Andy Moore

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Biography
Filmography
Distribution

Biography

Born in 1956 in Burbank, California across the street from Disney Studios, Andy Moore grew up in a neighborhood rife with film and TV production. He and a group of friends produced and performed a series of parody skits in grade school, then, forming another group called The Tads, created several original marionette productions out of a garage theater. Starting at age 12, they began to produce a series of Super-8 "trick" films (which Andy later learned were amazingly similar to the trick films of Georges Méličs). In high school, he made his first "art" film, a Super-8 account of the demolition of a metal mansion designed by Richard Neutra for Josef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich, accompanied by a doleful, repetitive, seemingly endless loop of As Time Goes By. His fellow 10th graders were bored stiff. Later, at UC San Diego, after a brief flirtation with sociology, he re-approached cinema in a more rigorous way, gaining inspiration from the films of Michael Snow, Standish Lawder, Jon Jost, James Benning, Pat O’Neill and many others. Around 1978 his films became saturated with language, but since then he has tried to gesture and suggest rather than state explicitly, and to keep his films non-language-specific. Deeply concerned with the grammar of cinema and music, his own films are a blend of structural and personal concerns, and he often starts first with the soundtrack in mind. He has lived in San Francisco for over 20 years with his partner, filmmaker Jack Walsh, and is actively involved with Canyon Cinema and Film Arts Foundation there. He earns a living selling advertising space, as a travel writer for Fodor’s guidebooks, and doing occasional voice-over work on others’ films. He currently has several ideas in development for media artworks, one of which has to do with a group of over 100 "personal treasure boxes" filled with curious items, and the stories behind them. His first actual collaboration with Jack Walsh, utilizing video footage shot in several dozen San Francisco hotel rooms over the last two years, is currently seeking post-production funding.

Filmography of Andy Moore

Split Description
Shades Of Meaning
Canyon By Degrees
Histrionic Response Section
Sound And Vision, Station To Station(1978)
Room List
Day Then Night
This Is Only A Test

Split Description


(1994) 16mm, color, sound, 8 min. 11 sec.
A film of gestures rather than statements, Split Description utilizes a concentric split-screen technique to present a kaleidoscopic moving montage of three diverse locales (in California, Massachusetts and New York). The different zones within the frame interplay, while the hairline borders between them become crucial junctures of vanishing/becoming. The soundtrack, ranging from dead simple to deliriously intricate, collaborates in the collage. Virtually non-verbal (except for some Morse code), the film is a magic viewing box designed to cut the viewer free from narrative expectation and instead serve as a tool for reflection on space/time/sound.

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Awards:

Director's Citation, 1995 Thomas Edison Black Maria Film Festival
Honorable Mention, 1995 Ann Arbor Film Festival

Additional Screenings:

1994 Film Arts Festival, San Francisco
1995 Charlotte Film & Video Festival
1995 Big Muddy Film Festival
1995 Ann Arbor 10-city U.S. Tour
1995 Mill Valley Film Festival

Shades Of Meaning



(1986) 16mm, color, sound, 10 min.
A poetic meditation on music and meaning in cinema. Aurally iconographic music fragments have been decomposed, then re-composed into loops and patterns, and combined with eclectically chosen imagery shot mostly in the western United States. The result is both a reflection of the artistŐs sensibilities and a commentary on commercial media values. At once a celebration of visual beauty and a semiological investigation into how musical codes and imagery combine to create meaning, Shades Of Meaning has been called paradoxical, mystical and elegant, pregnant with multiple meanings and a powerful tool for reflection.

Awards: