We are sad to report that filmmaker/artist Jordan Belson died early Tuesday morning, September 6, at his home in San Francisco, of heart failure. He was 85. A memorial screening is planned for the near future in the San Francisco Bay Area, plus tribute screenings in several other cities. Details will follow soon.
Jordan Belson created abstract films richly woven with cosmological imagery, exploring consciousness, transcendence, and the nature of light itself. Born in Chicago in 1926, Belson studied painting at the California School of Fine Art (now San Francisco Art Institute), and received his B.A., Fine Arts (1946) from The University of California, Berkeley. He saw films by Oskar Fischinger, Norman McLaren and Hans Richter at the historic Art in Cinema screening series in San Francisco in the late 1940s. Belson was inspired to make films with scroll paintings and traditional animation techniques, calling his first films "cinematic paintings." Curator Hilla Rebay at The Museum of Non-Objective Painting, New York, exhibited his paintings, and upon Fischinger's recommendation awarded Belson several grants. From 1957-1959, Belson was Visual Director for The Vortex Concerts at San Francisco's Morrison Planetarium, a series of electronic music concerts accompanied by visual projections. Composer Henry Jacobs curated the music while Belson created visual illusions with multiple projection devices, combining planetarium effects with patterns and abstract film footage. His Vortex work inspired his abandoning traditional animation methods to work with real time projected light. He completed Allures (1961), Re-entry (1964), Phenomena (1965), Samadhi (1967), and continued with a series of abstract films. His varied influences include yoga, Eastern philosophies and mysticism, astronomy, Romantic classical music, alchemy, Jung, non-objective art, mandalas and many more. Belson produced an extraordinary body of over 30 abstract films, sometimes called "cosmic cinema." He produced ethereal special effects for the film The Right Stuff (1983). His last completed film was Epilogue (2005), commissioned by The Hirshhorn Museum. He is survived by his long time partner, Catherine Heinrich. (Revised bio by C. Keefer, for Guggenheim Museum's "The Third Mind" catalog, 2008.) More information about Belson and his work can be found on his approved research pages, at www.centerforvisualmusic.org/Belson Earlier in 2011, Belson wrote a statement asking people not to put his films online, as it did not do justice to his work. In lieu of flowers, Belson's partner Ms. Heinrich requests that donations be made to Center for Visual Music's preservation and digitization work to continue preserving the legacy of Jordan Belson. Contact cvmarchive (at) gmail.com posted by: Cindy Keefer Center for Visual Music Los Angeles, CA 213-683-1514 cvmaccess (at) gmail.com www.centerforvisualmusic.org _______________________________________________ FrameWorks mailing list FrameWorks@jonasmekasfilms.com https://mailman-mail5.webfaction.com/listinfo/frameworks
