James Harrar has been crafting densely lyrical film-poems since the late 1980’s, exhibiting at prestigious venues such as the Museum of Modern Art, The Andy Warhol Museum and Telluride to name a few. His films are personal in a very direct and explicit sense. In a intimate form, Harrar attempts to imprint thoughts, dreams and conceptual ideas onto the open-minded viewer while examining the possibilities of perception. Throughout his career, Harrar has tried to give the viewer new visual experiences while challenging fixed notions of filmic language and individual seeing. Since 1998 James has been collaborating with Marshall Allen, creating live music to Harrar’s silent films. Marshall Allen explores sound in much the same manner that Harrar attempts to explore the moving image. Together they complete a creative cycle similar in tradition with the 17th century alchemical opus.

Harrar will present selected work and the east coast premiere of The Green Lion. The film is a visceral meditation suggesting a quest for Hermetic knowledge and spiritual unity through an invocation of the alchemical cycle. At the culmination of the process, the green lion is revealed with a merged image of a woman in a red dress and the energy of what she represents becomes contained. The pure state is achieved with the symbolic mosaic of an illuminated peacock. The film concludes with a poem that lyrically describes the visual experience and the symbolic imagery: She is the green lion. /Newton sought her,/we hunted her perfection./ Animal progenitor,/nature in distillate/beauty. The lapis philosophorum. /The stone, still/incomplete, an alter/within the prima/materia, continuing/the cycle. c. Harrar 2004.

During the mid-1950’s, Marshall Allen met Sun Ra and became a devoted student of his musical cosmology. After joining the Sun Ra Arkestra in 1958, Marshall Allen led Sun Ra’s reed section for over 40 years. He is featured on over 200 Sun Ra releases, while appearing as special guest soloist in concert and on recordings with diverse groups such as NRBQ, Phish, Sonic Youth, and Medeski, Martin & Wood. Allen assumed the helm of the Sun Ra Arkestra in 1995 after the ascension of Sun Ra in 1993 and John Gilmore in 1995. Marshall Allen plays the alto saxophone, flute, clarinet, oboe, kora and E.V.I. (Electronic Valve Instrument).