Joseph Cornell - The Aviary (made with Rudy Burkhardt) (1955)

The Aviary is about a park in New York and the birds that inhabit it. The black-and-white photography gives it a very nice feel of a past. I especially liked the bare branches of trees. This film captures a feel of New York in the past as some of us remember it. -- John C., Film Notes The films of the reclusive artist Joseph Cornell (1903-1972) are as unique as his famous box constructions. Though rarely exhibited during his lifetime, these mysterious works nonetheless have had a deep and lasting influence on the world of avant-garde filmmaking . His entire body of film numbers some thirty-odd works, encompassing the incomplete and the fragmentary. It can be said that Cornell made two kinds of films in two distinct periods of activity: collage films, made by recombining found materials, and directed films,where he worked with cinematographers (including Stan Brakhage, Rudy Burckhardt and Larry Jordan) to document his fantasy/experience of wandering in New York. -Bradley Eros and Jeanne Liotta