDocumentary

A radical Christian group's lecture tour of US colleges was filmed in the cinema verité tradition, with hand held camera, sync and wild sound. To avoid making a conventional documentary, the filmmaker created a dynamic collage by stroboscopically editing together pairs of scenes using a rapid rhythm of three-frame units.

Fluxfilm Anthology 1962-1970

Fluxfilm Anthology 1962-1970 · 2010

Fluxfilm Anthology 1962-1970

MovieDocumentaryFantasy

Feature-length compilation program presenting 37 out of 41 original fluxfilms produced and directed in the 1960s by Fluxus artists, including George Maciunas, Nam June Paik, Yoko Ono, Robert Watts, Paul Sharits, et al.

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