From Child's Play to Avant-Garde

Celestial Navigations: The Short Films of Al Jarnow at the Gene Siskel Film Center

By Charlotte Loftus
Published: February 25th, 2010 | 4:50pm

On a chilly Saturday night in February, Chicagoans gathered at the Gene Siskel Film Center for the premiere of Celestial Navigations: The Short Films of Al Jarnow. This short-form experimental filmmaker’s career has included commissions by the Children’s Television Workshop as well as a place in MOMA’s permanent collection. In celebration of their release of the DVD and book combo, the archival record label The Numero Group preFsented 15 of the 45 shorts included on the DVD, along with a half-hour documentary on Jarnow’s process and history.

Jarnow creates meditations on science and nature that hang suspended in your head like a string of Chinese lanterns. He has the ability to make a statement using only the simplest of line drawings—often with no soundtrack—in under eight minutes. Rather than using science as a purely didactic tool, Jarnow posits the very idea of science as objective and “real.” In the title piece, “Celestial Navigations,” time-lapse photography is used to track the sun’s path through Jarnow’s studio over the course of one year, from equinox to equinox. Lest I make all of his films sound like pure avant-garde experiments (and many are), there are more accessible treasures like “The Owl and the Pussycat” illustrated by Jarnow’s wife Jill, a psychedelic loop-de-loop adaptation of Edward Lear’s classic nonsensical poem.

Founded in 2003, The Numero Group aims to release the most obscure of materials by artists with little commercial success. This project marks thier first foray into the cinematic landscape, who prefer compilations. That is, they often choose to showcase a hand-picked grouping of great songs rather than re-release entire albums. Their decision to focus entirely on Jarnow for this collection, while clearly warranted, creates a presentation that fetishizes the lone genius so popular in American lore.

In the Numero-produced documentary “Asymmetric Cycles: The Work of Al Jarnow” that concluded the screening, many of Jarnow's experimental film scene buddies appear. Walter Lantz (the creator of Woody Woodpecker), for instance, advising him that his career would go nowhere if he didn't launch a recognizable character. Jarnow sardonically acknowledges that Lantz may have been right. While Jarnow may not have created an animated icon, his films have edged their way into the minds of children and adults the same way that characters like Woody have. The difference is that Jarnow’s films never seem to talk down to a perceived audience of children, instead harnessing the natural exuberance and curiosity of childhood to explore a world that he has always found wondrous.