ANOTHER WATER FILM (1970)
16mm, color, sound, 6m
THROBS (1972)
16mm, bw & color, sound, 7m
NOW, YOU CAN DO ANYTHING (1973) (w/ Chris Langdon)
16mm, color, sound, 5.5m
VENUSVILLE (1973) (w/ Chris Langdon)
16mm, color, sound, 10m
TETRAHEDRON (1974) (w/ Eugene Bernofsky & Charles DiJulio)
16mm, bw, sound, 14m
The following is taken from emails from Gene Bernofsky to Mark Toscano in 2017 on the subject of this film:
“It’s a pleasure to recall the fun we had making that film. Been a while ago and memory of the logistics may not be accurate. But here they are; Me and Charlie and Fred took turns with the camera. Maybe we used two bolex cameras? Fred would know. But Charlie is dead. I miss him. I think I did the edit. …
“That hike went to a 1400 ft. peak in the Rockies. I’m not sure of the specific mountain but it may have been Long’s Peak. Yes, we had fun making that. When we got to the top Charlie lay down to rest and I sneaked a bunch of rocks into his pack so that we could film his funny struggle lifting the pack up and on! At the summit I was overcome with hypothermia and blacked out. Fred and Charlie hustled me down the mountain and I slowly recovered. We stopped to make a fire and there are shots in the film of Charlie coaxing up a flame. The lower altitude and the warmth led to recovery. I think I did the edit in Charlies’ dome studio at Thorn Lake. …
“Yes, I think you have the date right. Charlie and I were happy to have a film school grad along. Especially as we had no formal film training and I believe we both teased Fred for his knowledge. He took it well. We conceived of ourselves as “advanced” creative artists and shunned formal training. I never, ever thought there were RULES for filmmaking. But then I’ve always been a bit of a rebellious fool. I bet Fred would agree.”
VUDOO (1976)
16mm, color, silent 24fps, 14m
“I made this film in 1976 as an attempt to consider the flow of the scrolling frames in the spotlight as a field of experience of continuity, if the representation and naturalism were rejected. I have not shown this film since the early 80s. But while I finished One, I realized that some of the questions I was trying to solve at that time came from this film, and that is how I rediscovered.” (FW)
VUDOO [short version] (1976/ca.1995)
16mm, color, silent 24fps, 4m
Worden seems to have created this short version around 1995 by removing about ten minutes of material at one point in the film. This latter-day short version of Vudoo exists as only one print which has been modified by the filmmaker.
FOUR FRAMES (1976)
16mm, color, silent 24fps, 10m
BON AMI (1977)
16mm, color, silent 24fps, 6.5m
NOT BE BOP (1977)
16mm, bw & color, sound, 8.5m (8:20)
This film is described on its opening titlecard as: “6 little films comprised of 3 scenes each, separated by black leader. 1972, 1976”
GO (1978)
16mm, color, silent 24fps, 2m (1:56)
PANOVISION [original version] (1978)
16mm, color, silent 24fps, 20m
A year after its making, Fred Worden cut the film’s length down substantially to produce the final and preferred version of the film, which is 11 minutes. This original long version of the film also seems to have had a couple of rejected tentative titles, based on labeling of the original cans: MY FRACTAL (ROLLING ANALOGY) and REPLIGON (SELF-SIMILAR GEOMETRY).
PANOVISION [revised version] (1979)
16mm, color, silent 24fps, 11m
This shortened version of the film should be considered the final and preferred version.
“A field-oriented, non-hierarchial distribution of information across time, which aims towards a dispersed, radiated attention in viewing.
“Inspired by fractal geometry, which is the geometry of self-similar patterns. Fractal geometry developed out of the discovery of Brownian motion and deals with dimensionality, chance and form. ‘Fractals’ offered a new set of terms for thinking about what I seemed already to be doing in film. This is a landscape film which aims to establish a kind of panoramic viewpoint.” (FW)
VENETIAN BLIND [Barbara Bode soundtrack] (1978)
16mm, bw, sound, 11m
There are two soundtrack versions of this film, referred to as the “Barbara Bode track” and the “John Fernie track”. Both versions feature a performance of the same text (written by John Fernie), by Barbara Bode or John Fernie, respectively, with windmill sounds underneath the performer. The Fernie track is the later and apparently preferred track for this film.
