Street Meat

Astral Man

"An animated vision... a subliminal glance at man in light and space" S.V.

Site

Performance by Robert Morris and Carolee Schneemann.

Fuses

An experimental short in which a couple engaged in lovemaking is superimposed over ocean and beach scenes.

Breathdeath

A surrealistic fantasy based on the 15th century woodcuts of the dance of the dead. A film experiment that deals with the photoreality and the surrealism of life. A collage-animation that cuts up photos and newsreel film and reassembles them, producing an image that is a mixture of unexplainable fact (Why is Harpo Marx playing a harp in the middle of a battlefield?) with inexplicable act (Why is there a battlefield?). It is a black comedy, a fantasy that mocks death ... a parabolic parable.

Fluids

16mm color work by Stan Vanderbeek that takes his work away from the cutups and the commentary and lands him in the psychedelic and abstract. Opticals, repetitions, camera moves and zooms are what make up the bulk of this exploration into fluids. The results bridge that realm between hangout art piece and intersteller stoner trip.

Expo Faces

16mm film transferred to video, black and white, sound

Mirrored Reason

A Kafka-inspired tale, Mirrored Reason tells the story of a woman who is haunted and eventually replaced by her double.

Face Concert

Face Concert is an ode to human expression in which VanDerBeek transforms the face into a visual canvas.

Ad Infinitum

Notes on the Buffalo Conference: “Autobiography in American Independent Cinema”

During the 1970s I shot, helped to make, or commissioned about ten document films, mainly about film-makers. This film is one of them. It was made with Dan Ochiva, who acted as cameraman on about half of the footage. I shot the rest, and then edited the film. It is a record of a conference held at the State University of New York at Buffalo on March 22-25, 1973. Among the participants filmed were Gerald O'Grady (who organized the conference), Will Hindle, Stan Brakhage, Jonas Mekas, Robert Creeley, Bruce Baillie, Scott Bartlett, Hollis Frampton, Ken Jacobs, Ed Pincus, Stan Vanderbeek, Ed Emshwiller, Sally Dixon, James Cox. This footage will eventually become part of my film PEOPLE, PLACES, THE 1970S. –R. H.

Movie-Drome

Influenced by Buckminster Fuller’s spheres, VanDerBeek had the idea for a spherical theater where people would lie down and experience movies all around them. Floating multi-images would replace straight one-dimensional film projection. From 1957 on, VanDerBeek produced film sequences for the Movie-Drome, which he started building in 1963. His intention went far beyond the building itself and moved into the surrounding biosphere, the cosmos, the brain and even extraterrestrial intelligence.

Who Ho Rays No. 1

"The shapes of sound filmed from a computer system that reproduces analog patterns from sounds. This pioneer work in animated computer mandalas is a lyrical, abstract song with analog rhythms."

Poem Field Series

"Each film was constructed using Knowlton's BEFLIX computer language, which was based on FORTRAN. The films were programmed on a IBM 7094 computer. The films were created in black and white, with color added later by Brown and Olvey." --AT&T Archives and History Center

Visual Velocity: The Work of Stan VanDerBeek

Visual Velocity is a tribute to the pioneering work of Stan VanDerBeek. VanDerBeek was an experimental filmmaker, artist, animator, and media visionary. Produced by David Donnelly, the work originally aired on PBS stations' THE TERRITORY, the longest running public television showcase of independent film/video in the country.

After Laughter

In After Laughter, VanDerBeek constructs a rapid-fire montage depicting the evolution of the human race and the haunting specter of its destruction.

Strobe Ode

Strobe Ode is an exercise in video feedback and analog imaging, in which a circular image-field is modified and abstracted by strobe flashes.