What’s new
Cine Archive
← Back to filmography
Owen Land
Born
Died
Place
Directing

Owen Land

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.

As director

Fluxfilm Anthology 1962-1970

Fluxfilm Anthology 1962-1970

Dialogues, or A Waist Is a Terrible Thing to Mind

Dialogues, or A Waist Is a Terrible Thing to Mind

Excerpts from a Work in Progress (Undesirables)

Excerpts from a Work in Progress (Undesirables)

The Box Theory (Ireko Riron)

The Box Theory (Ireko Riron)

Noli me tangere

Noli me tangere

Diploteratology

Diploteratology

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?

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?

New Improved Institutional Quality: In the Environment of Liquids and Nasals a Parasitic Vowel Sometimes Develops

New Improved Institutional Quality: In the Environment of Liquids and Nasals a Parasitic Vowel Sometimes Develops

Wide Angle Saxon

Wide Angle Saxon

No Sir, Orison!

No Sir, Orison!

A Film of Their 1973 Spring Tour Commissioned by Christian World Liberation Front of Berkeley, California

A Film of Their 1973 Spring Tour Commissioned by Christian World Liberation Front of Berkeley, California

Thank You Jesus for the Eternal Present

Thank You Jesus for the Eternal Present

What's Wrong with This Picture? 2

What's Wrong with This Picture? 2

What's Wrong with This Picture? 1

What's Wrong with This Picture? 1

Remedial Reading Comprehension

Remedial Reading Comprehension

Institutional Quality

Baroque Slippages

The Film That Rises to the Surface of Clarified Butter

The Film That Rises to the Surface of Clarified Butter

Bardo Follies

Bardo Follies

Film in Which There Appear Edge Lettering, Sprocket Holes, Dirt Particles, Etc.

Film in Which There Appear Edge Lettering, Sprocket Holes, Dirt Particles, Etc.

The Evil Faerie

The Evil Faerie

Adjacent Yes, But Simultaneous?

Studies and Sketches in 8mm

This Film Will Be Interrupted After 11 Minutes by a Commercial

This Film Will Be Interrupted After 11 Minutes by a Commercial

Not a Case of Lateral Displacement

Fleming Faloon

Richard Kraft at the Playboy Club

Fleming Faloon Screening

Are Era

Two Pieces for the Precarious Life

As actor