Shorelines (1977) Al Jarnow

Let Al Jarnow’s entrancing short film take you to the beach. Staging “natural souvenirs”—seashells, stones, sticks, strands of seaweed—in hypnotic, gently pulsing animations, this film is a paean to magical hours spent idly on the shore: imaginary kingdoms and elaborate games, abandoned when the tide rolls in. “Instead of showing the sea itself,” wrote William Costanzo in Film Library Quarterly, “the camera evokes the sounds, smells, shapes and textures of ocean life with a playful and imaginative assembly of sea-spawned memorabilia.” To learn more about Al Jarnow—including his extraordinary “beachworks”—please visit: As part of The Met’s 150th anniversary in 2020, each month we will release three to four films from the Museum’s extensive moving-image archive, which comprises over 1,500 films, both made and collected by the Museum, from the 1920s onward. This includes rarely seen artist profiles and documentaries, as well as process films about art-making tech