Preceded by shorts:Rhythm (Len Lye, 1957). Using stock footage of an assembly line, the artist creates a car in no time. (5 mins, B&W, 16mm, From Canyon) Shift (Ernie Gehr, 1972-74). Shots of traffic are manipulated to create surprising shifts in scale, direction, and expectation. (9 mins, Color, 16mm, From Canyon) There is nothing more American than the automobile. It offers mobility, privacy and the pleasure of ownership. For Lord, the automobile has been an object of desire since 1974 when he placed ten Cadillacs nose-down in the Texas prairie and called them Cadillac Ranch. Motorist continues the trajectory of this American icon. The star is a 1962 T-Bird, a beautifully proportioned piece of machinery that possesses both a sheen of past elegance and a glimmer of the future. Behind the wheel, Richard (Richard Marcus) is heading for Los Angeles to hand this "classic" car over to its new owner, a Japanese auto importer. The trip from New Orleans is a funeral-procession-of-one as Richard reminisces about the formative influence of the automobile. After all, he's a third-generation Ford man. Lord's narrative employs a chilling metaphor for its world of diminished expectations: glamorous footage from fifties promotional films and magazine ads find their mocking counterpart in a stretch of highway riddled with two-bit towns, a dinosaur park, and the London Bridge. If the automobile promised a lavish journey through some boundless autopia, Motorist navigates a cultural dead-end.-Steve Seid