Dwightiana

Dwightiana

1959 · 3 min · Animation

Menken's 16mm, stop-motion tribute to the art of Dwight Ripley was filmed in 1959 in his apartment at 416 East Fifty-eighth Street in New York. She used his drawings as flats.The remarkably contemporary soundtrack for steel drum, guitar, flute, and voice was written for the occasion by Maya Deren's young husband, Teiji Ito, and is available in his album Music for Maya (Tzadik). Stan Brakhage called Dwightiana a pioneer example of the film portrait, abstract rather than narrative (the colored pencils represent Ripley's palette). Ripley was also a botanist, and Menken's unusual title alludes to botanical nomenclature as if Dwightiana might be the name of a species as well as a work "about" Dwight.

Directed by Marie Menken

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Dwightiana

Dionysus

Both from Marie Menken.

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Bitch

“Andy Warhol called Marie Menken and Willard Maas ‘the last of the great bohemians,’ and, in 1965, made Bitch, his real-life parody of Edward Albee’s play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, with Willard and Marie sitting on the couch in their living room, drunk and arguing on a Sunday afternoon. Unscripted, shot with a stationary camera in his signature home-movie documentary style, Warhol’s Bitch has never before been seen by the public—until now…” (Philip Gefter).

Moonplay

Moonplay · 1962

An expansion upon an idea put forward in Marie Menken's film Notebook; single-frame footage of the moon shot on various nights, blinking and darting around within Menken's field of vision.

Dionysus

Dionysus · 1964

In 1963 Boultenhouse wrote, produced, and directed Dionysius,which he described as a “free treatment of Euripides' The Bacchae.”It starred the dancers Louis Falco, Anna Duncan, and Nicolas Magallanes as Dionysius, Agave, and Pentheus respectively, and the experimental filmmakers Charles Levine, Willard Maas, Gregory Markopoulos, Marie Menken, Lloyd Williams and William Wood as the Chorus of Cameras. The film's score was by Teiji Ito.

The Life of Juanita Castro

The Life of Juanita Castro · 1965

The Life of Juanita Castro

A playwright taunts a number of actors into improvising a truly ridiculous but subtlely meaningful meditation on Fidel Castro and his family.

Hurry, Hurry!

Hurry, Hurry! · 1957

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Go! Go! Go!

Go! Go! Go! · 1964

MovieDocumentary

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Visual Variations on Noguchi

Visual Variations on Noguchi · 1945

Visual Variations on Noguchi

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Arabesque for Kenneth Anger

Arabesque for Kenneth Anger · 1961

Arabesque for Kenneth Anger

MovieDocumentary

Filmed at the Alhambra in Spain in just one day, according to Marie Menken. Arabesque for Kenneth Anger concentrates on visual details found in Moorish architecture and in ancient Spanish tile. The date 1961 refers to the addition of Teiji Ito's soundtrack and its subsequent completion, but the film was likely shot in 1960 or earlier. - David Lewis

Lights

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Chelsea Girls · 1966

Follows various residents of the Chelsea Hotel in 1966 New York City.

Glimpse of the Garden

Glimpse of the Garden · 1957

Glimpse of the Garden

MovieDocumentary

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Notebook · 1963

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Eye Music in Red Major

Eye Music in Red Major · 1961

Eye Music in Red Major

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The Geography of the Body

The Geography of the Body · 1943

The Geography of the Body

MovieDocumentary

A quotation from Aristophanes, "The desire and pursuit of the whole is called love," precedes views of a man and a woman's bodies, often in extreme close up. Off-screen, a voice recites fragments of oracular literature and purple prose. We see an eye, an ear, a mouth, a tongue, bits of hair, a hand, the tips of fingers, toes. Occasionally, the frame includes a larger scape of a body: a chest, a back, a breast. Usually the camera is stationery; sometimes, it moves across a body, remaining in close up. They hold hands for one moment. The bodies are without clothes; no genitalia are visible.

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Andy Warhol · 1965

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In Search of the Miraculous

In Search of the Miraculous · 1967

In Search of the Miraculous

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