Jordan Belson

"The hallucinatory aspect of imagery is certainly inherent in my work and in the ideas relevant to my work." (Belson) has also insisted on the solid, perceptual reality his films recreate: "I first have to see the images somewhere, within or without or somewhere. I mean I don't make them up." Belson made that statement in the late 1960s, shortly after he had completed Samadhi , whose title (from Mahayana Buddhism) refers to the total union between the mind and its object of contemplation, a mental state that can be achieved only in the most advanced stages of meditation. In a later interview, Belson said, "[Samadhi] is intended to be a real documentary representation, as accurately as it was possible to make, of a real place and a real visual phenomenon that I perceived—just as I am looking at you right now."

Samadhi (1967)

Since the early 1970s, however, his films have been more consciously shaped by his concerns with "art making," as he puts it.[24] They have also revealed an increased interest in imagery of the outer world, or as Belson said in 1978, "The distinction between an external scene perceived in the usual way and the scene perceived with the inner eye is very slight to me."

Fountain of Dreams (1984)

The film that according to Belson "relates more to human physical perception than [his] other films" is Allures ...Allures might almost be a textbook illustration of many of the elements Siegel isolates in his study of hallucinations. Points of colored light cluster into circles and spirals wheeling in empty space. Light travels across the screen in lattice- and weblike structures... Sometimes these mandalas of light are geometrically precise constellations of tiny glittering dots; at other times they are pulsating disks and halos of misty, glowing colors.

Allures (1961)

Belson's increasing tendency to minimize distinctions between the physical light of the outer world and the mental light of the inner world is especially apparent in Light . "The film," he says, "portrays light simultaneously as both a spectrum of physical phenomena and as corresponding states of consciousness. It is an expression of light as a physiological and psychological substance."

Light (1973)

El Center for Visual Music ha editado un DVD con 5 obbras de Belson. Jordan Belson: 5 Essesntial Films contiene las obras Allures (1961), Samadhi (1967), Light (1973), Fountain of Dreams (1984), y Epilogue (2005), a las que pertenecen estas imágenes. Textos recogidos de "Light Moving in Time - Studies in the Visual Aesthetics of Avant-Garde Film" (William C. Wees, 1992), disponible online.