The Films of Myron Ort - FILMS 60'S-70'S

FILMS 1960's-1970's
DVD Vol. I Okeanos 33 min. silent, 1972-2008 Filmed in Baja California where the desert sun meets the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf. A rusting shipwreck on the rocks outside of Cabo San Lucas in 1972 provides a central and poignant metaphor for a macro-psychedelic and micro-expressionistic exploration of tropical colors and surfy forms. At the time many innovative and experimental in-camera techniques were used to create a dazzling and mysterious vocabulary of painter’s eye multi-plane cinema. Extensive abstract expressionist hand painting can also be seen in this final version. Meanwhile the shipwreck "Inari Maru" has disintegrated and disappeared back into the sea. Palimpsest Palindrome 4 min. silent, 1965-1975 Mirrored from left to right and front to back, this multilayered black and white symmetrical abstract horror film has apocalypse written all over it. It is still a lot of fun to see and is not without its humor. Okeanos 33 min. silent, 1972 The edited A-roll original prior to reversal wet-gate printing and hand-painting.		Okeanos #1 Okeanos #2 Okeanos #3 Okeanos #4 Okeanos #5
DVD Vol. II *Love Must Love* 28 min. silent, 1968 Flower generation celebration of love. Filmed in San Francisco and Berkeley California in collaboration with my girlfriend at the time, the actress Donna Germain. *Eye Lands* 29 min. silent, 1970 Having moved from the city to the country, a continuation of ongoing investigations into filmmaking vision as a spiritual meditation. Documents an engagement with Avatar Meher Baba and his teachings. *Awakener* 10 min. silent, 1969 Transition from psychelics to Meher Baba. Cinema as path to reality. *Ommo* 17 min. silent, 1972 Originally an 8mm film with hand-painting which was blown up to 16mm and hand-painted again before multiple printings with several optical manipulations. A mandala of ever changing configurations, both angelic and demonic, to be seen as an evanescent phenomenon. In the late 1960s I met Stan Brakhage when he attended a screening by local filmmakers in San Francisco. Afterwards he expressed an enthusiasm for trading some of his own 8 mm Songs for a print of my 8 mm film “Love Must Love”. We started a correspondence and then further trades for my 8 mm film “Eye Lands”. This dvd contains the three films pertaining to the enclosed facsimiles of the letters from Stan. About my 16 mm film “Ommo” (1971) Brakhage states: “I think I have never seen a more thoroughly worked-on hand-painted film”.		*Ommo*
DVD Vol. III He’s Here Now 33 min. silent 1967 *Awakener* 13 min. 1967 Sproul Plaza Drummers 15 min. 1967 By the late 1960s I moved from Berkeley to San Francisco where I met other like- minded artists and experimental filmmakers. It was the era of intense outrage against the war in Viet Nam, psychedelics, and interest in Eastern mysticism. Canyon Cinema was the focus of a renewed underground film scene. While attending San Francisco State University, I met artists Ben Van Meter, Guido Bondioli, Robert H. Ballad, and ML Carle. One stony day we took a day trip with our cameras and filmed each other filming each other. This footage became the nucleus of an autobiographical compilation documenting some of my first experiments. “He’s Here Now” and “Awakener” (8 mm blowup to 16 mm with sound) referenced the avatar Meher Baba. Through the veils of multiple exposure at an “Acid Test” party in San Francisco (toward the end of “He’s Here Now” ) one might catch a brief glimpse of Ken Kelsey and Neal Cassidy. During those years, when picking up processed film at Multi-Chrome labs in San Francisco, I would sometimes run into and chat with another hero, the great filmmaker Bruce Baillie, one of the original founders of Canyon Cinema. My film “Awakener” was shown at the first “Cinema Psychedelica” in Berkeley at the end of the 60s and was reviewed by Lenny Lipton who was a film critic for the Berkeley Barb at the time. Included in this dvd set is also some black and white documentary footage of the conga drummers at Sproul Plaza on the U.C.Berkeley campus during the late 60s.		*Awakener #1* *Awakener #2* Sproul Plaza Drummers
DVD Vol. IV Old Redwood Series 95 min. silent, 1974-1979 8mm Interludes - Reels 1- 5 Animations by Jack Fisher and Carl Conversa In 1974 I moved to a rural property on Old Redwood Highway in Sonoma County near the town of Penngrove California where I still live. I had started a filmmaking curriculum in the Art Department at nearby Sonoma State University in 1969 after obtaining an MA in Film from San Francisco State University, and wanted to live closer to work. During the ensuing years of developing the land, remodeling the house, the studios, and various outbuildings, as well as various projects and excursions with my partner and friends, I carried around the smallest and humblest of unobtrusive regular 8mm movie cameras with which I could both record interesting moments and also weave a cinematic fabric equivalent to the gestural style and compositional concerns of Abstract Expressionism, a style of painting I had studied, practiced, and related to since the late 1950s. In other words, these film interludes are Abstract Expressionist home movies.		Old Redwood Series #1 Old Redwood Series #2
DVD Vol. V *8mm Portrait Series* 115 min. silent 1974-79 Filmed with the Bolex Rx8 camera which was the exact same size as a 16mm Bolex but holding 4 times the amount of film time-wise. These rolls were spontaneously edited with my in-camera style and have emerged as portraits, mostly of artist friends, including the painter and colleague Lynn Shelton at work in his San Francisco home studio. There is also a black & white “portrait” of my old Los Angeles neighborhood and a glimpse of my current locale in Sonoma County California. The painter's eye and a musician's lyricism is at the root of these cinematic explorations.		8mm Portrait Series #1 *8mm Portrait Series #2*
DVD Vol. VI *Film Class Projects* 85 min. 1969 to 1980 I wrote my Master's thesis on the teaching of film as an art form. From 1969 to 1980 I was able to put these ideas into practice while teaching filmmaking in the Art Department at Sonoma State University in northern California. Some of my students , whose early efforts are represented in this collection, went on to successful careers in the field. Marcy Page became an Academy Award winning producer of animation for the Canadian Film Board, and Steven Zaillian an acclaimed Academy Award winning writer, producer, and director in Hollywood, among others. My teaching was based not only on cinematic history and theory, but was deeply grounded in the fundamentals of "gestalt" perception studies as originally taught by professor Hoyt L. Sherman of Ohio State University, which came to me via his student, the renowned painter and teacher Harold Gregor, and his students. The animation which starts off this collection was produced entirely during classroom time using the most economical means. It was based on the "Dada" device known as the "exquisite corpse" applied with innovation to cartoon animation. During the decade of the 1970s I was generally impressed with the creative talent of my students and their love and enthusiasm for the cinematic arts. We had a lot of fun. And, they watched a lot of Brakhage films as well as classic French movies and of course the entire history of films in the good old USA and everything else. Film Titles: Hairy Things, 14 Student Animators Going To Fat City, Michael Welles Stove Bolts, Michael Welles Untitled, Michael Welles Balloon Man Meets Butterfly Lady, Marcy Page Space Out or Scratch One, Pat Traimer Beautiful Dreamer, Steven Zaillian Blue Skies Over Topanga, Steven Zaillian Calistoga Road, Steven Zaillian Mother Hubba I, Xeno Kung (aka Myron Ort) Mother Hubba II, Xeno Kung (aka Myron Ort) Mountain Cat, Myron Ort Park Man, Myron Ort		*Space Out or Scratch One by Pat Traimer* *Hairy Things*