These three Super 8 films, all made by the late documentarian Jane Morrison, offer a compliment to her contemplative work. Lipstick 74 documents the beginning of a woman’s day, closely observing her as subject who applies makeup, then dresses, and finally presents herself to the outside world. The Fang Gang dramatizes a vampire scene set in Maine’s dense woods. Dream imagines a tragic meeting between 1920 flappers and pilgrims from 1620.
Jane Morrison was a filmmaker who focused her camera on quiet, often meditative lives. Her filmmaking reveals a fascination with the commonplace where she discovers, and skillfully presents, the splendor of simple forms. Morrison also was an English teacher in Maine before moving to New York where she taught at Columbia University’s School of Film graduate program. She conducted film workshops for professionals and at universities in Kenya, Zimbabwe, and Trinidad. In 1987, at the age of 39, she died of malaria while working in Kenya.
