Jane Conger Belson Shimané

Jane Conger Belson Shimané (1927–2002) was an American experimental filmmaker.

Life and career

Jane Conger Belson Shimané was born in Missouri. She studied at the San Francisco Art Institute, where she met the artist Jordan Belson. Though she used his name, they never legally married. Her first film, Logos, premiered in 1957 and was screened at festivals in North America, Europe, and Latin America. The animated film featured an electronic score by Henry Jacobs, a sound artist who also collaborated with her husband on the groundbreaking "Vortex" light shows.

In 1959 she made Odds & Ends, a short animated film that pokes fun at the avant-garde film culture of the 1950s. To make the film, she combined recycled travel and advertising footage with her own animations — made from paper cutouts, color fields, and line drawings — and added a "faux hipster" narration by Jacobs, with bongos playing in the background. (Jacobs is credited as "Rheny Bojacs," an anagram of his name.) The narrator natters pretentiously about poetry and jazz, contradicting himself at every turn, one moment claiming that "money doesn't count" and the next mentioning the possibility of grants and subsidies. The satire, which appears to have been aimed at her husband, may have precipitated the end of their marriage. Shimané apparently stopped making films soon after parting with Belson.

Filmography Logos (1957) 16mm, 2 min. Odds & Ends (1959) 16mm, 3:40 min.