Also Directed by Lawrence Jordan
In Entr'acte II the walls come tumbling down. The wheels come off the wagon: Thunder, Lightning, Explosive meditations. Everything seems to be happening at once. Then, before you can catch your breath, it's over.
A 'found-footage' film, original too shrunk to print on 16mm, it was made as one of four films for a project called GRAVITY SPELLS, an album of film and new music by John Davis, my collaborator in sound. The title derives from a title in the footage: THESE DRIVING DEMONS START YOUNG, and proceeds to show soap box derby races. I made a soap box racer and drove it in the official derby when I was about nine years old. The footage goes on to show various race cars, races, collisions, road cars racing and strange mobile contraptions, including rocket cars and exploding motorcycles. And of course mad drivers. All in the 1920s.
For a long time, i have wanted to construct a melodrama (animated) from the funky engraving of the 19th century which illustrated "young peoples" adventure stories. Eventually, through a great deal of selection, such a film fell into place. I have attempted to present the high emotional overlay of very mundane events in this "alchemical melodrama". To that end, Puccini combines with blatant sounds of police sirens and old door buzzers on the sound track, while "real" and nightmare images compete for screen time.
The filmmaker pays homage to the two men who most influenced his initial film work: Max Ernst (collage) and Luis Buñuel (surrealism in cinema).
We are first presented a cobweb castle, filled with the haunting doubts of the young protagonist. Spirits appear on the screen and are heard on the soundtrack. Gradually a female guide emerges and escorts the young man into an antechamber to another (and possibly higher) world.
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
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
"After GYMNOPEDIES, I had long wanted to animate a film specifically for a pre-selected piano piece by [Erik] Satie. MOONLIGHT SONATA is that film. It was totally designed for the 'Gnossienne V' and the movements of the animation are timed to the overall rhythms as well as the specific beats of the music." - Lawrence Jordan
An accurate depiction of the basic tenets of northern Mahayana Buddhism, cast into living or "experiential" form, consistent with powerful mantras heard on the soundtrack of the film. Tarthang Tulku, a Tibetan Lama, was the advisor.
Sepia toning lends a romantic (even wistful) quality to Larry Jordan's film Visions of a City, which he shot in San Francisco in 1957 and edited in 1978. The pace is un-irritating, in contrast to the San Francisco of today; but unlike the equal weight Helen Levill gives to all her subjects, there is an internal evolutionary development in the Jordan film that ultimately delivers a story. Until the introduction of the human protagonist, poet Michael McClure, we are treated to an extravagant display of visual delights.
