Ed Emshwiller

Ed Emshwiller

Born: February 16, 1925
Died: July 27, 1990
in Lansing, Michigan
Born in 1925, Ed Emshwiller studied graphic design at the University of Michigan and L'Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. By the late '60s Emshwiller was working as a science fiction illustrator, and had established his place in the American avant-garde cinema with such works as Relativity (1966) and Image, Flesh and Voice (1969). His early films featured collaborations with dancers and choreographers—a theme he carried over into his videoworks.

As both an artist and a teacher, Emshwiller’s pioneering efforts to develop an alternative technological language in video were enormously influential. His early experiments with synthesizers and computers included the electronic rendering of three-dimensional space, the interplay of illusion and reality, and manipulations of time, movement, and scale that explore the relationship between "external reality and subjective feelings." Emshwiller was among the first artists-in-residence at the TV Lab at WNET, where he produced the groundbreaking Scape-mates (1972). Sunstone (1979) was made over a period of eight months at the New York Institute of Technology. Emshwiller passed away in 1990 and an extensive collection of his work is housed by Anthology Film Archives.

Movies for Ed Emshwiller...

Home Movies 1971-81
Title: Home Movies 1971-81
Released: January 1, 1985
Type: Movie
Home movies shot on Super 8mm by W+B Hein over 10 years.
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Lost, Lost, Lost
Title: Lost, Lost, Lost
Character: Self
Released: September 14, 1976
Type: Movie
Jonas Mekas adjusts to a life in exile in New York in his autobiographical film, shot between 1949 and 1963.
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Family Focus
Title: Family Focus
Character: Himself
Released: May 5, 1976
Type: Movie
Emshwiller terms Family Focus a "family self-portrait, a stylized autobiography," which takes the form of an intimate collage of home movies, black-and-white videotape and photographs that have been colorized, synthesized or otherwise visually transformed in an electronic mediation by the artist. The viewer is witness to the spontaneous activities and conversations of the family's quotidian home life, which is accompanied by Carol Emshwiller's ironic, often poetic commentary. In one sequence of home movies, the children are seen "growing" over a span of twenty years. Using the video camera as a kind of psychological mirror, Emshwiller integrates video's intimacy, reflexivity and realism with its "unreal" technological manipulations to form what the artist describes as a "documentary/video art transformation of self-revealing images."
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Painters Painting
Title: Painters Painting
Released: March 19, 1973
Type: Movie
Painters Painting: The New York Art Scene 1940-1970 is a 1972 documentary directed by Emile de Antonio. It covers American art movements from abstract expressionism to pop art through conversations with artists in their studios. Artists appearing in the film include Willem de Kooning, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Helen Frankenthaler, Frank Stella, Barnett Newman, Hans Hofmann, Jules Olitski, Philip Pavia, Larry Poons, Robert Motherwell, and Kenneth Noland.
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Diaries, Notes, and Sketches
Title: Diaries, Notes, and Sketches
Character: Self
Released: March 1, 1968
Type: Movie
An epic portrait of the New York avant-garde art scene of the 60s.
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Galaxie
Title: Galaxie
Character: Himself
Released: September 3, 1966
Type: Movie
In March and April of 1966, Markopoulos created this filmic portrait of writers and artists from his New York circle, including Parker Tyler, W. H. Auden, Jasper Johns, Susan Sontag, Storm De Hirsch, Jonas Mekas, Allen Ginsberg, and George and Mike Kuchar, most observed in their homes or studios. Filmed in vibrant color, Galaxie pulses with life. It is a masterpiece of in-camera composition and editing, and stands as a vibrant response to Andy Warhol's contemporary Screen Tests. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2001.
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Hallelujah the Hills
Title: Hallelujah the Hills
Character: Gideon
Released: December 16, 1963
Type: Movie
Jack and Leo vie for the affections of Vera – who appears a little differently to each man – over the course of a series of energetic sketches, flashbacks and homages.