VENETIAN BLIND [John Fernie soundtrack] (1979)
16mm, bw, sound, 11m
There are two soundtrack versions of this film, referred to as the “Barbara Bode track” and the “John Fernie track”. Both versions feature a performance of the same text (written by John Fernie), by Barbara Bode or John Fernie, respectively, with windmill sounds underneath the performer. The Fernie track is the later and apparently preferred track for this film.
TERRIFIC MEASURES [original version] (1979)
16mm, color, silent 24fps, 9m
TERRIFIC MEASURES [revised version] (1980)
16mm, color, silent 24fps, 5.5m
This shortening of the original version is the filmmaker’s preferred and final version. The year of the revised version has been given by Fred as both 1980 and 1981 in different instances.
INSOMNIA (1981)
16mm, bw, silent 24fps, 6m
HERE, THERE, NOW, LATER (1983)
16mm, color, silent 24fps, 3m
“Two naturally accumulating forward progressions collide within the confines of the Moffit Tunnel on the Great Divide.” (FW)
IN & OUT (1983)
16mm, color, silent 24fps, 3m
“A lyrical study of the World Trade Center occupying space and reflecting space.” (FW)
PLOTTING THE GREY SCALE (1985)
16mm, bw, silent 24fps, 7m
No titles appear on the film, but the full title of the film as sometimes used by Fred Worden in labeling his film cans seems to be PLOTTING THE GREY SCALE: 2 OR 3 QUICK TRAVERSES. However, this title does not seem to have been used in print references.
LURE [original version] (1986)
16mm, color, sound, 5.5m
LURE [revised version] (1986/ca.1993?)
16mm, color, sound, 5m
This film was slightly revised from its original version, probably sometime around 1993 based on interpretation of available evidence. There are five cuts at which I believe only some titlecards were removed. This should be considered the final and preferred version of the film.
“An accident on a frozen lake. A story spread across a visual matrix in parallel with the spread across the breaking ice of the hero/victim. Gambling and luxuriating on nature’s thin ice mandates a payback, no? Welcome to that sinking feeling.” (FW)
HOW THE HELL I RIPPED JACK GOLDSTEIN’S PAINTING IN THE ELEVATOR (THE ART MOVER’S STORY) (1986)
16mm, bw, sound, 20.5m
“A more or less true story from my days as an art handler in 1980s New York City.” (FW)
BOULEVARD (1989)
16mm, bw, sound, 9m
“Conceived as a homage and an answer to Len Lye’s hand-processed Free Radicals.” (FW)
BREAKOUT (1990)
16mm, color, sound, 10m
INTRODUCTION TO THE SECRET SOCIETY (1992)
16mm, bw & color, sound, 7m
“The initiates are seen lounging at their stations. A face, a figure against a ground and the crowd, three chips off the same block.” (FW)
THIS OLD HOUSE (1993)
16mm, color, silent 24fps, 14m
Fred Worden seems on occasion to have shown Part 1 of this film on its own, which runs about 5.5 minutes in length.
“I don’t think I sent This Old House at all. Decided that one was too obscure and too unrealized for preservation. I only showed it twice after completing it before retiring it.” (email from Fred Worden)
AUTOMATIC WRITING (ca.1996-99)
16mm, bw, silent 24fps, 7.5m
This film was completed and printed (and probably screened somewhat), but Worden then revised it and added to it, releasing the result as Automatic Writing 2. This first film survives only as a couple of extant prints.
