George Landow (filmmaker)

George Landow (1944 – June 8, 2011),[1] also known as Owen Land, was a painter, writer, photographer and experimental filmmaker. He also worked under the pen names Orphan Morphan and Apollo Jize.

George Landow
Born
George Landow

1944
New Haven, Connecticut
DiedJune 8, 2011
Los Angeles, California
OccupationExperimental filmmaker

According to the film historian Mark Webber, Land made some of his first films as a teenager and his later films, made mostly during the 1960s and 1970s, are some of the first examples of the "structural film" movement. Land's films usually involve word play and have been described by Webber as having humor and wit that separates his films from the "boring" world of avant-garde cinema.

His work is also known to parody the experimental and "structural film" movement, as featured in his 1975 film Wide Angle Saxon. His style of filmmaking is also inspired by Bertolt Brecht, educational films, advertising and television, and employs devices used by such in his films to destroy any sense of "reality", as exhibited in What's Wrong With this Picture 1 and Remedial Reading Comprehension.

Shortly after the release of his film On the Marriage Broker Joke as Cited by Sigmund Freud... (1977), Landow rearranged his name to Owen Land.[2] It is an anagram of "Landow N.E.". Land was the model for Robert Heinlein's character Jubal Harshaw, unbeknownst to Heinlein.

The book Two Films By Owen Land (Lux, London) has the complete scripts of Landow/Land's films Wide Angle Saxon and 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?, as well as footnotes written by Land interpreting the many references and elements of these two films and a filmography by Mark Webber. Released in May 2011, the book Dialogues - a film by Owen Land (Paraguay Press, Paris) has the complete script of his last film, as well as two interviews with the artist and essays written by Philippe Pirotte, Julia Strebelow and Chris Sharp.

Biography

Education, live theater and retrospectives

Land was born and raised in Connecticut, USA, and studied drawing, painting, sculpture, industrial design and architecture at Pratt Institute, Art Students League of New York and New York Academy of Art. He graduated with an MFA in painting from New York Academy of Art. He also studied acting and acting improvisation at Goodman Drama School and The Second City in Chicago. His music studies include classical and flamenco guitar, classical piano and music composition and Hindustani classical music at the Ali Akbar Kahn College of Music in San Rafael, California. He taught film production at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Northwestern University, San Francisco Art Institute and Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. He founded the Experimental Theater Workshop at The Art Institute of Chicago and wrote and directed several musical theater pieces, with original songs and music, including Mechanical Sensuality and Schwimmen mit Wimmen. Retrospectives of Land’s films have been held at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in Scotland, the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, New York, the International Film Festival Rotterdam in the Netherlands, the Tate Gallery in London, Kunsthalle Bern in Switzerland, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Until his death, Land was represented by Office Baroque in Brussels, Belgium.

Death

Land was found dead in his Los Angeles apartment on June 8, 2011.[1] His death was announced by Office Baroque on July 13,[1] though the cause of death was not made public.[3]

Filmography
YearTitleFormatLengthNotes
1961Two Pieces for the Precarious Life16mm10 minutes
1961Faulty Pronoun Reference, Comparison and Punctuation of the Restrictive or Non-Restrictive Element16mm5 minutes
1961A Stringent Prediction at the Early Hermaphroditic Stage16mm5 minutes
1962Are Era8mm3 minutes
1963Richard Kraft at the Playboy Club8mm2 minutes
1963Fleming Faloon Screening8mm2 minutes
1963-4Fleming Faloon16mm7 minutesColor[4]
1964Not a Case of Lateral Displacement8mm8 minutes
1965Leopard Skin8mm4 minutes
1965Adjacent Yes, But Simultaneous?8mm3 minutes
1965This Film will be Interrupted after 11 Minutes by a Commercial16mm12 minutes
1966Film in Which There Appear Edge Lettering, Sprocket Holes, Dirt Particles, Etc.16mm3:30 minutesColor; silent[4]
1967Bardo Follies16mm20 minutesColor; silent[4]
1968The Film that Rises to the Surface of Clarified Butter16mm9 minutesB/w[4]
1969Baroque Slippages16mm3 minutes
1969Institutional Quality16mm5 minutesColor[4]
1970Remedial Reading Comprehension16mm5 minutesColor[4]
1971What’s Wrong With This Picture 116mm5 minutesB/w and color; silent[4]
1972What’s Wrong With This Picture 216mm7 minutesB/w and color; silent[4]
1973Thank You Jesus for the Eternal Present16mm6 minutesB/w and color[4]
1974A Film of Their 1973 Spring Tour Commissioned by Christian World Liberation Front of Berkeley California16mm12 minutesColor[4]
1975No Sir, Orison!16mm3 minutesColor[4]
1975Wide Angle Saxon16mm22 minutesColor[4]
1976New Improved Institutional Quality: In the Environment of Liquids and Nasals a Parasitic Vowel Sometimes Develops16mm10 minutesColor[4]
1978Diploteratology16mm7 minutesColor[4]
1977-9On 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?16mm18 minutesColor[4]
1983Noli Me Tangere/Don't Touch MeVideo6:15 minutes
1984The Box TheoryVideo15:36 minutes
1999Undesirables (Condensed Version)16mm/Video
2009Dialogues, or A Waist Is A Terrible Thing To MindVideo

Dialogues is informed by Land's study of folklore, myth and history, and the theology of all major religions, including Gnosticism and Kabbala. It ironically uses the form of the Platonic dialogue to explore the themes of reincarnation, art criticism and Tantra. It includes pastiches of badly-written well-known Hollywood films, as well as the films of Maya Deren, Stan Brakhage, Jim McBride and others. Dialogues was produced between January 2006 and August 2009 by Eric Michael Kochmer, Benjamin E. Pitts and Skye Le-fever.

References
  1. Marcos Ortega (2011),"Owen Land (1944-2011)", Experimental Cinema, July 13, 2011. Accessed July 16, 2011.
  2. David Ehrenstein (1984) Film: the front line, 1984, Arden Press, Inc., p49
  3. Mike Everleth (2011) "Owen Land, R.I.P.", Underground Film Journal, July 14, 2011. Accessed July 16, 2011
  4. Reverence: The Films of Owen Land, Harvard Film Archive. Accessed June 19, 2011
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