[Frameworks] My Trip To PFA And Canyon Cinema Part 4

[Doug Chaffin("Douglas Graves")]

Next I saw some incredible abstract 16mm movies by the great master Jordan Belson!
Since I first was able to see most of his work about 6 years ago, on a bunch of the Iota Center vhs tapes, I was immediatley enthralled and enchanted by his exciting, meditative, and intensely beautiful cinematic experiences. I loved all of his uniquely crafted visual effects and emotionally atmospheric soundscapes, especially from "Allures" on and all the way to "Bardo" and "Epilogue", I immensely enjoyed each and every one of his works. And I keep going back to my copy of the CVM "Jordan Belson: 5 Films" DVD to watch these majestic movies. So I was particularly excited to finally see some 16mm prints of a couple of his pieces. 
"Meditation"
 Jordan Belson
Coolly blue, flowing dynamic visuals. Misty, shimmering, rich blacks, handsome beautiful blue shapes and cloud-forms. Very calming and dream-like. Delicious to look at and great sound too. To my recollection, his most cool and relaxing movie. 
"World" Jordan Belson
Unfortunately the print is terrible, milky white, faded colors, along with the normal problems like dirt and scratches. Also from the vhs tape, "World" seems to be the Belson movie that has suffered the most physically. It's like a hollow, lifeless suggestion of the richly gorgeous experience that I can imagine it really was when first made. On the vhs tape a couple of moments seem to still, at least partially, remain visually forceful and effective but this film print to my recollection is completely ruined. Like some kind of very sad archaelogical find of a once great painting that has
 fallen apart to almost nothing of it's former glory.
"Momentum" Jordan Belson
This one is the vaguest in my mind. I definitely have to see it again to give it it's proper due. 
"Phenomena" Jordan Belson
Incredibly exciting and bizarrely enjoyable! I think this really stands out as an oddball but wonderful Belson piece. Very strange opening with great visuals and sounds, quirky with a kind of "modern" sensibility. Some images off a TV set, things like that. Extremely vibrant colors with some cool optical distortion effects, mixing abstraction with representation, and great fast montage with quirky sounds like distorted rock
 music. A amazing sight and sound show follows, one amazingly colorful motion display after another. All violently alive with beauty and feeling.               
"Light" Jordan Belson
A favorite of mine from the CVM DVD and it was great to see it projected on film! An old print, pretty bruised and beaten with dirt and scratches. But the colors are still saturated and vivid! Having known all the visuals in it after many several viewings of the dvd on different kinds of screens and players over the last 3 years, it was quiet a revelation to enjoy it projected on celluloid! I saw some incredible differences in  the visual details and motions. The kind of movement and textural "look" of the film print was very different and more exciting optically to me and much more dynamically kinetic and graceful.    This is a piece with some great imagery, some appear to be like subtle moving and richly colorful curtains, others are like whirling and cascading galaxies of flowing swimming carbonated bubbles and crystals, others like huge sandscreens that are gently being blown in slow motion.    All have more clarity of detail and concrete
 separateness of gradations in the different moving spots of the motion picture frame.    And the great ending with the flame! A great angle looking straight down on an intensely sizzling, smoldering, scalding hot ring of fire in the blackness that jumps out at the screen and gradually is superimposed over a vast black vista of pairs of oncoming circles of white light, like speeding car headlights but completely floating by themselves in the surrounding darkness. They enter the top of the frame in the background and spread out over the whole frame, coming down closer and exiting out of the bottom of the image. On their way they pierce and scatter what appears to be a vast fog or clusters of clouds. Still superimposed, the violent ring of fire
 continues to burn and then fades away. One gigantic lick of fire, like a huge torch or candle flame, is left flickering in the center of the frame until a pair of round white lights moves head-on and extinguish it as they pass straight through it.         On 16mm film the fire is much more alive - powerful, luminous, and explosively furious!     Douglas Graves
4636 Talbot DriveBoulder, CO 80303  702-580-4293PURE CINEMA CELLULOIDhttp://www.purecinema-celluloid.webs.com/
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