Still from Wide Angle Saxon

Reverence is a new film touring exhibition and book of the work of US artist filmmaker Owen Land (formerly known as George Landow) curated by Mark Webber for LUX. It is accompanied by the publication of a book, Two Films by Owen Land, available via the LUX shop section.

TOURING VENUES AND DATES
25/26 January 2005, Austrian Film Museum www.filmmuseum.at
28 January-6 February 2005, Rotterdam Film Festival www.filmfestivalrotterdam.com
11/12 & 18/19 February 2005, Tate Modern www.tate.org.uk/modern
25-26 February 2005, Leeds Lumen www.lumen.org.uk
7 March, Side Cinema 2005, Newcastle www.sidecinema.com
10/13 March 2005, Centre de Culturia Contemporania Barcelona www.cccb.org
17/24 March 2005, Glasgow Film Theatre www.gft.org.uk
30/31 March 2005, Microcosmos, Athens
6/8 April 2005, Centre Pompidou www.cnac-gp.fr
20-24 April 2005, European Media Art Festival, Osnabruck www.emaf.de
26 April 2005, Kino 46 Bremen www.kino46.de
1/8 May 2005, Sheffield Showroom www.showroom.org.uk
3/4 May 2005, Cinéma Spoutnik & Esba, Geneva www.spoutnik.info
22-29 May 2005, Videoex, Zurich www.videoex.ch
23/24 May 2005, Outpost, Norwich www.norwichoutpost.org
9/16 June 2005, Musee d’Art Moderne et Contemporain Strasbourg www.musees-strasbourg.org
15-20 June 2005, Norwegian Short Film Festival, Oslo www.kortfilmfestivalen.no
1/5 July 2005, Deutsches Filmmuseum, Frankfurt www.deutscherfilm.net
16 July 2005, Hull International Short Film Festival www.hullfilm.co.uk
27 July-8 August 2005, Brisbane International Film Festival www.biff.com.au
14/15 August 2005, Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne www.acmi.net.au
3 September 2005, Performance Space, Sydney www.performancespace.com.au
13/20 September 2005, Union Theatre, University of Wisconsin www.aux.uwm.edu/uniontheatre
26 September 2005, Lisbon Biennale www.experimentadesign.pt
1/8 October 2005, Chicago Filmmakers www.chicagofilmmakers.org
6/20 October 2005, Wexner Centre, Columbus www.wexarts.org
14/16 October 2005, San Francisco Cinematheque www.sfcinematheque.org
25/26 October 2005, Cinema Project, Portland www.cinemaproject.org
2-27 November 2005, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York - exhibition www.whitney.org
1 December 2005, Syracuse University http://students.syr.edu/thursdayscreeners
10 December 2005, Pleasure Dome, Toronto www.pdome.org
22/29 January 2006, Los Angeles Filmforum www.lafilmforum.org
18/19 March 2006, Hallwalls, Buffalo www.hallwalls.org
16 April 2007, Harvard Film Archive, Cambridge, Massachusetts http://hcl.harvard.edu/hfa/

OWEN LAND
"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

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 “Mechanical Sensuality” and “Schwimmen Mit Wimmen”. Retrospectives of Owen Land’s 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)
- 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)

PROGRAMMES

Reverence: The Films of Owen Land (formerly known as George Landow): Programme One
Remedial Reading Comprehension
Owen Land (formerly known as George Landow)
Landow rejects the dream imagery of the historical trance film for the self-referential present, using macrobiotics, the language of advertising, and a speed-reading test on the definition of hokum. The alienated filmmaker appears, running uphill to distance himself from the lyrical cinema, but remember, “This is a film about you, not about its maker.”
USA, 1970
Colour, sound, 16mm, 5 min.

Fleming Faloon
Owen Land (formerly known as George Landow)
A cinematic equivalent to the illusionistic portraiture of the Flemish painters. In his first 16mm film, Landow proposes that if we accept the reality offered to us by the illusion of depth on the flat plane of the screen, we can then assign reality to anything at will.
USA, 1963
Colour, sound, 16mm, 7 min.

