Completed as thesis for his UCLA Master’s degree, Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographerwas Andersen’s breakthrough feature, the first work to express his unique melding of avant-garde cinema and careful historical archaeology. As a work of historical research, Andersen’s film helped spur the rediscovery of Muybridge that was just beginning in the period, pointing new attention in particular to his then relatively unknown landscape photography. Equally striking, however, was the film’s meticulous reanimation of thousands of Muybridge images to firmly establish the photographer’s pioneering work as a taproot of the cinematic imagination. With its focus on the origins and essence of the motion picture, Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer is an important precedent to Andersen’s latest exploration of Gilles Deleuze. Crisply edited together with fellow Angelo and filmmaker Morgan Fisher, the film’s insightful narrative is spoken by actor (and occasional experimental filmmaker) Dean Stockwell.

In 1996, Jonathan Rosenbaum authoritatively praised the film, which he declared “remains one of the best works of film history ever committed to film—an admirably economical and ingenious documentary exploring the philosophical, sociological, scientific, aesthetic, optical, technical, and theoretical implications of Muybridge's motion studies without belaboring any of them.”

Also included in the program are two early short films that place Andersen clearly within the vibrant avant-garde scene flourishing in Los Angeles in the Sixties. The playfully unequivocal Melting, for example, anticipates the work of fellow Angelo and friend Morgan Fisher, while Olivia’s Place is a tender monument to a local-culture establishment, a Santa Monica café, and an expression of the interest in street vernacular embraced by such Los Angeles artists as Ed Ruscha and Judy Fiskin.

Melting

Directed by Thom Andersen
US 1965, 16mm, color, 6 min

Olivia’s Place

Directed by Thom Andersen
US 1966/1974, 16mm, color, 6 min

Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer

Directed by Thom Andersen
US 1975, 35mm, color, 59 min