Movies: Jon Jost

A telling story of an unemployed Vietnam vet in Butte, Montana, whose wife leaves him after seven years when she feels there is no longer communication between them and - more painfully and pointedly - because she is unable to have a child owing to h...

Speaking Directly is an essay-film making for a kind of State of the Nation address, from the perspective of someone other than the President of the United States, circa 1973-5. This film addresses both the political and cultural situation of the US ...

This film is a portrait of the passage of one year in the lives of some San Francisco friends, circa 1988 (before the dot.coming of the city), a slow marijuana hazed story which drifts like the fabled fog, encompassing the quirks and habits of a gene...

An essay-film on language and theater, on human communication - intellectual in content, but purely poetic in terms of form: image, sound, language, cinema. Stagefright, with the exception of one shot, was all filmed in a small puppet theater space, ...

The famous French film director Jean-Luc Godard is interviewed by British film theorist Peter Wollen and the editor of Framework Don Ranveaud. He talks of the developments in his work, the change in style epitomized by his most recent film, Sauve Qui...

An American independent director comes to Italy to shoot a film. But inconveniences and obstacles stand in the way at every step. These are the years in which “Tangentopoli” rages and the golden rule of officials and collaborators is “one (bribe) to ...

An essay film/documentary perusing matters of art, society, history, and a grab-bag of the author's interests, which also serves as a primer to the aesthetics of digital video....

Set in the quasi-Biblical splendor of the Mormon Dixie of central Utah, Sure Fire follows the trajectory of an American archetype, the small town entrepreneur seized by visions of fortune. Wes, eager to sell out the local grandeur to the wealthy hord...

A bluesy lyrical romance of two ugly-ducklings who meet on the Golden Gate Bridge and after a brief and awkward courtship, live together with the usual problems of money and work, take flight to an illusory freedom on the road, and dances inexorably ...

"PRIMARIES is a simple film which merely establishes a definition of 'politics'. Its narrative moves in paragraph blocks, with each sentence accompanied by different pictures of a young woman's hands, feet, torso, face… A TURNING POINT IN LUNATIC CHI...

Taking inspiration from the collaborative 1967 militant anthology film Far from Vietnam, five of the boldest and most prominent American militant filmmakers unite to create this searing (and seething) omnibus work, employing a variety of approaches t...

Jon Jost: "RANT is a discursive portrait of Steven Lack, actor (Cronenberg's Scanners, Alan Moyle's Rubber Gun, Jost's All the Vermeers in New York) and full-time painter/artist in the New York scene since the late 1970's. The film provides a glimpse...

A film that Jon Jost dedicated to his daughter Clara, an artistically designed home movie and at the same time a look back at his life, mostly commented off-screen by Jon Jost. He used the technology of the digital camera which contrasts nicely with ...

Working for the first time with sound, I made TRAPS, a film scripted in jail on hearing of an acquaintance’s suicide, and LEAH. Both are “portraits” of alienated young women. TRAPS is harsh in both form and content, with long takes speaking to the ca...

Mountain landscapes enveloped in foggy fields that slowly merge into one another. Sometimes the fog clears and details become visible. Sometimes the landscape blurs into an abstract drawing. From photographic images by Danila Rumold....

An experimental sketch that came about while Jon Jost was teaching at Italy's National Film School. He strolled through the San Lorenzo district, observed the celebrations, the lively street life and didn't miss the nearby cemetery....

1964, Autumn in Chicago. This was my 4th film, shot while waiting to go to prison for refusing to serve in the US military. Silent. B&W. I think it captures the sense of depression, of loneliness within the city. Looking back it seems almost archaic,...

A scathing portrait of the Hollywood/LA arts milieu of the late 70’s, Chameleon follows the amorphous day of its lead character, an Armani-jacketed peddler of high-class dope, fraudulent art, and preening postures suited-to-fit the changing victims, ...

After being thrown out of his house, a cowboy hits the road in a senseless wave of robbery, murder and rape. On a bucolic farm a seemingly retarded woman is kept on a rope by a mute farmer. Soon, the cowboy shows up. "Parable" is a radical reflection...

A portrait of alienation is sketched out, focusing on a young art student who passively, but consciously, rejects responsibility for the political storms swirling about her. The epitome of bourgeois mentality, she insists she is, or at least will be,...