Arapadaptor (I Feel So) is an abstract film of mostly found sound and cameraless images. Most of the source material was unwittingly supplied by a Chinese herbalist. To produce Arapadaptor I applied my flashlight and laser, a la Man Ray, to the caterpillars, cicadas and seeds of the herbal packages, and this was only the beginning. Much of the original footage was further manipulated – painted, tinted and/or bleached. Finally, the images were rephotographed, slowed, through the use of an optical printer.

Using rapidly edited, superimposed images of plants, trees, water, the sun, and the moon, Incantation weaves a dynamic tapestry of organic forms and textures, combining its images with a fierce rhythmic intensity so as to suggest a kind of natural force. The film was shot entirely in 8mm, in camera, according to a pre-arranged score, and then blown up to 16mm using a homemade optical printer. The accompanying soundtrack, a chant taken from Islamic liturgy, is breath-based, as is much of the underlying structure of the image, and brings the film into the form of a prayer.

“… massive and lovely …” – Roger Greenspun, The New York Times

I lost sight due a blow on the head from slipping on black ice (leading to eye surgery, eventually); and now (because of artificially thinned blood) most steps I take outdoors all winter are made in frightful awareness of black ice.

These “meditations” have finally produced this hand-painted, step-printed film.

“Brilliant found-footage film about extraterrestrial aliens, fear and microbes.” – International Film Festival Rotterdam.

Out of the Ether re-assembles disquieting images from decades-old hygiene and science films, merging them with the filmmaker’s own Bolex camerawork. It was re-photographed on the optical printer, toned and tinted to bring out pulsating hues of oozing greens and yellows.

“Fred Worden’s magical CalArts thesis film collages all manner of spectacle (car crashes, football, circus, television) into a hypnotic and dream-like reverie that feels somehow personal, as if a revisited catalog of images that might once have given him delight in his youth. The eclectic source material, woven together with genuine and unexpected beauty on the optical printer, moves from refrain to refrain with a fluidity that suggests a free-associating cinematic consciousness, a momentary pause in the now on the then.” (Mark Toscano)

Restored print by the Academy Film Archive.

“Kinochestvo is the art of organizing the necessary movements of objects in space as a rhythmical artistic whole, in harmony with the properties of the material and the rhythm of each object.” From WE: Variant of a Manifesto (Dziga Vertov, 1922)

“Kinodelic is the art of organizing the necessary movements of color film stock through the optical printer in harmony with the internal rhythm in the music of Jimi Hendrix.” From US, A Variant of a Variant (Alva, 1995)

History paints a heroic picture of the so-called “cowboys” of history. Using the “hero” as a metaphor to question his validity, Cowboys Were Not Nice People is an attempt to break down the solid foundation upon which myths of modern society are based.

Composed entirely on the optical printer, the film involves rhythmic editing and montage sequences of found footage and camera original exploring the mythical frontiers of Western culture and the romanticism of colonialism.

Eight stereoscopic slides taken to the JK-104 optical printer, shot frame by frame. This is the first hand-processed color film I’ve made. The slides were found at a thrift store in Milwaukee, WI in 2009. They are of Cuba between 1948 and 1950, taken by an army officer while accompanied by his family. Their touristic gaze is reclaimed, by fragmenting their photographs into new possibilities of the frame, and reviving the bodies that may have perished by the revolution in 1952.

The day they filled all that gravel in front of Jack and Jerry’s old studio on Venice Blvd.

A yellow bird fascinated by reflection.

Several views from the San Francisco Marine Museum on a gray day in December.

Three views of Mercer Street, New York after the second big snowstorm of January, ’78.

Several fogs, a strange puddle, and a female Husky induced to howl by humans.

(This film is perhaps best seen after one of the others, like a “chaser.”)