Standish Lawder

Independent filmmakers are given a chance to show and discuss their work on a commercial (ABC-TV) affiliate station.

CINEMA16 celebrates the short film by showcasing some of the best classic and award-winning shorts on DVD. With over three hours of films CINEMA16: AMERICAN SHORT FILMS is essential viewing for anyone with an interest in the moving image. Films include Gus Van Sant's 1982 adaptation of a William S. Burroughs short story, The Discipline Of DE, Tim Burton's early stop motion animated classic Vincent, George Lucas' USC short Freiheit, Alexander Payne's previously unreleased UCLA graduation short Carmen, Paperboys by Mike Mills, D.A. Pennebaker's Duke Ellington scored Daybreak Express, Todd Solondz's NYU short Feelings, along with Oscar Winner The Lunch Date by Adam Davidson, Stefan Nadelman's multi- award winning documentary Terminal Bar, Joe Nussbaum's cult classic George Lucas In Love and 2006 Sundance Winner The Wraith Of Cobble Hill by Adam Parrish King. Films are subtitled in French, German, Italian, Spanish and Japanese, and include commentaries from many of the directors involved.

Also known as Walden, Jonas Mekas’s first diary film is a six-reel chronicle of his life in 1960s New York, interweaving moments with family, friends, lovers, and artistic idols. Blending everyday encounters with portraits of the avant-garde art scene, it forms an epic, personal meditation on community, creativity, and the passage of time.

Played on a distant television screen in the dark (with some additional zooms by Lawler), 'Runaway' mainly consists of looped footage of what looks like a Fleischer or Terry cartoon, in which a group of dogs, intrigued by surrounding sounds, run to the left of the screen, and then to the right, back and forth, while a frenzied, spiraling organ score plays over the top. The scene eventually begins to warp and disintegrate. The result is equal parts mind-numbing and hypnotic.

The faces of a 5:00 PM crowd descending via the Pan Am building escalators in one continuous shot. In old-fashioned black and white, these faces stare into the empty space, in the 5:00 PM tiredness and mechanical impersonality, like faces from the grave.

An unknown observer is seen traveling through a bleak corridor. At the end of the corridor they see a naked woman, whom they are unable to reach as their trip seems to become increasingly twisted and looped.

Standish Lawder's four minute abridgement of D.W. Griffith's 1916 colossus. Processed "entirely automatically" and 'skip-printed' on homemade hardware, Intolerance is played at a speed and rhythm "as fast as possible, and yet one can still follow the narrative continuity of the film itself"; According to Lawder, "A kind of classic comic condensation, an encapsulation of this grand monument". Premiered in 1973 on television on Screening Room with Robert Gardner, to a lukewarm reaction from those present.

A spectacularly silly collage combo of old-cartoon-loop, colored light display and superimposed B-roll-- Why not do it in the road?

Further examining the medium of film itself, Colorfilm is a work Lawder made while trying to make a minimalist, "pure color" film. Using spliced-together strips of colored film leader in white, yellow, blue, red, green, etc., Lawder ran the film through a projector and found the results to be quite boring. While he was running the film, though, he noticed how beautiful the colored strips of film looked as they ran through the projector. So, he turned a camera on the projector and filmed the colored film gorgeously winding its way through the projector's machinery." - Noel Black, Colorado Springs Independent

Made for Intercat '73, Pola Chapelle's Cat Film Festival in New York. In the early 70's, a New York cat-lover and film-maker named Pola Chapelle produced a "Cat Film Fesitval:" which was shown in a large downtown NYC auditorium to an audience of more than a thousand cat-lovers. At the time, I lived with my wife Ursula and our daughters Katy and Cynnie, together with many, too many cats. I loved my family but not the cats. -SL. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2011.

Made entirely from old classroom instructional films, Dangling Participle offers a wealth of practical advice on contemporary sexual hang-ups and where they come from.

RAINDANCE plays directly on the mind through programmatic stimulation of the central nervous system. Individual frames of the film are imprinted on the retina of the eye in a rhythm, sequence, and intensity that corresponds to Alpha-Wave frequencies of the brain. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2010.

Made in 1988 at the University of California, San Diego in Standish Lawder's Experimental Film course.

Standish Lawder's The March of the Garter Snakes effectively demonstrated that a slide can produce kinetic experiences.

Made from some footage I shot on a family vacation way back in 1949. It features my brother Doug and a horse whose name I've forgotten. A circular cybernetic study film. (Standish Lawder)

Super 8 film. Observations of the Institute on Film, Video & Photography, Amherst, MA, summer 1975. Among the cast of characters, in order of appearance, are Robert Breer, John Terry, Steve Ascher, Richard Leacock, Jon Rubin, Frank Daniel, Ed Emshwiller, Ann McIntosh, Terry Lockhart, Standish Lawder, Jerome Liebling.

At the time, I lived with my wife Ursula and our daughters Katy and Cynnie, together with many, too many cats. I loved my family but not the cats. But one of our cats would wag her tail endlessly as long as her neck was stroked and, with the right music on the film's soundtrack, she really looked like she was conducting the musicians. This idea became Catfilm for Ursula. The audience loved it, and I was awarded a carton of cat food for the film. —Standish Lawder

A compilation job, a construction film, a treasure chest of bizarre and amusing footage, gathered from the entire range of the history of cinema.

I had long wanted to make a film on Hans Richter who has been an important figure in my life, and this is the result. Almost unedited, it was shot one summer Sunday afternoon in 1968 at a picnic with friends and relatives. Jonas Mekas was also shooting the event, and his version is included in his recent films "Diaries," "Notes" and "Sketches."