Film in Which There Appear Edge Lettering, Sprocket Holes, Dirt Particles, Etc.
Owen Land (formerly known as George Landow)
The ‘imperfections’ of filmmaking, which are normally suppressed, are at the core of a work that uses a brief loop made from a Kodak colour test. “The dirtiest film ever made,” is one of the earliest examples of the film material dictating the film content. It may seem minimal, but keep looking – there’s so much going on.
USA, 1965-66
Colour, silent, 16mm, 4 min.

Bardo Follies
Owen Land (formerly known as George Landow)
A shot of a Southern Belle waving to group of tourists on a pleasure boat ride is looped, multiplied and then melted, creating psychedelic abstract images. These globular forms resemble cellular, microscopic or cosmic structures. “A paraphrasing of certain sections of the Tibetan Book of the Dead in motion picture terms.”
USA, 1967-76
Colour, silent, 16mm, 20 min.

What’s Wrong With This Picture? 1
Owen Land (formerly known as George Landow)
A found, utilitarian object, the overtly moralising educational film “How to be a Good Citizen”, is elevated to the status of ‘art’. The film is first presented unaltered and then in Landow’s colour facsimile, which is further modified by applying an opaque matte that creates a spatial paradox.
USA, 1971
B&W/Colour, sound, 16mm, 5 min.

What’s Wrong With This Picture? 2
Owen Land (formerly known as George Landow)
As Landow and his students were testing a new video camera, an elderly man began to talk to them about new technology. This impromptu conversation forms the basis for a comparison of spoken and written language. After being transferred to film, a transcript of the encounter is superimposed over the image.
USA, 1972

Institutional Quality
Owen Land (formerly known as George Landow)
The film is constructed around a found soundtrack in which a strict female voice delivers a test of perception and comprehension. As this test continues, the relationship between sound and image becomes detached and they follow separate paths, a consequence of the filmmaker losing interest in his subject.
USA, 1969
Colour, sound, 16mm, 5 min.

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 ?
Owen Land (formerly known as George Landow)
“Two pandas, who exist only by textual error, run a shell game for the viewer in an environment with false perspectives. They posit the existence of various films and characters, one of which is interpreted by an academic as containing religious symbolism. Finally, Sigmund Freud’s own explanation is given by a sleeper awakened by an alarm clock.” (P. Adams Sitney)
USA, 1977-79
Colour, sound, 16mm, 18 min

Programme Two
The Film that Rises to the Surface of Clarified Butter
Owen Land (formerly known as George Landow)
An illustrator is drawing figures that resemble Tibetan deities. He can’t believe his eyes when they appear to come to life and dance on the paper, taking on qualities we might associate with Disney characters. They appear trapped between 2D and 3D space, an eerie limbo which is amplified by the sinister loop of the soundtrack.
USA, 1968
B&W, sound, 16mm, 9 min.

Diploteratology
Owen Land (formerly known as George Landow)
A revision of BARDO FOLLIES, subtitled “the study newly formed monstrosities”. Its images represent visual phenomena seen during a passage into the afterlife, but also evoke the cellular structure of the filmstrip, and of our own bodies. “The suggestion is that death (destruction of the original image) is not an end but merely the next stage.”
USA, 1967-78
Colour, silent, 16mm, 7 min.

“No Sir, Orison!”
Owen Land (formerly known as George Landow)
After singing a vivacious song of love in the aisle of a supermarket, the performer kneels down to ask forgiveness for those involved in the commercial food industry, which substitutes natural produce with non-nutritious commodities. Orison means prayer. The title of the film (a palindrome) is the answer to a question.
USA, 1975
Colour, sound, 16mm, 3 min.

Wide Angle Saxon
Owen Land (formerly known as George Landow)
An interpretation of The Confessions of Saint Augustine, featuring an ordinary middle-aged man who undergoes a conversion experience whilst watching an experimental film. The film is by Al Rutcurts (think about it) and Earl is so bored that his mind starts to wander. He realises that his possessions may be a barrier between himself and God and determines to something about it.
USA, 1975
Colour, sound, 16mm, 22 min.

