"PRIMARIES is a simple film which merely establishes a definition of 'politics'. Its narrative moves in paragraph blocks, with each sentence accompanied by different pictures of a young woman's hands, feet, torso, face… A TURNING POINT IN LUNATIC CHINA provides a critique of the methods of communication employed by my fellow Leftists. The ritualistic posturing and sloganeering I had used myself and seen in action in Chicago and San Francisco State, the seizing of exotic foreign figures (Mao, Che) and ideological rhetoric (SDS debates on Stalinism)–all struck me as mistaken and useless... [TURNING POINT] initiates a conscious probing of the means and techniques of mass communication, particularly film. 1, 2, 3, FOUR... delivers a critique from within of the... ideologies... of the 'counter-culture'... [It] provides no answers, but rather it allows the internal dynamics of the 'left' generate its own questions."

Arbor Fugue is made from “outs” material from the installation piece, Trinity. I felt that the material made for an interesting re-working of the nature of the musical form of the fugue, in which motifs are returned to again and again in new forms. This was an experiment in doing the same visually.

A 2000 short film directed by Jon Jost. The film screened at International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2002.

Two HIV-positive young men — a semi-employed film critic and a hot hustler — tear off on a cross-country crime spree.

The aesthetic moves progressively from loose “underground” means using expressionistic camera movement, multiple exposures, droning sequences and shock cut towards a static, didactic form of “documentary” marked with long takes, minimal camera movement, a surface concentration on showing how things are. Being silent they operate on sheerly visual means. From the outset they grapple with socio-political issues with the stifling atmosphere of Catholic family life in Italy

I walked around Trondheim, shooting this and that, and at one point I saw these girls walking across a little footbridge. After I got the shot of them, I spent a little time trying to imagine what they might have seen on their little walk. This is the result. I don't know if it was the light, or the architecture, but I was reminded of Edvard Munch's paintings and graphics, and decided this was a modest electronic homage to him. (Jon Jost)

A short landscape film made by Jon Jost in 2004 in DV.

A portrait of alienation is sketched out, focusing on a young art student who passively, but consciously, rejects responsibility for the political storms swirling about her. The epitome of bourgeois mentality, she insists she is, or at least will be, an artist. She says, all she is responsible for is “art”—though she admits she cannot tell you what it is. Beginning with TV images from Viet Nam being turned off, the film ends with the 13th fragment, TV images of Viet Nam being turned on again. We are bracketed by history, like it or not. (Jon Jost)

A portrait of alienation is sketched out, focusing on a young art student who passively, but consciously, rejects responsibility for the political storms swirling about her. The epitome of bourgeois mentality, she insists she is, or at least will be, an artist. She says, all she is responsible for is “art”—though she admits she cannot tell you what it is. Beginning with TV images from Viet Nam being turned off, the film ends with the 13th fragment, TV images of Viet Nam being turned on again. We are bracketed by history, like it or not. (Jon Jost)

A detective fiction mixed with an essay-documentary about Los Angeles, Hollywood and the film industry, Angel City is a satiric comedy with serious intentions.