ONE (1998)
16mm, bw, silent 24fps, 22.5m
“One. One frame in play. Infused with the elemental energies of cinema and turned on itself this meager frame (happenstance’s visage) sheds its pictorial guise and atomizes into sheer dynamic. Light and No-light areas in continuously streaming interplay. Trajectoried to shoot right past the discursive mind and jigger directly the brain’s electro-chemical neural flows, seedbed to every single thought or feeling. A cinema of pure energy climbing out along an axis of its own invention.” (FW)
AUTOMATIC WRITING 2 (2000)
16mm, bw, silent 24fps, 11m
“Continued explorations of automatism as a practical guide to negotiating the mysterious zone where light and no-light flutter in a fecund equipoise. A homemade rocket to realms unknown to any movie camera or photo lens. In the end, perhaps nothing more than a search for an experience of continuity, a kind of sanity. Failing sanity, a wild ride at least.” (FW)
THE OR CLOUD (2001)
16mm, bw, silent 24fps, 7m
“A guided adventure for the eyeballs. And as such, also, of necessity, an adventure of the mind (how could it be otherwise?). I believe there is a current which runs at the core of all beings, call it the life force, a dynamic which in individuals reflects both the personal and the universal. Up on the screen, frames in motion, a rushing stream of articulated energy to resonate with that inner biological current. Adventurous eyeballing then, in the ideal, an epiphanous moment of mutual recognition and commiseration between energy forms. “There is a vibration which exists to enrapture and console us.” (Rilke). I like to think this vibration can be detected streaming out of The Or Cloud.” (FW)
IF ONLY (2003)
16mm, bw, silent 24fps, 7m
“The bubble shaped orb of the human head, perched atop its touchy-feely transport system has seven moist openings through which everything outside comes in: two eyes, two nostrils, one mouth and two ears. Inside the bubblehead, bubble universes spawn ad infinitum and the only passable direction is directly into the steady headwinds of an ever-advancing infinity of veils. A high wire bobbing and weaving just to stay upright. These artful if endless veil penetrations are at once the human job description as well as nature’s shot at vindicating the transient in the face of the impassive infinite. Nature makes the orifices moist so things can stick, at least momentarily.
“And so the intoxicated camera operator shoots the moon slipping through the barren trees. The rabbit hole’s light shadow appears and he obliges, head first, no looking back. His cranium (like yours) is packed with illusions, but down the rabbit hole they treasure the same just so long as they’re custom fabricated, hand tooled and conscious. Down this hole, stalking the unforeseen non-translatable is all. Join in here.” (FW)
AMONGST THE PERSUADED (2004)
digital (SD), bw & color, sound, 22.5m
“The human susceptibility to delusional thinking has, at least, this defining characteristic: easy to spot in others, hard to see in oneself. The filmmaker, racked by the inescapable observation that it is delusional thinking that is the common denominator driver of so many contemporary man-made disasters gins up a vehicle meant to ruthlessly uncover and expose his own particular brand of pathological believing. This film is about us. I believe its true. See the iron jaws of the mechanism at work as the filmmaker falls into the biggest and most obvious delusion of all: the belief that he can master his own delusions by making a film about them.” (FW)
BLUE POLE(S) (2005)
digital (SD), bw, sound, 20m
“A digital continuation of my long-standing interest in an optical/perceptual cinema, Blue Pole(s) tries hard to up the ante on the notion that film is a visual rather than literary art and that seeing as a perceptual process precedes and models thought. Music by Tom Hamilton.” (FW)
HERE (2005)
digital (SD), bw & color, sound, 11m
“HERE is a place, an optical location brought into being through conjuring in order to accommodate a clandestine rendezvous between Sir Laurence Olivier and Georges Melies. Early cinema audiences, we are told, were mesmerized by the cinematic apparitions and impossible cavortings realized by the sly Melies. Those first paying customers had, apparently, no need for plots, movie stars or sharp ideas. Direct conjuring was more than enough. Could that work HERE?” (FW)
EVERYDAY BAD DREAM (2006)
digital (SD), color, sound, 6.5m
“Like picking shards of broken glass out of pile carpet on a hangover morning.” (FW)
NORTH SHORE (2007)
digital (SD), color, silent, 11m
“The North Shore: where the big ones break and the under currents push-pull an ancient, silent tune.” (FW)
TIME’S ARROW (2007)
digital (SD), bw & color, sound, 11.5m
“Time’s arrow is a term coined by British astronomer Arthur Eddington in 1928 to describe the directionality of time. He cast it as a one-way street aimed into the future. Out on my freeway, directionality is elusive. The faces in the windows appear and then disappear, some moving out ahead, some falling behind, some moving so fast as to be beyond registering, others sliding by so languidly you’d think they want something from you. Each time I think to myself: one more person I’ll never know.” (FW)