Thank You Jesus for the Eternal Present
Owen Land (formerly known as George Landow)
A rapturous audio-visual mix that “deliberately seeks a hidden order in randomness.” The film combines the face of a woman in ecstatic, contemplative prayer with shots of an animal rights activist, and a scantily clad model advertising Russian cars at the International Auto Show, New York.
USA, 1973
B&W/Colour, sound, 16mm, 6 min.

A Film of Their 1973 Spring Tour Commissioned by Christian World Liberation Front of Berkeley, California
Owen Land (formerly known as George Landow)
A radical Christian group’s lecture tour of US colleges was filmed in the cinema verité tradition, with hand held camera, sync and wild sound. To avoid making a conventional documentary, the filmmaker created a dynamic collage by stroboscopically editing together pairs of scenes using a rapid rhythm of three-frame units.
USA, 1974
Colour, sound, 16mm, 12 min.

New Improved Institutional Quality: In the Environment of Liquids and Nasals a Parasitic Vowel Sometimes Develops
Owen Land (formerly known as George Landow)
The IQ test soundtrack is re-used in an entirely new work that is concerned more with the effects on the examinee, who enters a Chinese box of impossible perspectives in a hyper-realistic living room. He briefly escapes the oppressive environment of the test but passes into the imagination of the filmmaker, where he encounters images from previous films.
USA, 1976
Colour, sound, 16mm, 10 min.

TOURING EXHIBITION - INFORMATION FOR VENUES

REVERENCE
THE FILMS OF OWEN LAND (FORMERLY KNOWN AS GEORGE LANDOW)
is a new 16mm film touring package curated by Mark Webber for LUX featuring newly restored prints of the key works by Owen Land. It consists of two programmes of films, running to approximately 75 minutes each backed up with publicity material in the form of a poster/flier/programme notes and a new book 'Two Films by Owen Land' (see below for details). Preview tapes of both programmes and press cuttings are available on request from LUX. The price of the package (2 programmes) is £120 for UK venues, and £200 for international venues (excluding VAT and shipping). The package is available to book from LUX email info@lux.org.uk from mid-November 2004 onwards. Mark Webber the curator of the package may be available to introduce the programmes – please contact LUX for more information. Publicity material and programme notes will be supplied free to venues. The accompanying book, Two Films by Owen Land is available to venues wholesale. For trade enquiries please see www.wallflowerpress.co.uk

Reverence: The Films of Owen Land: Programme One
Remedial Reading Comprehension, 1970, 5 min
Fleming Faloon, 1963-64, 7 min
Film in Which There Appear Edge Lettering, Sprocket Holes, Dirt Particles,
Etc., 1965-66, 4 min
Bardo Follies, 1967-76, 20 min
What1s Wrong With This Picture? 1, 1971, 5 min
What1s Wrong With This Picture? 2, 1972, 7 min
Institutional Quality, 1969, 5 min
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, 18 min
[Total running time approximately 75 minutes]

Reverence: The Films of Owen Land: Programme Two
The Film that Rises to the Surface of Clarified Butter, 1968, 9 min
Diploteratology, 1967-78, 7 min
"No Sir, Orison!", 1975, 3 min
Wide Angle Saxon, 1975, 22 min
Thank You Jesus for the Eternal Present, 1973, 6 min
A Film of Their 1973 Spring Tour Commissioned by Christian World Liberation
Front of Berkeley, California, 1974, 12 min
New Improved Institutional Quality: In the Environment of Liquids and Nasals
a Parasitic Vowel Sometimes Develops, 1976, 10 min
[Total running time approximately 75 minutes]

The film tour will be available for screenings from January 2005 onwards. If you are a venue interested in showing REVERENCE please contact LUX.

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, author of Visionary
Film)

Two Films by Owen Land is available to buy from the shop page of the LUX website.

REVERENCE: THE FILMS OF OWEN LAND (FORMERLY KNOWN AS GEORGE LANDOW) is a LUX project, produced in association with Österreichisches Filmmuseum, Vienna and supported by Arts Council England.

Owen Land's films have been preserved by Österreichisches Filmmuseum, Vienna, in co-operation with Anthology Film Archives, New York, Haghefilm, Amsterdam, and Listo-Film, Vienna.