Morgan Fisher

Production Stills

Morgan Fisher

As its title indicates, the subject in Production Stills is a series of production stills of a film that was never made, and that at the same time is the film we are watching. A perfectly enclosed narrative of its own production: the image is one long take (11 minutes) of a wall on which a hand sequentially pins a number of Polaroids, one after the other. The Polaroids depict the crew making the film; the synchronous sound allows us to hear in ‘real time’, their chatter and the hum of the still camera, so that we can anticipate the photos and assign faces to the voices we hear. - Artefact Festival

()

Morgan Fisher

A collection of inserts from B-movies, edited according to a structuralist scheme. The latent meaning of purely functional film language released through isolation and interposition.

Standard Gauge

Morgan Fisher

Morgan Fisher

Standard Gauge is an autobiographical film that examines Morgan Fisher’s work as an editor in the film industry. The film goes through scraps of rejected material along with commentary on the meaning of all the scrapped images. This film is an account and critique of the processes of meaning within film production through an examination of both materialism and the institution of film itself.

Messiah of Evil

Willard Huyck, Gloria Katz

Marianna Hill, Michael Greer

A young woman searching for her missing artist father finds herself in the strange seaside town of Point Dune, which seems to be under the influence of a mysterious undead cult.

Picture and Sound Rushes

Morgan Fisher

Morgan Fisher

In a static medium shot a narrator seated at a table delivers an explanation of the combinations and permutations which the sound and picture elements of the conventional monochromatic sound motion picture afford, as the film itself undergoes them.

Remembering Messiah of Evil

Lee Christian

Morgan Fisher, Willard Huyck

Documentary on the making of "Messiah of Evil," the surreal horror cult classic written by Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz, directed by Willard Huyck. Includes interviews with Huyck and Katz as well as cinematographer Stephen M. Katz, editor Billy Weber, co-editor and actor Morgan Fisher.

Dorothy and Alan at Norma Place

John Dorr

Strawn Bovee, George LaFleur

In 1963, living a routine life on Norma Place in Los Angeles, recluse writer Dorothy Parker and bisexual husband Alan Campbell recall their often-rocky relationship, started thirty years earlier.

The Wilkinson Household Fire Alarm

Morgan Fisher

Morgan Fisher has long explored the space that segregates art cinema from industrial movie making. The one-minute-thirty-second-long Wilkinson Household Fire Alarm, an eye-blink homage to Marcel Duchamp, is more obviously engaged with conceptualism than with studio manufacturing. What you see is what you hear.

Color Balance

Morgan Fisher

A 1980 video art piece by American artist Morgan Fisher, a multi-projection work featuring floating spheres of different colors (green, red, blue) projected simultaneously.

Projection Instructions

Morgan Fisher

Regrettably, the labour of projectionists is usually only considered by the audience when they ‘screw up’. This film offers an alternative opportunity. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2014.

Another Movie

Morgan Fisher

The Director and His Actor Look at Footage Showing Preparations for an Unmade Film (2)

Morgan Fisher

An actor and director screen a film and comment on it.

Screening Room

Morgan Fisher

Morgan Fisher’s Screening Room (1968–) is a tracking shot of the movie theatre in which the film is exhibited, and thus must be remade each time it is shown in a new location. —Erika Balsom

Red Boxing Gloves / Orange Kitchen Gloves

Morgan Fisher

Red Boxing Gloves / Orange Kitchen Gloves was shot in 1980 in Polavision, an instant movie format that the videocassette made obsolete. The work is in the form of a pendant pair, a convention that arose in seventeenth-century Holland. The pendant pair consists of two paintings with subjects that are complements of each other. In the classic case one painting shows a husband and the other his wife. Together the two figures make a larger whole. The two pairs of gloves express this same relation in figurative if conventional terms. A few years ago I transferred the films to DVDs; far simpler to show them in that form than as films.

Releasing Human Energies

Mark Toscano

Morgan Fisher

“A film about control. A refinement of energy for purposes of conserving resources, materials, impetus, potential, so they might all be narrowly channeled toward an unquestioned goal of maximum profit with minimum waste. Capitalism, in this example, as a process of understanding how to make use of someone as efficiently as possible to get the most out of them that is desired. Instructions for keeping people on task.” –Mark Toscano

Documentary Footage

Morgan Fisher

Maurine Connor

Naturalness willfully corrupted by inevitable self-consciousness, unwittingly corrupted by unavoidable naturalness, a role played with incredible nuance and complexity by Maurine Connor. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2007.