Pat O'Neill

Documents the life and works of filmmaker Pat O'Neill, showing the making of a select group of films and discussion of these films by O'Neill.

During the winter of 1975 in Hawaii, surfing was shaken to its core. A group of young surfers from Australia and South Africa sacrificed everything and put it all on the line to create a sport, a culture, and an industry that is today worth billions of dollars and has captured the imagination of the world. With a radical new approach and a brash colonial attitude, these surfers crashed headlong into a culture that was not ready for revolution. Surfing was never to be the same again.

An exercise in special effects, using conventional travelling matte techniques on a contact printer. A small box (whose classic dimensions animators using an Oxberry field guide will recognize) moves across the screen revealing certain objets d'interest, hiding others and performing other tricks. The last event features Patrick O'Neill in his first screen role along with a docile Siamese, busy ants and a palsied hand.

The day they filled all that gravel in front of Jack and Jerry's old studio on Venice Blvd. A yellow bird fascinated by reflection. Several views from the San Francisco Marine Museum on a gray day in December. Three views of Mercer Street, New York after the second big snowstorm of January, '78. Several fogs, a strange puddle, and a female Husky induced to howl by humans. (This film is perhaps best seen after one of the others, like a "chaser.")

Several well-known and pioneering abstract filmmakers discuss the history of non-objective cinema, the works of those that came before them and their own experiments in the field of visionary filmmaking.

Short film portrait using narration and artworks by Pat O’Neill and edited by Martha Colburn.

Short film portrait using narration and artworks by Pat O’Neill and edited by Martha Colburn.

Short film portrait using narration and artworks by Pat O’Neill and edited by Martha Colburn.

Pat O'Neill narrates his photographs made between 1965 & 1975 approx.

Pat O'Neill narrates his photographs.