Stan VanDerBeek

Directing·Jan 6, 1927·New York, New York

Rate

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.

Film	Credit
Free Radicals: A History of Experimental Film2011 · Himself (archive footage)	Himself (archive footage)
Visual Velocity: The Work of Stan VanDerBeek2000 · Actor	Actor
Home Movies 1971-811985 · Actor	Actor
Reeling in TV Time1983 · Director	Director
Micro Cosmos 1-41983 · Director	Director
Sonia and Stan Paint a Portrait of Ronnie1983 · Director	Director
Self-Poured Traits1983 · Director	Director
Face Concert1981 · Director	Director
After Laughter1981 · Director	Director
Euclidean Illusions1980 · Director	Director
Mirrored Reason1980 · Director	Director
Color Fields Left1977 · Director	Director
Vanishing Point Left1977 · Director	Director
Strobe Ode1977 · Director	Director
Notes on the Buffalo Conference: “Autobiography in American Independent Cinema”1973 · Actor	Actor
Symmetricks1972 · Director	Director
Reality's Invisible1972 · Self	Self
Who Ho Rays No. 11972 · Director	Director
The Computer Generation1972 · Director	Director
VVideospace1970 · Director	Director
Moirage1970 · Director	Director
Filmmakers1969 · Himself	Himself
Oh1968 · Director	Director
Ad Infinitum1968 · Director	Director
Poem Field No. 5: Free Fall1968 · Director	Director
Superimposition1968 · Director	Director
Film Form No. 11968 · Director	Director
Fuses1967 · Director of Photography	Director of Photography
PPoemfield No. 1 (Blue Version)1967 · Director	Director
Poem Field No. 11967 · Director	Director
PPanels for the Walls of the World1967 · Director	Director
Poem Field Series1967 · Director	Director
Poem Field No. 71967 · Director	Director
Image After Image1967 · Director	Director
For Life, Against the War1967 · Director	Director
MMan and His World1967 · Director	Director
Expo Faces1967 · Director	Director
Poem Field No. 31967 · Director	Director
Spherical Space No. 11967 · Director	Director
CCollide: Oscope1966 · Director	Director
PPoem Field No. 21966 · Director	Director
VVision III1966 · Director	Director
Movie-Drome1966 · Director	Director
See Saw Seams1965 · Director	Director
The Human Face Is a Monument1965 · Director	Director
PPastorale1965 · Director	Director
MMovie-Movies1965 · Director	Director
A Dam Rib Bed1965 · Director	Director