THE AFTER LIFE (2007)
digital (SD), color, sound, 6m
“I made The After Life using images out of a 98 dollar mini-camcorder called a Flip that I bought on Amazon.com. All I did with the material was work with arrangements of frames along a timeline to setup what Eisenstein called “collisions” (for him a colliding of shots, for me a colliding of frames). On rare occasions, Eisenstein substituted the word “copulation” for the word “collision” in describing the dynamics of his montage theory. In The After Life it’s all copulation all the time. Bodies attract, bodies intersect and new creatures stream forth. In The After Life uninhibited promiscuity is what makes the world go round. It can’t be all bad.” (FW)
THE AFTER LIFE (“VICTORIA’S SECRET VERSION”) (2007)
digital (SD), color, sound, 15m
WHEN WORLDS COLLUDE (2008)
digital (SD), color, sound, 13.5m
“An experimental film structured as a kind of specialized playground in which highly representational images are freed from their duties to refer to things outside of themselves. The images run free in their new lightness making unforeseeable, promiscuous connections with each other and developing an inexplicable, non-parsable plot line that runs along with all the urgency of any good thriller. When worlds collude, something outside of description is always just about to happen.” (FW)
1859 (2008)
digital (SD), color, silent, 11.5m
“Built out of a 30-frame clip of a lens flare. LSD is illegal, 1859 is not.” (FW)
ALL MY LIFE (2009)
digital (HD), color, sound, 19m
“A dramatic weather front led to images that in turn invoked memories of Bruce Baillie’s 1966 film of the same name. The passage of time would seem to be the common theme that both films share.” (FW)
POSSESSED (2010)
digital (HD), bw, sound, 8.5m
“Once, when I was about 18 years old, my friend Eddie Moulton and I were taking a short cut across the local high school parking lot and we happened to notice that one of the school buses parked there had an open door and we could see the keys sitting on the driver’s seat. It was a Sunday afternoon and no one was around, so just for the illicit thrill of it we got in and drove the bus from one end of the school parking lot to the other. I think if the cops had caught us driving the bus, the charge would have been something like “joy riding.” A similar impulse explains Possessed. I had a strong, slightly illicit, urge to commandeer the original train sequence from the 1932 film, Possessed and make it move in such a way as to give the girl (Joan Crawford) what she thought she wanted: a position on the inside. To do that, I had to create my own (all encompassing) vehicle. By my count, the original sequence provides three orders of motion: the motion (and stillness) of the passengers on the train, the motion of the train itself, and finally the motion of the girl (Joan) outside of the train. By injecting my own additional level of motion, I was able to move Joan from her position on the outside looking in (played melodramatically as desire’s longing for the just-out-of-reach) to a position inside, looking around (played as pure vision). But maybe that’s really just my fanciful imagining and, as such, pretty much situates me in Joan’s original position: projecting desire onto a handy passing vehicle. In the end, at least this much is true: we both love staring into this passing train. In fact, we never seem to tire of it. Soundtrack by Michael Schumacher.” (FW)
ALL OR NOTHING (2012)
digital (HD), color, sound, 15m
“When it comes to motion pictures, I’ve always been a lot more interested in the motion than the pictures. Images, in fact, have always been for me primarily a medium through which motion (or energy) can manifest. In All or Nothing abstract images are made dynamic by an infusion of energy imposed by me from outside. I’m tempted to describe this as a conversion of biological energy (mine) into cinematic energy. The individual frames collide and new things appear. It’s almost like a jerry-rigged, homemade version of the Large Hadron Collider. On the web page for the Large Hadron Collider it describes the Hadron Collider’s mission as “tunneling to the beginning of time.” A no-nonsense mission, I’d say. The mission of All or Nothing might also be described as a kind of tunneling, but for the life of me, I can’t say exactly where its tunneling to.” (FW)
*
Though not technically a film, Fred Worden created an illustrated lecture that was filmed (and theoretically screenable as a single-channel video) called After Hours in the Cerebral Kitchen, which was first presented around 2010. It’s highly recommended and as of this writing, can still be found HERE.
Some material exists for an unfinished collaborative film with Chris Langdon tentatively called The Boat Show, from around 1973.
LIGHTSTRUCK 