Northwest Film Forum

This experimental documentary is a brilliant, innovative film about the origins of cinema and its most famed forefather, Eadweard Muybridge. Over the course of ten years, Andersen animated Muybridge's landmark photographic studies of humans and animals in motion. Interpolated with these incredible sequences are biographical sections detailing Muybridge's personal and professional struggles, narrated by Dean Stockwell. Drawing the contrasts between Muybridge's reclusive lifestyle and genius and the explosive, very public birth of cinema, Eadweard Muybridge is both a film about cinematic history and a genuine work of art.

“One of the best essay films ever made on a cinematic subject.” —Jonathan Rosenbaum

"An often thrilling look into the experiments that anticipated the invention of moving pictures." —Seattle Post Globe

Screens with
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(Thom Andersen, Malcom Brodwick, USA, 1966-67, 16mm, 11 min)
Andersen's rock and roll film comes with instructions to play as loudly as possible. Here you'll find The Canned Heat, Charlie Watts, Duke of Earl, Riot in Cell Block Number Nine, Riot on the Sunset Strip, King Creole, The Shangri-Las, The Supremes, Wolfman Jack, Ray Charles, The Who, The Coasters, Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, John Cale, Screaming Jay Hawkins, Howlin Wolf, James Brown, The King, The Beatles, Great Balls of Fire and an early clue to a new direction.

Melting
(Thom Andersen, USA, 1964-65, 16mm, 6 min)
Entropy caught on film, in this monostructural work Andersen observes the melting of a strawberry sundae.

Olivia's Place
(Thom Andersen, 1966/74, 16mm, 6 min)
Thom Andersen preserves a piece of LA history with this wonderful short in which footage shot at the iconic diner before its demise is accompanied, jukebox-style, by the full recording of Big Jay McNeely's "There Is Something On Your Mind".