Undercurrents

Symmetry was a film I made in 1990 at that time I wanted to experiment more with narrative elements in my films. Looking back on this film I see Ernie Steeles, O.K. Hotel, Virginia Inn, The Viaduct and James Carbo’s eastlake silver house all gone now. This film is different from the films I made before .. and the films I have made after. I was grateful to Pony Mourice for agreeing to be in this picture, if it wasn't for her the film never would have been made because she was the only one I could picture in my mind to be in my film.

This film was the second installment of what I call the URBAN LANDSCAPE SERIES. The film is more like an extension my earlier film Exposures, but this time I made a much more valiant attempt to say what I wanted to say. By the time I made this film I felt that I had mastered the art of cinematography.

Film by Jon Behrens

Short film by Jon Behrens

"I wanted to capture the beautiful snow as it fell onto the trees on Christmas morning. Shot it one long take on my Arriflex camera from the deck of my home, in homage to the late great Peter Hutton."

I made this film with the help of friend Timmi Harrop she graced the screen in this liquid like atmospheric industrial performance piece. Multiple exposures, water, and weird underwater cinematography shots that create the environment drowning the viewer in a symphony of sight and sound.

Made from sections of random family photos that I acquired while working at a film lab in the early 1990's. -JB

“The second collaboration I did with R.K. Adams, we proceeded to experiment with the Idea of using panels in our films. When we talked about doing this we decided that we wanted to pay homage to the upcoming spring, the result was this film"

"This film is a collaboration with friend-filmmaker, Mia Roozen Separately filming footage, unknown to the other, and splicing it together to create an abstract prosaic, a symphony of sight and sound, a subconscious exploration of neurotic origins"

I made this film by shooting around 180 rolls of 35mm slide film. I then hand processed the film in a very sloppy manner. I never mounted the film into slides I simply took the 35mm strips of film and spliced them together. Some of the rolls used in this film were shot by random people I sent a roll of film to that they shot and sent back to me.

"This film is a collaboration between myself, Caryn Cline and Luke Sieczek. We made this film using a matte box. We used three different coin sized mattes, and we took turns exposing them."

I made this film from manipulated and hand painted 35mm trailers of main stream Hollywood films from the 1990's. -JB

"Kirsten McCory is the mending woman who is meandering through this hand painted and optically printed film."

"This is a film that I had wanted to make for many years. It was not until the summer of 1996 that I actually got it together and shot it. Again with the help of Steve Creson we packed up all our equipment and loaded on to a plane and flew to Arizona were we rented a car and drove around the desert for week and filmed everything that we thought looked interesting. This film is similar to the films in my urban landscapes series, only this film was shot in eye popping full color and there are no man made elements in this film at all. Lots of rock formations, colors, and shapes only things made my mother nature. This film also has a film score by RUBATO."

This film features Kirsten McCory drinking coffee and telling me about her day.

This film is a collaboration with filmmaker Joel Schlemowitz, on ALL SAINTS DAY 2001 we each shot 100 ft of film, at the same time of the day, 3000 miles apart, and we did not tell each other what we shot. The film was hand processed and cut up into 2ft length’s and then cut back together alternating from Joel’s footage to Jon’s until all the film was gone. This film is the follow up to ALL SAINTS DAY which was done using the same techniques the year prior soundtrack for this film was done the same way.