Cast & creator
Stan VanDerBeek
Best known for Breathdeath, Breathdeath, Mirrored Reason
American experimental filmmaker Stan Vanderbeek began his career in the 1950’s after having studied art and architecture in New York and North Carolina. His earliest period (1955-1965) is marked by his animated painting and collage films which the artist and critic Daryl Chin regarded as having an “enormous vitality, bounding inventiveness and incendiary wit which was shared by such other collagists as Robert Breer, Bruce Conner, Dick Preston.” Films such as Science Friction (1959, 10’), Breathdeath (1963, 15’), A la Mode (1959, 7’) and Achoo Mr. Kerrooschev (1960, 2’) are from this period. In the 1960’s, in the context of his expanded cinema research, Vanderbeek started his audacious project of the “Movie Drome” theater, a space that allowed him to create an appropriate environment for his synesthetic works, which included film, performance and dance among other disciplines. The filmmaker spent about 10 years developing this project, which consisted of a huge dome that surrounded the audience and engulfed them in the images projected all around them. From the mid-1960’s, Vanderbeek ‘s appetite for exploring new technologies increased and tools such as video played a major part in the filmmaker’s work. This can be seen in his computer-animated films from this period such as Symmetricks (1972, 6’) and the Poemfield series of 8 computer generated animations (1966-1971). His work with computers and experiments with holograms reflected his desire to use the most complex technology to get as close as possible to the functioning of the human nervous system. In addition to his creative work in the fields of film and video art, Vanderbeek was a faculty member and artist-in-residence at a number of major universities. He died in 1984.
77
film credits
0
television credits
7
1957–2011 · acting roles
5.8
average across scored titles
Signature credits
Known for
Across film & television
Filmography (77)
Showing 77 of 77 credits
Breathdeath
Director
1963Breathdeath
Editor
1963
Mirrored Reason
Director
1980
Birth of a Nation
Self
1997
Expo Faces
Director
1967
For Life, Against the War
Director
1967
Free Radicals: A History of Experimental Film
Himself (archive footage)
2011
Home Movies 1971-81
1985
Strobe Ode
Director
1977
After Laughter
Director
1981
Fluids
Director
1964
Movie-Drome
Director
1966
Face Concert
Director
1981Summit
Director
1963
Site
Director
1964Movie-Movies
Director
1965Vision III
Director
1966Videospace
Director
1970
Fuses
Director of Photography
1967Collide: Oscope
Director
1966
Street Meat
Director
1959
Ad Infinitum
Director
1968
Astral Man
Director
1959
Filmmakers
Himself
1969
Euclidean Illusions
Director
1980
Notes on the Buffalo Conference: “Autobiography in American Independent Cinema”
1973
Superimposition
Director
1968Pastorale
Director
1965
Mankinda
Director
1957
Moirage
Director
1970Science Friction
Director
1959
Poem Field Series
Director
1967
Facescapes
Director
1965
Skullduggery
Director
1962
Oh
Director
1968
Who Ho Rays No. 1
Director
1972
Newsreel of Dreams 1 & 2
Director
1964
Visual Velocity: The Work of Stan VanDerBeek
2000
Symmetricks
Director
1972
The Human Face Is a Monument
Director
1965
Micro Cosmos 1-4
Director
1983
Self-Poured Traits
Director
1983
Image After Image
Director
1967Achooo Mr. Kerrooschev
Director
1960Poem Field No. 2
Director
1966Man and His World
Director
1967
Sonia and Stan Paint a Portrait of Ronnie
Director
1983
The Birth of the American Flag
Director
1965Poem Field No. 4
Director
Black and White, Day and Night
Director
1960
Dance of the Looney Spoons
Director
1959
The Computer Generation
Director
1972Panels for the Walls of the World
Director
1967
Reeling in TV Time
Director
1983
Wheeeeels No. 2
Director
1958
Snapshots of the City
Director
1961
The Smiling Workman
Director
1960
Phenomenon No. 1
Director
1964
What, Who, How
Director
1957A La Mode
Director
1959A La Mode
Writer
1959
Poem Field No. 3
Director
1967
Reality's Invisible
Self
1972Poemfield No. 1 (Blue Version)
Director
1967
Spherical Space No. 1
Director
1967
Poem Field No. 5: Free Fall
Director
1968
Poem Field No. 7
Director
1967Poem Field No. 8
Director
Film Form No. 1
Director
1968Poem Field No. 6
Director
Poem Field No. 1
Director
1967
A Dam Rib Bed
Director
1965
Vanishing Point Left
Director
1977
Pittsburgh
Cinematography
1959
See Saw Seams
Director
1965Wheeeels No. 1
Director
1958
Color Fields Left
Director
1977