Allures (1961)
Directed by Jordan Belson
Genre: Experimental Short / Abstract film
Runtime: 8 min
Country: USA
Language: English
Color: Color
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054616/
Amos Vogel's Film as a subversive art escribió:One of the most ravishing abstract animations by the master of "cosmic" cinema, this film pulsates with concentric, exploding mandala-like forms -- continual intimations of a pantheist universe and of all matter and forms flowing endlesslyinto each other. The other-worldly images are artistic transformations of actual, yet unrecognizable objects. Peace, acceptance, oneness is the implicit message.
Experimental film made in 16 mm - colors and its optics -- 24 one duration im./sec. of 7' or 8' according to sources', Allures (1961) is famous for its plans of circular landscapes which Kubrick for 2001 took as a starting point: In Space Odyssey (1968). Kubrick also took as a starting point Belson for its large plans of irises turned in equidensities.
Jordan Belson, experimental scenario writer author of almost 35 films (cm and mm) and painter, was born into 1926 in the USA Graduate from the university from the Art schools from Berkeley in 1947, it is devoted to painting abstract expressionnist and discovers nearly simultaneously Oskar Fishinger and James Whitney at the time of the Festival of Film of Art of San Francisco in 1946. It then makes its first film Transmutation (1947) which so strongly impresses Fishinger that it recommends Belson to the Guggenheim Foundation of New York. It is initiated over there with the technique of the "color-morphing" by Thomas Wilfred: it is interested more in the colors and a little less in the geometrical effects. Witney works with him with and takes as a starting point Mandala (1958) in its own Lapis (see this catalogue). From 1966 to 1968 Belson is initiated with the techniques of Yoga, Indian philosophy and the religion boudhist: after Phenomena (1965), it turns Samadhi (22 ' - 1967), World (1970), Chakra (1972) and Light (1973) which retranscribe its interior experiments. Hollywood calls upon him for (not-credited) the mental representations of the Proteus computer in Demon Seed [ Proteus Generation ] (the USA 1977) of Donald Cammell and for (credited) The Right Stuff [ fabric of the heroes ] (the USA 1983) of Philip Kaufman. At 71 years, it still turns Mysterious Journey (1997) in video and does not cease working over again its former films in erudite variations, carrying out a series of Caballed Mandala whose referential titles with cosmology as much as with cosmogony are evocative: Diagram, Wheel of Life, Mother Universe.
(1 full source and several unfinished)