In the best traditions of the early avant-garde cinema (Georges Melies, Fritz Lang) and American Underground movement of the 60's (Stan VanDerBeek, Kenneth Anger), this collection of works glorifies theatricality, intensity of sets and decor, masks, make-up and costumes of the exalted characters, intricate illusionary experiments, magic and supernatural within the multi-layered experimental narratives. Among the filmmakers featured are Mara Mattuschka, Anna Biller, Reynold Reynolds and Lawrence Jordan .

The Apparition 50min, 16mm, 1976
Director: Lawrence Jordan

A full production: sync-sound drama with cast, crew, color neg., and 16mm wide screen cut-off (normal projector and lens). My intention was to follow James Agee's idea to present "an imaginary story against a background of reality." The imaginary story is of Paul Rose and his past incarnation as a woman in classical Greek times. I collaborated with George Kuchar, who did special sets for the film.

In THE APPARITION, which is being shown at the Whitney Museum's New American Filmmakers Series, Mr. Jordan sets up a central figure to whom a dream belongs, and the figure simultaneously constructs it and dreams it. The figure is Paul, a maker of experimental films and commercials. Hallucination and reality shift back and forth. We see Paul experiencing his visions, telling about them afterward, and - he is a film maker, after all - setting them up. There is a charming openness in the way Mr. Jordan blurs the lines between fantasy and reality, and between fantasy and fraud. - Richard Eder, The New York Times.

Larry Jordan is an independent filmmaker who has been working in the Bay Area in California since 1955, and making films since 1952. He has produced some 40 experimental and animation films, and three feature-length dramatic films. He is most widely known for his animated collage films. In 1970 he received a Guggenheim award to make SACRED ART OF TIBET. His animation has shown by invitation at the Cannes Film Festival. Jordan is one of the founding directors of Canyon Cinema Cooperative. He has shown films and lectured throughout the country. He is presently chairman of the film department at the San Francisco Art Institute.

Jordan is one of the most prolific and accomplished stalwarts of the Bay Area independent film community. He takes full advantage of the tendency of disparate objects to take on new meaning, and form new relationships when they are brought into close proximity or when their usual context is changed. While these film collages link together a myriad of symbolic forms in new combination, the smooth, lyrical progression of the work results in a powerful sense of wholeness and totality." - Hal Aigner, San Francisco Chronicle "One thing: If I'd have to name one dozen really creative artists in the independent (avant-garde) film area, I'd name Larry Jordan as one. His animated (collage) films are among the most beautiful short films made today. They are surrounded with love and poetry. His content is subtle, his technique is perfect, his personal style unmistakable. - Jonas Mekas

Three Examples of Myself as Queen 26 min, 16mm, 1994
Director: Anna Biller

An Arabian queen is cheered by her attendants, a Queen Bee rules over a hive of adoring drones, and a teenage girl escapes from danger to a pink castle in a colorful feminist fairy tale inspired by old Hollywood musicals.

Anna Biller is an artist and filmmaker living in Los Angeles. Her films include the horror-western "A Visit from the Incubus," the musical fantasy "Three Examples of Myself as Queen," and the 30's melodrama "The Hypnotist." Her work has shown in festivals and art spaces around the country, and was mentioned in Artforum's "Best of 1994." She is known for her use of lavish handmade costumes and sets to talk about experiences within the everyday feminine. She received a B.A. in art from UCLA and an M.F.A from CalArts in art and film. She is curently working on a feature-length film called "Viva," based on ads and cartoons from old Playboy magazines.

Burn 35mm on video, 10min, 2001
Director: Reynold Reynolds and Patrick Jolley

Burn is a stunning evocation of those unspoken, unconfronted somethings, those secrets, worries and lies, forming a force which is always a part of the fabric of everyday interactions; at first niggling at the edges, then - provoked by a word or a gesture - suddenly searing through everything and everyone in its path.

Having both a film and an installation run as part of a single piece has been the mark of the Jolley-Reynolds collaboration in the four years since they met at the New York School of Visual Arts. Both Seven Days 'til Sunday and The Drowning Room were screened both in a gallery and in a cinema space. While compromise may be an essential part of any successful collaboration, Jolley and Reynolds found it easy to negotiate in their earliest pieces. Jolley, the photographer, created an installation with the striking visual image as central; Reynolds, the film-maker, had his work of determinate length with credits to mark the beginning and end. Both artists could feed their individual habits. "Every piece that we've done," admits Reynolds, "in my mind has existed as a film. But from Patrick's point of view they all probably exist as art works." -Belinda McKeon, Irish Times, http://www.temple-bar.ie/review_november_2001.asp

Alaskan-born, Reynold Reynolds has created four films and three videos since 1995, often in conjunction with his own gallery installations. Among his awards are prizes from the South by Southwest Film Festival and Ireland’s Cork Film Festival for Seven Days ‘Til Sunday (1998), and an honorable mention from The Sundance Film Festival for The Drowning Room (2000). His video and installation works have been presented in Havana, London, Berlin, Seattle, and New York.

S.O.S. Extraterrestria 10min, 16mm, 1993
Director: Mara Mattuschka

The world as a plaything for a giantess from outer space.

A Godzilla-imitation on the way to herself: the giantess from outer space in the streets of a big city, fooling around, producing destruction, copulating with the Eiffel Tower. An orchestra of big feelings, the melodrama, defamed in infantile sounds and absurd costume, in make-up-persiflage and grotesque body-art-performances. E.T. staggers through the night & the City, looks like Mimi Minus and grabs little projected human beings with her hand, just like the huge infatuated monkey of the horror genre. And the cinema of war and catastrophies watches with an open mouth until a toy city - which desperately tries to be a real one - finally collapses laconically. (Stefan Grissemann)

Mara Mattuschka was born in Bulgaria in 1958. 1975 "Golden Circle for Advanced Mathematics." Since 1976 lives in Vienna. 1977 "General Certificate for Education of the University of London." 1977-83 studied ethnology and linguistics at the University of Vienna. 1990 completion of her degree at the College of Applied Arts (painting and animated film in the master class for Experimental Design under Maria Lassnig). Numerous exhibitions of oil paintings as well as performances and song recitals. 1990 birth of son Max Victor. 1991 received a scholarshipto work in Prague from the Austrian Ministry of Education and Art. 1994 professor of "free art" at the College of Fine Arts in Braunschweig. Member of the Austria Filmmakers Coop and committee member of ASIFA Austria.