George Landow (1944 – June 8, 2011), also known as Owen Land, was a painter, writer, photographer and experimental filmmaker. He also worked under the pen names Orphan Morphan (probably a reference to Eugène Ionesco's play The Chairs) and Apollo Jize.
His work is also known to parody the experimental and "structural film" movement, as featured in his 1975 film Wide Angle Saxon. His style of filmmaking is also inspired by Bertolt Brecht, educational films, advertising and television, and employs devices used by such in his films to destroy any sense of "reality", as exhibited in What's Wrong With this Picture 1 and Remedial Reading Comprehension.
Shortly after the release of his film On the Marriage Broker Joke as Cited by Sigmund Freud... (1977), Landow rearranged his name to Owen Land.David Ehrenstein (1984) Film: the front line, 1984, Arden Press, Inc., p49 It is an anagram of "Landow N.E.".
Early life He was born into a conservative Jewish family before becoming a skeptic in his later years.
According to the film historian Mark Webber, Land made some of his first films as a teenager and his later films, made mostly during the 1960s and 1970s, are some of the first examples of the "structural film" movement. Land's films usually involve word play and have been described by Webber as having humor and wit that separates his films from the "boring" world of avant-garde cinema.
Education, live theater and retrospectives Land was born and raised in Connecticut, US, and studied drawing, painting, sculpture, industrial design and architecture at Pratt Institute, Art Students League of New York and New York Academy of Art. He graduated with an MFA in painting from New York Academy of Art. He also studied acting and acting improvisation at Goodman Drama School and The Second City in Chicago. His music studies include classical and flamenco guitar, classical piano and music composition and Hindustani classical music at the Ali Akbar Kahn College of Music in San Rafael, California. He taught film production at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Northwestern University, San Francisco Art Institute and Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. He founded the Experimental Theater Workshop at The Art Institute of Chicago and wrote and directed several musical theater pieces, with original songs and music, including Mechanical Sensuality and Schwimmen mit Wimmen. Retrospectives of Land's films have been held at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in Scotland, the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, New York, the International Film Festival Rotterdam in the Netherlands, the Tate Gallery in London, Kunsthalle Bern in Switzerland, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Until his death, Land was represented by Office Baroque in Brussels, Belgium.
Death Land was found dead in his Los Angeles apartment on June 8, 2011. His death was announced by Office Baroque on July 13, though the cause of death was not made public.
His last film Dialogues was informed by Land's study of folklore, myth and history, and the theology of all major religions, including Gnosticism and Kabbala. It ironically uses the form of the Platonic dialogue to explore the themes of reincarnation, art criticism and Tantra. It includes pastiches of badly-written well-known Hollywood films, as well as the films of Maya Deren, Stan Brakhage, Jim McBride and others. Dialogues was produced between January 2006 and August 2009 by Eric Michael Kochmer, Benjamin E. Pitts and Skye Le-fever.
Filmography Year Title Format Length Notes 1961 Two Pieces for the Precarious Life16mm10 minutes1961 Faulty Pronoun Reference, Comparison and Punctuation of the Restrictive or Non-Restrictive Element16mm5 minutes1961 A Stringent Prediction at the Early Hermaphroditic Stage16mm5 minutes1962 Are Era8mm3 minutes1963 Richard Kraft at the Playboy Club8mm2 minutes1963 Fleming Faloon Screening8mm2 minutes1963-4 Fleming Faloon16mm7 minutesColorReverence: The Films of Owen Land , Harvard Film Archive. Accessed June 19, 20111964 Not a Case of Lateral Displacement8mm8 minutes1965 Leopard Skin8mm4 minutes1965 Adjacent Yes, But Simultaneous?8mm3 minutes1965 This Film will be Interrupted after 11 Minutes by a Commercial16mm12 minutes1966 Film in Which There Appear Edge Lettering, Sprocket Holes, Dirt Particles, Etc.16mm3:30 minutes Color; silent1967 Bardo Follies16mm20 minutesColor; silent1968 The Film that Rises to the Surface of Clarified Butter16mm9 minutesB/w1969 Baroque Slippages16mm3 minutesColor; unreleased1969 Institutional Quality16mm5 minutesColor1970 Remedial Reading Comprehension16mm5 minutesColor1971 What's Wrong With This Picture 116mm5 minutesB/w and color; silent1972 What's Wrong With This Picture 216mm7 minutesB/w and color; silent1973 Thank You Jesus for the Eternal Present16mm6 minutesB/w and color1974 A Film of Their 1973 Spring Tour Commissioned by Christian World Liberation Front of Berkeley California16mm12 minutesColor1975 No Sir, Orison!16mm3 minutesColor1975 Wide Angle Saxon16mm22 minutesColor1976 New Improved Institutional Quality: In the Environment of Liquids and Nasals a Parasitic Vowel Sometimes Develops16mm10 minutesColor1978 Diploteratology16mm7 minutesColor1977-9 On the Marriage Broker Joke as Cited by Sigmund Freud in Wit and its Relation to the Unconscious or Can the Avant-Garde Artist Be Wholed?16mm18 minutesColor1983 Noli Me Tangere/Don't Touch MeVideo6:15 minutes1984 The Box TheoryVideo15:36 minutes1999 Undesirables (Condensed Version)16mm/Video2009 Dialogues, or A Waist Is A Terrible Thing To MindVideo
Legacy His 1976 film New Improved Institutional Quality: In the Environment of Liquids and Nasals a Parasitic Vowel Sometimes Develops appeared on the 2008 DVD set entitled Treasures IV: American Avant-Garde Film, 1947-1986. Alt URLLim, D (March 1, 2009). "Avant-garde film gems in 'Treasures IV' collection," The Los Angeles Times.
The book Two Films By Owen Land (Lux, London) has the complete scripts of Landow/Land's films Wide Angle Saxon and On the Marriage Broker Joke as Cited by Sigmund Freud in Wit and its Relation to the Unconscious or Can the Avant-Garde Artist Be Wholed?, as well as footnotes written by Land interpreting the many references and elements of these two films and a filmography by Mark Webber. Released in May 2011, the book Dialogues - a film by Owen Land (Paraguay Press, Paris) has the complete script of his last film, as well as two interviews with the artist and essays written by Philippe Pirotte, Julia Strebelow and Chris Sharp.
References
External links Office Baroque: Owen Land Writing on Owen Land (George Landow) by Fred Camper on the Web Reverence: The Films of Owen Land (a touring exhibition of his films)
Owen Land (George Landow) on e-flux.com