Plastic Montage: A Program of Cine-Sculpture
Sunday June 7th - 3PM
The University of Trash at SculptureCenter
44-19 Purves Street, Long Island City, NY 11101
PLASTIC MONTAGE is a program of short films utilizing sculpture as their point of departure. With sculptures by, among others, Michelangelo, Thorvaldsen, and Noguchi, as filmed and analyzed by Carl Th. Dreyer, Marie Menken, Michelangelo Antonioni, Marguerite Duras, Chris Marker, Alain Resnais, and Agnes Varda. 5 of the 7 films have never been released on home video in this country, and they probably never will be.
Constantly moving cameras and dynamic montage resists and counteracts the stillness of the statues depicted, as the authors appropriate the work for their own ends. Some of the films feature a dialogue, with the sculptures, their creators, and the audience, in the hopes of better understanding the lasting relevance of their representations and context. Others choose simply to look.
--Visual Variations on Noguchi – by Marie Menken, 1945, 4 minutes
--Thorvaldsen – by Carl Th. Dreyer and Preben Frank, 1949, 10 minutes
--Les Statues meurent aussi (Statues Also Die) – by Alain Resnais, Chris Marker, and Ghislain Cloquet,1953, 30 minutes
--Cesaree – by Marguerite Duras, 1978, 11 minutes
--Junkopia – by Chris Marker, John Chapman, and Frank Simeone, 1981, 6 minutes
--Les dites cariatides (The So-Called Caryatides) – by Agnes Varda, 1984, 12 minutes
--Lo Sguardo di Michelangelo (The Gaze of Michelangelo) – by Michelangelo Antonioni, 2004, 18 minutes
TOTAL RUNNING TIME: 91 minutes | Digital Projection
University of Trash
SculptureCenter
(Menken's film is available on the Avant-Garde 2, 1928-1954 2DVD set released by Kino (2007). Dreyer's film is available as a bonus feature of the Image DVD release (2004) of The Parson's Widow (1920). All of Duras' short films are available on one region-2 DVD (2007) from her son Jean Mascolo, via the Benoit Jacob label (www.benoitjacob-editions.fr). All of Varda's short films are available directly from her on a region-2 2DVD set, Varda tous courts (2007), via her Cine-Tamaris label (www.cine-tamaris.com). Antonioni's film is available as a bonus feature of the Warner DVD release (2006) of the omnibus film Eros (2004).)