Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer

Thom Andersen's remarkable and sadly neglected hour-long documentary adroitly combines biography, history, film theory, and philosophical reflection. Muybridge's photographic studies of animal locomotion in the 1870s were a major forerunner of movies; even more interesting are his subsequent studies of diverse people, photographed against neutral backgrounds.

minicômios

Buffalo Police on Parade

A street scene showing parade of the entire Buffalo Police Department, 16 men abreast, with military band.

Everbest Virgil

Virgil Thomson composed many musical portraits of people as they faced him. Like a visual artist using different visual elements, Virgil established personal sketches using the palette of musical expression. EVERBEST VIRGIL perpetuates this tradition by linking the portrait of a composer to his own composition. I filmed Virgil, in his apartment at the Chelsea Hotel, in Manhattan, shortly before his death. These are the last images taken from the life of one of America's most treasured composers.