Luther Price

Pop Takes

With Pop Takes, Luther Price transforms a terrific thrift-store find into a reflexive Warholian catwalk upon which twirling women and jaunty men sashay with decadent, late-seventies zeal, the film's coarse optical sound and images in negative creating a strange dissonance with the poppy polka-dotted scene.

Shelly Winters

A film without images — only the sounds of interviews from a documentary about domestic violence. “Shelly Winters” is a deeply unsettling experience, intensified by the incongruous joke of its title, suggesting how, even in the most abject of moments, we cling to the melodrama of our own lives.

Inkblot #9: At Twilight

"…..At one point, 6 years ago……..I felt I had become very resolved with things in my life and had reached a contemporary state…………….But that was the problem……I found a resolution…………and defined a cycle……….of issues…………..but then I felt so lonely…………and quite empty………..The things eating at me were now resolved……………and I was left with a big blank empty unknown…………………….In my gut…….I felt I needed to move on……………….So I dove into a more abstract world of decomposing film by rotting it in my garden…………and thinking about color to roll out my Inkblot films to drive myself into a visceral beautiful turbulent place…………………That visceral….turbulent place……….turned out to be more than I expected………." - Luther Price

Silk

Cops busting a riot, men having sex, optically-printed abstract forms: a dialectical struggle between desire and repression, black and white, yes and no.

Turbulent Blue

16mm, Experimental

Rocket

Film by Luther Price

Singing Biscotts

Price’s film series titled Biscuits is a re-edit of segments of found footage from many identical prints of 16mm film that date from the 1970s and that contain a documentary about a Boston-area nursing home. In Singing Biscuits, Price focuses on the faces of choir members as they sing gospel to an unseen audience. The repetitions and stutters created by Price through his masterful editing place emphasis on the existential intensity of the film's subjects.

Kittens Grow Up

A found footage film that intercuts a 1970s made-forTV melodrama about alcoholism and neglect with a cuddly instructional film about kittens to devastating effect.

Nice Biscotts #1

Price created his “Biscotts/Biscuits” series by re-editing the same bits of footage from 13 prints of a 1970s documentary about a nursing home. The film itself is aged, worn and faded, doubling the existential intensity of its subject, while his use of multiple copies generates a brutal Musique concrète through variation and repetition. A HAUNTING LOOP OF NEVER ENDING UN FORGIVENESS..................I WANT TO GO HOME ...'DIME.....WHY DO YOU DO THIS TO ME "...........TAKEN FROM "THE EXORCIST'.............ALONE FOREVER TO ROME A HAUNTED HALLWAY................AND LERK INTO A DOORWAY , ...TO A ROOM WERE MOST JUST WAIT.................AND PEER,...............AND SEEK..................THE PEES ....AND FAKE SAULSERY STEAK .......WITH SMASHED POTATOES ...........CAN NEVER KILL THAT MUCH TIME ....WHEN, ALL YOUR WAITING .............FOR YOUR SON TO MAKE GOOD ON HIS PROMISE AND TAKE YOU HOME

Same Day Nice Biscotts

Part of The Biscotts Series Luther Price, 2005–08

Nice Biscotts #2

Price created his “Biscotts/Biscuits” series by re-editing the same bits of footage from 13 prints of a 1970s documentary about a nursing home. The film itself is aged, worn and faded, doubling the existential intensity of its subject, while his use of multiple copies generates a brutal Musique concrète through variation and repetition.

Domestic White

An 8mm home movie inserted into a 16mm frame.

A Patch of Green

Shots of children, animals and fire evoke both caring and destruction.

Mother (revised)

A portrait of his mother reveals his admiration for Sirkian melodramas, for a Bette Davis or Barbara Stanwyck–like glamour that defies reality’s vulgar truths. Standing before the ocean in a billowing emerald dress with matching necklace, her hair tied behind a butterfly-printed scarf, and wearing canary-colored sunglasses, Price’s mother transcends home-movie status.

Home

The sights and sounds of Price’s domestic life—snapshots of his mother, along with her voice; a shopping list on a refrigerator; a box of donuts on the kitchen table—combine into a melancholy lullaby, homely and unheimlich, the images and recordings looped, distorted, and partially destroyed.

Ritual 629

Film by Luther Price from 1990-1999

Recitations

US 1999, Super 8, color & b/w, sound on cassette, 13 min

Me Gut No Dog Dog

Experimental film juxtaposing found footage scenes of military training, leisure time and gay pornography.

Run

Woke up walking alone from a dream toward a translucent sky a run day ... The edge electric against infinity revealed everything it was the moment before I was born the moment before I died I was pressed between glass I could see myself walking past I could see my eye looking at my eye I was standing someplace far away looking at myself pressed between glass I looked like I was moving but it was more like the way a worm pushes into itself to get to wherever it goes I could slip through those spaces and rest for awhile then distribute everything I am and all that I was but I panicked I continued to push my body into itself I woke pressed between glass I thought I was walking I saw myself walking I could see my eye looking at my eye and the place where I died when I was born

Jellyfish Sandwich

Deploying rhythmic loops, Jelly Fish Sandwich splinters and reanimates found material including World War II bombing footage, upside-down NFL sequences, and idyllic Polynesian scenes.

A.

