All film descriptions were written by Neelon Crawford. Program approx. 50 min.
Window Dance. 1971. Silent. 8 min.
A chance meeting with contemporary dancer Ishi Kamamoto during a visit to London led to the filmmaker shooting the performer’s improvised dance in natural light alongside a canal which Crawford later edited when he returned to San Francisco. “With Window Dance I explored how any image contains aspects of a “surface” to look at and a “window” to look through.”
Mobius. 1971. 18 min.
The material…was shot primarily on the West Coast, some in New York, during 1969–71. Divided into eight sections, Mobius defines a motion from downtown San Francisco through a forest in Los Padres National Forest, a student (Michael Anton) practicing Tai Chi Chuan, to the southern Big Sur coast. It pertains to sensing the intensity of the energy that surrounds one.
Sun Dream. 1972. Silent. 1 min.
[…The] first of a series of one-minute films to replace television commercials.
La Selva. 1974. Silent. 11 min.
The films shot during 1973–74 in Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia span a range of interests. Some, like Ship Side Steel Plate Lights and Laredo Sugar Mill, are examinations of visual details. Others, like La Selva, which I completed using a number of complicated yellow and green filters, are portraits of places and their energies.
Ship Side Steel Plate Lights. 1974. Silent. 2 min.
Bright sun reflecting off the water’s surface onto the black hull of a cargo ship made a fluid painting with light and steel.
Fire Flames. 1975. Silent. 3 min.
Optically printed frames of a flickering candle flame.
Paths of Fire II. 1976. Silent. 8 min.
From two color camera rolls filmmaker Michael Mideke and I shot on July 4, 1969, we began editing many versions, independently and together. I worked running a 16mm Bell & Howell “J” contact printer in San Francisco, which allowed me to make many generations of printing elements not normally available to customers.