West End Salon Series: The Films of Myron Ort
Friday, August 20th, 20h
West End Salon Series
602 Wilson St., Santa Rosa, California, 95401, USA
The program consists of ten short films completed within the last couple of years. They range from 2 minutes to 19 minutes in length. One of the films was shot at last year’s Handcar Regatta with a hand-crank 35mm movie camera from the 1920s. This footage became a canvas on which other colors and patterns were added to create a film collage/montage with photographic images from the event peaking through the hand-painted and hand -printed layers. Other films range from the non-referential to the obscurely referential to the humorously referential. You wouldn’t know it from these notes, but I have a sense of humor. All films, unless otherwise noted, shown as digital transfers from full frame “super” 35mm.
Programme:
- Strip Film One 2 min.
- Phantom Ore 4 min.
- Tamper Oh No 7 min.
- Strip Film II 3 min.
- A Poem Thorn 9 min.
- A Prone Moth 3 min. (35mm film projection via antique silent projector)
- Strip Film III 5.5 min.
- Regatta 9 min.
Brief Intermission
- TNX UB aka "Ye Olde Bughouse" 6.5 minutes
- Neti Neti 19 min. silent
Total running time approx. 1 hour.
About the Artist: I have been making films since the 1960s. I hold an M.A. in Film from San Francisco State University and a B.A. in Physics from the University of California at Berkeley. I taught Film on the Art Department at Sonoma State University throughout the 1970s. I studied painting and drawing privately with Dr. Harold Gregor now considered by many to be the dean of contemporary American landscape painting. I have been a resident of Sonoma County since 1970. During the 60s and 70s my films were distributed by Canyon Cinema. A few won some prizes. I am self taught on the bongo drums and crazy about Afro-Cuban music and Jazz. My work comes out of the tradition of experimental and avant garde filmmaking in which the narrative is supplanted by the perceptual. I am a painter working and innovating in the film medium. The films are produced entirely with analog methods but are transferred to digital for showing. I work in both 16mm and 35mm film and also paint directly onto the film emulsion using a variety of techniques and materials. The visual elements of my films are highly polyrhythmic, coming from my long-time interest in drums and drumming. I feel adding soundtracks, more often than not, is unnecessary, redundant, and even distracting. I am aware of the perceptual challenge while viewing images progressing at speeds anywhere from 7 to 30 disparate frames per second, but feel confident that this a valid and rewarding art form and one which hopefully will become an acquired taste as it has for me. - Myron Ort