Owen Land
Biography
George Landow (1944 – June 8, 2011), also known as Owen Land, was a painter, writer, playwright, photographer, and experimental filmmaker. Shortly after the release of his film On the Marriage Broker Joke... (1977), Landow rearranged his name to Owen Land, an anagram of "Landow N.E." He has also worked under pen names Orphan Morphan and Apollo Jize. According to film historian Mark Webber, Land made early 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 wordplay, and have been described by Webber as having a humor & wit that separates his films from the "boring" world of avant-garde cinema. Webber also said that he was inspired by Joyce, Beckett, and Ionesco. While the humorous aspects of his films makes them appealing to audiences who are not familiar with the perceived hermetic and insular world of avant-garde film, many of his works function as sharp parody of the experimental & "structural film" movement. The book Two Films By Owen Land (Lux, London) features 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) features the complete script of his last film, as well as two interviews with the artist.
Personal Details
Also Known As
Movies (36)
Fluxfilm Anthology 1962-1970
Director (Directing)
2010
In the Land of Owen
2009
Dialogues, or A Waist Is a Terrible Thing to Mind
Director (Directing)
2009
On the Marriage Broker Joke as Cited by Owen Land...in the Film '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?'
Writer (Writing)
2009
Excerpts from a Work in Progress (Undesirables)
Director (Directing)
1999
The Box Theory (Ireko Riron)
Director (Directing)
1984
Noli me tangere
Director (Directing)
1983
Grand Opera: An Historical Romance
as Al Rutcurts
1979
Diploteratology
Director (Directing)
1978
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?
Director (Directing)
1977
New Improved Institutional Quality: In the Environment of Liquids and Nasals a Parasitic Vowel Sometimes Develops
Director (Directing)
1976
Wide Angle Saxon
Director (Directing)
1975
No Sir, Orison!
Director (Directing)
1975
A Film of Their 1973 Spring Tour Commissioned by Christian World Liberation Front of Berkeley, California
Director (Directing)
1974
Thank You Jesus for the Eternal Present
Director (Directing)
1973
What's Wrong with This Picture? 2
Director (Directing)
1972
What's Wrong with This Picture? 1
Director (Directing)
1971
Remedial Reading Comprehension
1970
Institutional Quality
Director (Directing)
1969
Baroque Slippages
Director (Directing)
1969
The Film That Rises to the Surface of Clarified Butter
Director (Directing)
1968
Ball Bearing
Cinematography (Crew)
1968
Bardo Follies
Director (Directing)
1967
Film in Which There Appear Edge Lettering, Sprocket Holes, Dirt Particles, Etc.
Director (Directing)
1966
The Evil Faerie
Director (Directing)
1966
Adjacent Yes, But Simultaneous?
Director (Directing)
1965
Studies and Sketches in 8mm
Director (Directing)
1965
This Film Will Be Interrupted After 11 Minutes by a Commercial
Director (Directing)
1965
Not a Case of Lateral Displacement
Director (Directing)
1964
Fleming Faloon
Director (Directing)
1963
Richard Kraft at the Playboy Club
Director (Directing)
1963
Fleming Faloon Screening
Director (Directing)
1963
Are Era
Director (Directing)
1962
Two Pieces for the Precarious Life
Director (Directing)
1961
Faulty Pronoun Reference, Comparison and Punctuation of the Restrictive or Non-Restrictive Element
Director (Directing)
1961
A Stringent Prediction at the Early Hermaphroditic Stage
Director (Directing)
1961