{{Infobox person | name = Andrew Noren | birth_date = {{Birth year|1943}} | birth_place = Santa Fe, New Mexico | death_date = {{Death date and given age|2015|5|2|71}} | death_place = South Carolina | occupation = | years_active = 1965–2004 | notable_works = }} '''Andrew Noren''' (1943–May 2, 2015) was an American avant-garde filmmaker.
==Biography== Andrew Noren was born 1943 in Santa Fe, New Mexico and grew up in Southern California.<ref name="hoberman-nyt">{{cite web |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/27/movies/homevideo/andrew-noren-avant-garde-filmmaker-fades-to-black.html |title=Andrew Noren, Avant-Garde Filmmaker, Fades to Black |last=Hoberman |first=J. |author-link=J. Hoberman |date=December 24, 2015 |website=The New York Times |access-date=October 20, 2018 }}</ref> He served in the Army before briefly attending university.<ref name="hoberman-ein">{{cite book |last=Hoberman |first=J. |author-link=J. Hoberman |year=2025 |title=Everything Is Now: The 1960s New York Avant-Garde—Primal Happenings, Underground Movies, Radical Pop |publisher=Verso Books |page=336 |isbn=978-1-80429-086-6}}</ref>
Noren moved to New York in the mid 1960s, where he worked as an editor at ABC. Through his job, he was able to access a Bolex 16 mm camera, with which he began making films. His first work, ''A Change of Heart'', was a narrative feature film inspired by Jean-Luc Godard's ''Breathless''. After the film's premiere, Noren met Jonas Mekas through a co-worker. He started working at the Film-Makers' Cooperative, where he became connected to local avant-garde filmmakers.<ref name="hoberman-nyt"/><ref name="macdonald-film-quarterly">{{cite journal |last=MacDonald |first=Scott |author-link=Scott MacDonald (media scholar) |year=1991 |title=Illuminations |journal=Film Quarterly |volume=44 |issue=3 |pages=30–34 |doi=10.2307/1212794 |jstor=1212794 }}</ref>
Noren began making more experimental works toying with different documentary approaches. For ''Say Nothing'', he recorded a single 30-minute shot in which he administers a screen test. Inspired by the Lumière brothers, his film ''The New York Miseries'' was a collection of three-minute takes documenting his own life.<ref name="macdonald-film-quarterly"/> Its production was interrupted in 1967, when a film laboratory confiscated the footage and submitted it to police because it included images of Noren and his girlfriend having sex. He was able to successfully challenge the decision in court.<ref name="hoberman-ein"/> ''The New York Miseries'', along with several other works from Noren's early period, were accidentally destroyed in 1970 and are now lost films.<ref name="macdonald-film-quarterly"/>
Noren's next film ''Huge Pupils'' was the first entry in ''The Adventures of the Exquisite Corpse'', an ongoing film cycle continued growing for the rest of his career. The cycle came to include nine films: ''Huge Pupils'', ''False Pretenses'', ''The Phantom Enthusiast'', ''Charmed Particles'', ''The Lighted Field'', ''Imaginary Light'', ''Time Being'', ''Free to Go (Interlude)'', and ''Aberration of Starlight''.<ref>{{cite book |last=Sitney |first=P. Adams |author-link=P. Adams Sitney |year=2008 |title=Eyes Upside Down: Visionary Filmmakers and the Heritage of Emerson |publisher=Oxford University Press |page=171 |isbn=978-0-19-533115-8 }}</ref> ''The Lighted Field'', a silent, improvised and plotless parable/thesis featuring black and white<ref>[https://bampfa.org/event/lighted-field-andrew-noren-usa-1987 BAMPFA]</ref> newsreel footage from where the filmmaker worked,<ref>[https://www.artforum.com/events/andrew-noren-the-lighted-field-213409/ Artfourm]</ref><ref>[https://www.artforum.com/features/in-common-hours-the-films-of-andrew-noren-192156/ IN COMMON HOURS: THE FILMS OF ANDREW NOREN - Artfourm]</ref> was inducted into the National Film Registry in 2023 for its cultural and historical importance.<ref name="npr.org">{{cite web|last1=Ulaby |first1=Neda |url=https://www.npr.org/2023/12/13/1218163436/two-beloved-christmas-classics-just-joined-the-national-film-registry|website=npr.org|title='Home Alone' and 'Nightmare Before Christmas' added to National Film Registry : NPR|date=13 December 2023 |access-date=2023-12-15}}</ref><ref name="nytimes">{{cite web|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/13/arts/apollo-13-bamboozled-national-film-registry.html|website=The New York Times|title='Home Alone,' 'Fame,' and Apollo 13' Join National Film Registry - The New York Times|date=13 December 2023 |access-date=2023-12-15}}</ref><ref name="time">{{cite magazine|url=https://time.com/6448784/home-alone-apollo-13-national-film-registry/|title=Apollo 13 and Home Alone Picked for National Registry|magazine=TIME|access-date=2023-12-15}}</ref>
In 1972 Noren began working at the Sherman Grinberg Film Library as a researcher and licensing agent for archived stock footage and newsreels. After Sherman Grinberg went out of business in 1998, Noren founded the Research Source, a visual research and copyright clearance company.<ref>{{cite magazine |last=MacDonald |first=Scott |date=October 2009 |title=In Common Hours |url=https://www.artforum.com/print/200908/in-common-hours-the-films-of-andrew-noren-23746 |url-access=subscription |magazine=Artforum |volume=48 |issue=2 |page=214 |access-date=October 20, 2018 }}</ref>
Noren died of lung cancer in 2015.<ref name="hoberman-nyt"/>
==Filmography== {{div col|colwidth=25em}} * ''A Change of Heart'' (1965) * ''Say Nothing'' (1965) * ''The New York Miseries'' (1966) * ''Bathing'' (1967) * ''The Wind Variations'' (1968) * ''Huge Pupils'' (1968) * ''False Pretenses'' (1974) * ''The Phantom Enthusiast'' (1975) * ''Charmed Particles'' (1978) * ''The Lighted Field'' (1987) * ''Imaginary Light'' (1994) * ''Time Being'' (2001) * ''Free to Go (Interlude)'' (2003) * ''Aberration of Starlight'' (2008) {{div col end}}
==References== {{Reflist}}
==External links== *{{IMDb name|1255257}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Noren, Andrew}} Category:1943 births Category:2015 deaths Category:American experimental filmmakers Category:Deaths from lung cancer in South Carolina Category:People from Santa Fe, New Mexico