LARRY JORDAN VISIONS OF A CITY (1978)

Director: Larry Jordan

Year: 1978

Time: 6 mins

Music: William Moraldo

Eye of Sound: I confess that I'm not a fan of Moraldo's music, though it does have a soothing effect after a few minutes of Visions of a City. But I'm a big admirer of Larry Jordan's work, and I'm especially fond of most of his non-collage works (which I absolutely adore, of course). Visions of a City was shot in 1957 but was not edited till 1978. Using beat poet and playwright Michael McClure (Ike in Kerouac's Dharma Bums)  as a "guide" and visual counterpoint, it is a short portrait of San Francisco shot almost entirely through reflections of all sorts: mirrors, shop windows, car windows, bottles. The mirror trope, obviously, has endless theoretical and philosophical possibilities. Suffice to say that the sepia tinted images, the powerful editing and the distorting effects of mirrors make this one of Jordan's most beautiful films.

http://rapidshare.com/files/403718053/visionsofacity.avi.html

SHIRLEY CLARKE BRIDGES-GO-ROUND (1958)

Director: Shirley Clarke

Year: 1958

Time: 8 mins

Music

Teo Macero

Louis & Bebe Barron

Eye of Sound: Produced with leftover material from a project purporting to document American landscapes, Bridges-Go-Round is a seminal exercise in montage and visual abstraction, with the cityscapes of NY working again as luminous background. Due to copyright/copywrong issues, Clarke commissioned two different soundtracks for the film, here presented in sequence, thus providing spectators with an excellent display of the all-intrusive power of sound in the perception of images: the same set of visual material is radically transformed with the simple addition of a  different soundtrack. The first score is offered by a Teo Macero formation which remains unidentified but is highly reminiscent of some later works by George Lewis and, in a more oblique way, his collaborations with Miles Davis. The second soundtrack comes from the machines of the Barrons, well-known for their score in the sci-fi classic Forbidden Plantet. Despite their enormous differences, and the contrasting effect they have on the screen, the end result of the two scores is uncannily similar: Macero's composition (which, despite the presence of "jazz instruments" cannot be called jazzy in any manner) renders the superimposed bridges and buildings of NY the same alien glitter lent by the more or less "conventional" cavernous bleeps of the Barrons' electronic score.

 

http://rapidshare.com/files/397348877/bridges.avi

FRANCIS THOMPSON A DAY IN NEW YORK (1957)

Director: Francis Thompson

Year: 1957

Time: 15 mins

Music: Gene Forrell

Eye of Sound: Thompson's training as a painter is evident throughout this gorgeous collage of New York distorted cityscapes. But his talents as a filmmaker are no less impressive. The film follows a chronological order, starting with early morning power generators and ending with night-time clubs and neon lights. Its kaleidoscopical pictures have the magic effect of bending not only image and space but also time itself, thus condensing 24 hours in 15 minutes. The hallucinatory, twisted NYscapes blend with Correll's music, which oscillates between light jazziness and darker contemporary tones. This is a fabulous vision of a lost city, a city that illuminated the American dream before its collapse. 

http://rapidshare.com/files/386090736/adayinny.avi.001

http://rapidshare.com/files/386090751/adayinny.avi.002

EDGAR VARÈSE & LE CORBUSIER POÈME ÉLECTRONIQUE (1968)

Year: 1958

Time: 8 mins

Music: Edgar Varèse

Eye of Sound: Cine-Simulation of the 1958 Phillips Pavillion at the Brussels World Fair. The future has always been a home for the surreal.

 

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