Hamfat Asar

The title of this film conjoins a made-up name for Lawrence Jordan's home, "Hamfat," with the archaic name "Asar" for Osiris, the Egyptian god of the underworld. "Every culture has a relation to symbols. Every culture has their ways of getting at the infinite. I especially like Egyptian culture in that way. So many of their symbols and practices are about getting in touch with an afterlife. Everyone has an inner personal place, a yearning. And, most artists get at that through representation."

The strangeness of this film is laced with carefully molded apocalypses as the filmmaker explores a vision of life beyond death - the Elysian fields of Homer, Dante's Purgatorio, de Chirico's stitched plain. A moving single picture.

Evolving the structure or script for the film involved a process of controlled hallucination, whereby I sat quietly without moving, looking at the background until the pieces began to move without my inventing things for them to do. I found that, given the chance, they really did have important business to attend to, and my job was to furnish them with the power of motion. I never deviated from this plan.

1965

16 MM

Black & White

15 Minutes

Sound