Film As Art - Lawrence Jordan

Bay Area-based Lawrence Jordan is one of America’s leading experimental filmmakers.

A key figure in San Francisco’s avant-garde art scene in the 1950s and 60s, Jordan also played a pivotal role in the growth of the Film Department at the San Francisco Art Institute, where he taught for more than 30 years.

In 1967 he was one of the founding filmmakers of the Canyon Cinema Cooperative.

Influenced by the artist Joseph Cornell, for whom he worked as an assistant in creating collages and collage boxes, Jordan is best known for his collage films, often animating Victorian engravings to create surrealist effects. One such film, Our Lady of the Sphere, inspired by The Tibetan Book of the Dead, was inducted into the National Film Registry in 2010 as a film that is “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.” Jordan has made more than 50 films, and he also continues to work in collage outside his film work.

At the Rafael, Lawrence Jordan will present and discuss a selection of his films, including recent work. The program will include: Waterlight (1957), Gymnopedies (1966), Our Lady of the Sphere (1969), Postcard from San Miguel (1996), Entr’acte III (2017), The Sacred Art of Tibet (1970-72) and Beyond Enchantment (2010). Films approximately 80 minutes plus discussion.