Reverence is a new film touring exhibition and book of the work of US artist filmmaker Owen Land curated by Mark Webber for LUX. It is accompanied by the publication of a book, Two Films by Owen Land.
OWEN LAND 'Copy lifted from www.lux.org.uk/owenland'
"After a mysterious territorial dispute in the late 1970's George Landow ended up asOwen Land. But before that he gave me the confidence, as a student film-maker, to follow my instincts and incorporate terrible puns in my formalist films." - John Smith"
Owen Land, formerly known as George Landow, was one of the most original and celebrated American filmmakers of the 1960s and 1970s. The works he made during this period fused an intellectual sense of reason with the irreverent wit that distances them from the supposedly ‘boring’ world of avant-garde cinema.
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 ‘literal’ 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 'facades' 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 filmmaker’s 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 topics’ of religion, psychoanalysis, commerce and pandas making avant-garde movies.
(Mark Webber)
Owen Land biography
Owen Land was born George Landow in New Haven in 1944 and began making films in high school. He spent many years of study in drawing, painting and sculpture with teachers in a direct line from the French artist Jean Léon Gérôme (1824-1904), who is remembered for his historically accurate scenes of life in ancient Rome. Land’s films of the 1960s and 1970s are widely acclaimed as amongst the most perceptive and important works of the period.
Owen Land 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), What’s Wrong With This Picture? 1 (1971), What’s 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), “No Sir, Orison!” (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, video), The Box Theory (1984, video), Work-In-Progress (1999)
“My films are not intended as entertainment or easy viewing. They do not attempt to engage the spectator on an emotional level. Therefore audience reactions are unpredictable, especially during DIPLOTERATOLOGY OR BARDO FOLLIES. A showing for the wrong type of audience could be commercially disastrous, though not necessarily without benefit.”
(Owen Land (formerly known as George Landow), Film-Makers Lecture Bureau Catalogue No. 1, 1969)
OWEN LAND 'Copy lifted from www.lux.org.uk/owenland'
"After a mysterious territorial dispute in the late 1970's George Landow ended up asOwen Land. But before that he gave me the confidence, as a student film-maker, to follow my instincts and incorporate terrible puns in my formalist films." - John Smith"
Owen Land, formerly known as George Landow, was one of the most original and celebrated American filmmakers of the 1960s and 1970s. The works he made during this period fused an intellectual sense of reason with the irreverent wit that distances them from the supposedly ‘boring’ world of avant-garde cinema.
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 ‘literal’ 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 'facades' 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 filmmaker’s 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 topics’ of religion, psychoanalysis, commerce and pandas making avant-garde movies.
(Mark Webber)
Owen Land biography
Owen Land was born George Landow in New Haven in 1944 and began making films in high school. He spent many years of study in drawing, painting and sculpture with teachers in a direct line from the French artist Jean Léon Gérôme (1824-1904), who is remembered for his historically accurate scenes of life in ancient Rome. Land’s films of the 1960s and 1970s are widely acclaimed as amongst the most perceptive and important works of the period.
Owen Land 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), What’s Wrong With This Picture? 1 (1971), What’s 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), “No Sir, Orison!” (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, video), The Box Theory (1984, video), Work-In-Progress (1999)
“My films are not intended as entertainment or easy viewing. They do not attempt to engage the spectator on an emotional level. Therefore audience reactions are unpredictable, especially during DIPLOTERATOLOGY OR BARDO FOLLIES. A showing for the wrong type of audience could be commercially disastrous, though not necessarily without benefit.”
(Owen Land (formerly known as George Landow), Film-Makers Lecture Bureau Catalogue No. 1, 1969)