“Edie, the faded starlet of “A.” is not so much a literal figuration of a woman, but a nightmare memory come to life. Nothing in Price’s cinema is quite what it appears to be. Daytime broadcasts implode into personal confessions. Edie is not Price-in-drag, but Price living within the ethos of the woman’s pictures that his mother obsessively tuned into when Price was growing up. Audio recordings Price made with his sister Sally, re-enacting the films Streetcar Named Desire and Imitation of Life invade the film. The memories engendered on these lazy afternoon are poured into Edie’s unsteady form. “A.” took years to film and the interior locales stretch out over 3 or 4 of Price’s apartments….it was a turbulent period of production in which Price became severely depressed and suffered a near-fatal accident while filming the suicide sequence.

Bottle Can

If I lived a thousand years ago I’d probably be running half naked in the scorching sun over jagged rocks ripping open the bottoms of my feet and tearing off my toes.

Sodom

SODOM is viscerally graphic and disturbing through its hypnotic mirage of human fragment absorbed in mutilation. Based on the biblical story, SODOM recreates this destruction through an editing style that lends itself to a kind of organic image breakdown, creating a collage of moving image.

Green

Green is a world where ghosts live. Emerging from silent memory, they enter an image of reality, cool, crisp and static. Tromping forward, time unravels tracing to points of the past, conjuring the familiar, reliving events unresolved, revealing very little. Beauty is continually redefined, celebrating life and death in a plastic world haunted. It is a romantic suicide.

A Hallow Kiss for Mark LaPore

The haunted heart is like a honeycomb, a catacomb, unlocked by a stuttering silence, a song of light sung in a skeletal key.

Suffering Biscuits

Price created his “Biscotts/Biscuits” series by re-editing the same bits of footage from 13 prints of a 1970s documentary about a nursing home. The film itself is aged, worn and faded, doubling the existential intensity of its subject, while his use of multiple copies generates a brutal Musique concrète through variation and repetition.

The Look of Love

THE LOOK OF LOVE is about a serial killer…who finds his next victim and turns into a shark rolling his eyes into his head…

The Mongrel Sister

Parallel worlds uncoil and ensnare with twisted logic and a terrazzo of dark magic.

Clown, Part 1

The first part of Clown by Luther Price.

Red Rooster

RED ROOSTER takes place at a street cafe, in Paris … This guy and a groovy chick hit it off and end up at a flat; nothing/happens…

Mr. Wonderful

Childhood programming is a recurring Price theme. His 10-minute Mr. Wonderful matches a single, scratched close-up of an LP portrait of goofy Fred Rogers to selections from the record. The effect is less ironic than defamiliarizing. At one point, Mr. Rogers sings a song suggesting that childish clowning is a way of warding off fear-an insight that provides the context for Clown (1992).

Cold, Cold Heart

Super 8 film utilizing an old photograph and a Hank Williams song.

Old September Biscuits

OVER A DECADE NOW , I FOUND A STACK OF PRINTS...3 16MM PRINTS...FROM THIS DOCUMENTARY FILM...TITLED ...'OLD BLACK AND ALIVE'...THEY WERE ALL IN MANY DIFFERENT CONDITIONS...AND FROM THE LOOKS OF THE PRINTS , YOU CAN SEE THAT TOO...A LOT OF AGE AND DECAY...VINEGAR...THAT PINKISH / PURPLE...THAT SAYS DESEASE...'DEATH OF THE RIBBON'...BUT NOT THE DEATH OF FILM...WITH THIS FOUND FOOTAGE , I FOUND MORE THAN 13 MULTIPLE REELS OF FILM...I FOUND A LOST HOPE...A LOST WISH...AND AN APOLOGY..."THE BISCUITS'...RESORECT. WHAT IS NOW DUST AND BONES...AND WITH THE COLLABORATION OF PROCESS...THROUGH FILM MAKING...WE ARCHIVE THESE LIVES...AND GIVE THESE PERSONS A SITUATION ...TO PROJECT BACK TO US...SO WE MIGHT NOT FORGET SOME OF THE GREATER THINGS LIFE AND DEATH...HOPE ..LOSS...EMPTYNESS...SORRY...REGRET...AND FORGIVENESS...LUTHER

The Biscuit Day

Price created his “Biscotts/Biscuits” series by re-editing the same bits of footage from 13 prints of a 1970s documentary about a nursing home. The film itself is aged, worn and faded, doubling the existential intensity of its subject, while his use of multiple copies generates a brutal Musique concrète through variation and repetition.

Nice Baskets

Price created his “Biscotts/Biscuits” series by re-editing the same bits of footage from 13 prints of a 1970s documentary about a nursing home. The film itself is aged, worn and faded, doubling the existential intensity of its subject, while his use of multiple copies generates a brutal Musique concrète through variation and repetition.

Meat

“MEAT is viscerally consuming in its sterile, antiseptic and static giving over of the flesh. Poked, prodded, pinched and disgraced, the humiliated body is sacrificed and the metamorphosis begins … the fly becomes the shit … the maggot becomes the bone … the bone becomes the food … the food becomes shit and the body becomes the wound … the institution becomes teeth … throat and stomach.” Luther Price

Warm Broth

Everything will be ok, just close your eyes little thing go to sleep little fuck feel my hand on your warm forehead It's cold isn't it? Ice cold. Dream of something real sweet for mommy Mommy likes sweet things Dream of a merry-go-round and cotton candy Mommy's hand got all warm resting on your tiny head See, look at mommy's hand It got all warm now You're running a slight fever Mommy will get you some water And you're running a slight fever Little fuck don't have to go to school tomorrow but no playing in the yard Someone could see you And I'll be an unfit mommy You'll have to stay in all day but now, dream of the prettiest flower for mommy I'll make you oatmeal first thing And you could tell me the color of the - prettiest flower.

Dipping Sause

A .black and white…seductive …love fantasy…tube socks and math