From: Adam Hyman (email suppressed)
Date: Sun May 10 2009 - 17:33:28 PDT
OWEN LAND RETURNS TO LOS ANGELES FILMFORUM
WITH DIALOGUES
Filmforum is delighted to welcome back legendary filmmaker Owen Land
(formerly known as George Landow) for the official Los Angeles premiere of
his newest work DIALOGUES, a feature length video. It will be presented at
Los Angeles Filmforum on Sunday, May 31, at 7:30 pm at the Spielberg Theater
at the Egyptian Theater.
Los Angeles Filmforum presents
Dialogues, by Owen Land Los Angeles Premiere! Owen Land in person.
At the Egyptian Theatre, 6712 Hollywood Blvd. at Las Palmas, Los Angeles CA
90028
Sunday May 31, 2009, 7:30 pm
General admission $10, students/seniors $6, free for Filmforum members.
For reservations please email email suppressed
http://lafilmforum.wordpress.com/
On one level, DIALOGUES (2009, 133 minutes, video) is a parody of Scorpio
Rising, using era-specific hit records to locate scenes in time; on another
level, it's an interpretation of Plato's dialogue 'Phaedo', in which
Socrates proves the doctrine of re-incarnation; on still another level, it
is a polemic for the Tantric belief in the sacredness of male-female
polarity in the form of thirty "Platonic Dialogues." Rated R: Restricted
to audiences with a knowledge of Art History. Owen Land
Dialogues is a feature-length self-reflexive experimental film by Apollo
Jize (aka Owen Land) with music by the American Buddhist composer Meredith
Monk, a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, Yonkers, New York:
It was raining torrents in Torrance
But she had no rain insurance
She said to a molester
I'll go back to Westchester
It never rains at Sarah Lawrence
But, alas, she finally went bonkers
Because it was raining in Yonkers
Owen Land
MORE ON OWEN LAND
Owen Land, formerly known as George Landow, was one of the most original and
celebrated American filmmakers of the 1960s and 1970s.
His early materialist works anticipated Structural Film, the definition of
which provoked his rejection of film theory and convention. Having first
explored the physical qualities of the celluloid strip itself in FILM IN
WHICH THERE APPEAR and BARDO FOLLIES, his attention turned to the
spectator in a series of literalı films that question the illusionary
nature of cinema through the use of word play and optical ambiguity.
His two most complex films are WIDE ANGLE SAXON, in which a man has a
spiritual revelation during an avant-garde screening at the Walker Art
Center, and ON THE MARRIAGE BROKER JOKE, whose disparate cast of characters
include two pandas discussing, and making, an avant-garde film about the
marketing of Japanese salted plums. Both are models of the unconscious
process, with loose narratives that bring together a variety elements
through visual and verbal humour.
Land constructs facadesı of reality, often directly addressing the viewer
using the language of television, advertising or educational films, and by
featuring characters that are often the antithesis of those we might expect
to see, such as podgy middle aged men and religious fanatics. He sometimes
parodies experimental film itself, by mimicking his contemporaries and
mocking the solemn approach of theorists and scholars.
Films like REMEDIAL READING COMPREHENSION propose an alternative logic for a
medium that has become over theorised and manipulated. Later works,
beginning with THANK YOU JESUS FOR THE ETERNAL PRESENT and A FILM OF THEIR
1973 SPRING TOUR, draw upon the filmmakerıs experiences with Christianity,
but are far from evangelistic.
His films contain numerous cross-references to the art and culture of our
time, giving them a relevance and vitality beyond the hermetic avant-garde.
Owen Land has exposed the material of cinema and deconstructed its process
and effect, while covering the big topicsı of religion, psychoanalysis,
commerce and pandas making avant-garde movies.
