Stan VanDerBeek

Biography

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.

Known for

Visual Velocity: The Work of Stan VanDerBeek

Acting roles

Year	Movie / TV show / Other	Role
2000	Visual Velocity: The Work of Stan VanDerBeek
1985	Home Movies 1971-81
1972	Reality's Invisible	Himself
1969	Filmmakers	Himself

Credits

Year	Movie / TV show / Other	Role
1983	Sonia and Stan Paint a Portrait of Ronnie	Director
1983	Reeling in TV Time	Director
1983	Micro Cosmos 1-4	Director
1983	Self-Poured Traits	Director
1981	After Laughter	Director
1981	Face Concert	Director
1980	Euclidean Illusions	Director
1980	Mirrored Reason	Director
1977	Strobe Ode	Director
1977	Vanishing Point Left	Director
1977	Color Fields Left	Director
—	Poem Field No. 8	Director
—	Poem Field No. 6	Director
—	Poem Field No. 4	Director
1972	Symmetricks	Director
1972	The Computer Generation	Director
1972	Who Ho Rays No. 1	Director
1970	Moirage	Director
1970	Videospace	Director
1968	Film Form No. 1	Director
1968	Superimposition	Director
1968	Ad Infinitum	Director
1968	Oh	Director
1968	Poem Field No. 5: Free Fall	Director
1967	Fuses	Director of Photography
1967	For Life, Against the War	Director
1967	Image After Image	Director
1967	Man and His World	Director
1967	Expo Faces	Director
1967	Poem Field Series	Director
1967	Poemfield No. 1 (Blue Version)	Director
1967	Panels for the Walls of the World	Director
1967	Poem Field No. 3	Director
1967	Spherical Space No. 1	Director
1967	Poem Field No. 1	Director
1967	Poem Field No. 7	Director
1966	Poem Field No. 2	Director
1966	Collide: Oscope	Director
1966	Vision III	Director
1966	Movie-Drome	Director
1965	See Saw Seams	Director
1965	Movie-Movies	Director
1965	The Human Face Is a Monument	Director
1965	Pastorale	Director
1965	A Dam Rib Bed	Director
1965	The Birth of the American Flag	Director
1965	Facescapes	Director
1964	Site	Director
1964	Fluids	Director
1964	Phenomenon No. 1	Director
1964	Newsreel of Dreams 1 & 2	Director
1963	Breathdeath	Director
1963	Breathdeath	Editor
1963	Summit	Director
1962	Skullduggery	Director
1961	Snapshots of the City	Director
1960	Achooo Mr. Kerrooschev	Director
1960	Black and White, Day and Night	Director
1960	The Smiling Workman	Director
1959	A La Mode	Director
1959	Science Friction	Director
1959	A La Mode	Writer
1959	Astral Man	Director
1959	Street Meat	Director
1959	Dance of the Looney Spoons	Director
1958	Wheeeels No. 1	Director
1958	Wheeeeels No. 2	Director
1957	What, Who, How	Director
1957	Mankinda	Director