Three More by Cornell

Three More by Cornell

2003 · 24 min

"Cornell's editing has not been tampered with. It is sometimes minimal (the editing), sometimes extensive, always sensitive. I did not change it, as when I did the entire re-edit of Cornell's Legend for Fountains. JACK'S DREAM, for instance, is a puppet animation into which Cornell has inserted a few shots from other material - just enough to throw it into the sphere of artful fantasy. Whereas CARROUSEL is a fully edited animal piece. There is no way now of determining the order in which the films were made, or even the exact years, but it was some time in the '40s." -Larry Jordan in 2003

Directed by Joseph Cornell

Your Rating

More from Joseph CornellSee all →

What Mozart Saw on Mulberry Street

What Mozart Saw on Mulberry Street · 1956

What Mozart Saw on Mulberry Street

Short film with sound by Rudy Burckhardt, assembled from the footage shot by Joseph Cornell for his own silent "Mulberry Street."

Thimble Theater

Thimble Theater · 1938

Thimble Theater

MovieAnimationDocumentary

One of Joseph Cornell’s funniest films, Thimble Theater is structured like a vaudeville variety show about nature.

Jack's Dream

Jack's Dream · 1938

MovieDramaFantasy

A lucid dream turned nightmarish reality. A ship sinking into a world of fear. A short film that’s mostly puppetry by one of America's most prolific twentieth century artists.

A Legend for Fountains

A Legend for Fountains · 1965

A Legend for Fountains

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

Angel

Short film of a statue of an angel by an ornamental pond on a summer's day.

Gnir Rednow

Gnir Rednow · 1955

A film composed of the out-takes from Brakhage’s The Wonder Ring (1955), which Cornell had commissioned. There has been a long-standing misconception that the film "Gnir Rednow" is simply "The Wonder Ring" mirrored or projected in reverse. However, Mark Toscano of the Academy Film Archive has definitively established that the original roll of each one of these two films is "unmistakably, completely comprised of camera original Kodachrome," and that no two shots are precisely the same from one film to the other.

By Night with Torch and Spear

By Night with Torch and Spear · 1942

By Night with Torch and Spear

Smoke, sparks and steam dance together in Cornell's found-footage collage. Backwards title cards (or an alien language, if you like) punctuate this mishmash of the industrial and the ancient.

Nymphlight

Nymphlight · 1957

MovieDocumentary

A short, avant-garde movie, starring twelve-year-old ballet student Gwen Thomas, Nymphlight is a lovely blend of fact and fiction, using Bryant Park at the New York Public Library as a stage set for the fantasy inclusion of a certain nymph. A meditation on an ephemeral day in the the life of a park shared by birds, the young and the old.

Rose Hobart

Rose Hobart · 1936

Cornell employs clips from 1931's jungle melodrama East of Borneo – more specifically, clips of its lead actress, Rose Hobart – to disquieting effect. Through Cornell's collage editing, Hobart becomes a singular object of desire and dread, trapped in an exotic paradise.

Children's Party

Children's Party · 1938

Children's Party

Director Joseph Cornell evokes the nostalgia of childhood by filming a children's party.

The Aviary

The Aviary · 1955

A collaboration between Joseph Cornell and Rudy Burckhardt, Aviary is an impression of Union Square. The location held a particular fascination for Cornell who wanted to establish a foundation for artists and art therapy there. In the film, he treats the park as an outdoor aviary.

Bookstalls

Bookstalls · 1938

A short made by Joseph Cornell in the late 1930s-- An ode to imagination, travel and literature. In true Cornellian fashion, the film borrows footage from, among other films, a Burton Holmes travelogue; Sightseeing tours of Dutch Marken and agrarian Asia therefore become the dream of a boy at a bookstall.

Centuries of June

Centuries of June · 1955

Centuries of June

MovieDocumentary

Centuries of June, perhaps more than any Cornell film, is a naked attempt to capture the soul of a place and the mood of a disappearing moment.

Children

Children · 1957

Slightly different version of Cornell's Mulberry Street. Scenes of Mulberry Street on New York City's Lower East Side, as seen from the point of view of a bust of Mozart sitting in a store window.

Joanne, Union Square

Joanne, Union Square · 1955

Joanne, Union Square

Footage shot for Cornell by Rudy Burckhardt in December 1955 of a woman buying chestnuts from a street vendor and watching people and birds in a city square.

The Aviary (Short Sound Version)

The Aviary (Short Sound Version) · 1955

The Aviary (Short Sound Version)

Shorter version with sound

More Like This

Couldn't load this row right now.

Rate this film

Your ratings make Midnight smarter