-- Mark Webber
BIOGRAPHY
Born and raised in Connecticut, USA. Formal studies in drawing, painting,
sculpture and industrial design at Pratt Institute, Art Students League of
New York and New York Academy of Art. MFA in painting from NYAA. Studied
acting and improvisation at the Goodman Drama School and Second City,
Chicago. Music studies include classical and Flamenco guitar; Classical
piano and composition; Indian vocal and instrumental music at the Alik Akbar
Khan College of Music, San Rafael, CA. Taught at School of the Art Institute
of Chicago, Northwestern University, San Francisco Art Institute and Art
Centre College of Design, Pasadena, CA. Founded the Experimental Theatre
Workshop at the Art Institute of Chicago, and wrote and directed several
musical theatre pieces with original songs and music, including ³Mechanical
Sensuality² and ³Schwimmen Mit Wimmen². Retrospectives of Owen Landıs films
have been held at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, American Museum
of the Moving Image, International Film Festival Rotterdam, London Tate
Modern and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
FILMOGRAPHY
- Two Pieces for the Precarious Life (1961)
- Faulty Pronoun Reference Comparison and Punctuation of the Restrictive or
Non-Restrictive Element (1961)
- A Stringent Prediction at the Early Hermaphroditic Stage (1961)
- Are Era (1962)
- Richard Kraft at the Playboy Club (1963)
- Fleming Faloon (1963-64)
- Fleming Faloon Screening (1963)
- Not a Case of Lateral Displacement (1964)
- The Leopard Skin (1965)
- Adjacent Yes But Simultaneous? (1965)
- This Film will be Interrupted after 11 Minutes by a Commercial (1965)
- Film in Which There Appear Edge Lettering, Sprocket Holes, Dirt Particles,
Etc. (1965-66)
- Bardo Follies (1967)
- The Film that Rises to the Surface of Clarified Butter (1968)
- Institutional Quality (1969)
- Remedial Reading Comprehension (1970)
- Whatıs Wrong With This Picture? 1 (1971)
- Whatıs Wrong With This Picture? 2 (1972)
- Thank You Jesus for the Eternal Present (1973)
- A Film of Their 1973 Spring Tour Commissioned by Christian World
Liberation Front of Berkeley California (1974)
- ³No Sir Orison!² (1975)
- Wide Angle Saxon (1975)
- New Improved Institutional Quality: In the Environment of Liquids and
Nasals a Parasitic Vowel Sometimes Develops (1976)
- Diploteratology (1978)
- 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?
(1977-79)
- Noli Me Tangere (1984)
- The Box Theory (1984)
- Undesirables (Condensed Version)" (2008)
- Dialogues (2009)
TWO FILMS BY OWEN LAND
TWO FILMS BY OWEN LAND features the illustrated scripts to the films Wide
Angle Saxon and On the Marriage Broker Joke, complete with detailed
footnotes that untangle their elaborate web of references. Reaching far
beyond the two films alluded to in the title, it also includes a new
interview, annotated filmography and recent essays by the artist.
TWO FILMS BY OWEN LAND. Paperback book. 178x114mm. 136 pages. Edited by Mark
Webber. Published by LUX and Östereichisches Filmmuseum, Vienna. ISBN
0-9548569-10. Price £8
"Two Films by Owen Land is much more than the texts of Wide Angle Saxon and
On the Marriage Broker Joke, the two most complex films of Owen Land (aka
George Landow). Mark Webber has scrupulously edited the first book on this
major filmmaker, judiciously allowing Land1s own words - his texts, his
essays, hilarious annotations, and an interview - to reveal the depth and
intensity of his engagement with cinema and other avant-garde film-makers.
It is a very funny book: Land admits he has a been "converted more times
than Uncle Ben1s Rice," or speculated that Freud "would have bombed in Las
Vegas" with the jokes in his book on Wit. The filmography alone constitutes
a major contribution to the field." -- P. Adams Sitney
DIALOGUES (2009) screening is presented by Los Angeles Filmforum on Sunday
May 31 at 7:30 pm.
Location: Egyptian Theater, 6712 Hollywood Blvd, Los Angeles 90028.
General admission $10, students/seniors $6, free for Filmforum members.
This screening series is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Board
of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission and the
Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles.
__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.