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

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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.

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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

In this strange little film, Marie Menken photographs billowy flames superimposed over microscopic medical footage of writhing spermatozoa.

Visual Variations on Noguchi

Visual Variations on Noguchi · 1945

Visual Variations on Noguchi

A voice occasionally says a word or two: "on the sidewalk" or "lithium" or a woman's name. A hand-held camera frames parts of sculptures, or moves across their surfaces, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly, almost always in close-up. The soundtrack, in addition to the voice, is discordant music. Light and shadows are paramount. Sometimes the camera repeats up and down movements; once, a set of jump cuts brings an object closer. The music can be shrill in contrast to the sculptures. Almost entirely of wood, they are the work of Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988): Abstract, usually smooth and rounded (but not always).

Go! Go! Go!

Go! Go! Go! · 1964

MovieDocumentary

Various forms of everyday motion in and around a city are shown at rapid speed.

Lights

MovieDocumentary

Shot over a period of three years. Marie Menken photographed New York window displays during the Christmas holiday. In order to avoid foot and street traffic interrupting the shots, Menken filmed from midnight to 1:00 in the morning, but had to keep the camera under her coat to keep it from freezing.

Chelsea Girls

Chelsea Girls · 1966

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

Notebook

Notebook · 1963

MovieDocumentary

A short, diaristic film; A series of impressions, animations and playful vignettes in color and B&W. Early/ Outtake footage of Menken's Lights can be seen here, as well as camera techniques she'd expand upon in later films.

Glimpse of the Garden

Glimpse of the Garden · 1957

Glimpse of the Garden

MovieDocumentary

Experimental film showing film clips of a garden, with birds chirping for the soundtrack.

Eye Music in Red Major

Eye Music in Red Major · 1961

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"A study in light based on persistence of vision and enhancement from eye fatigue." -- M.M.

The Geography of the Body

The Geography of the Body · 1943

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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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MovieDocumentary

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In Search of the Miraculous

In Search of the Miraculous · 1967

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Excursion

Excursion · 1968

A boat trip with friends round Manhattan, shot in single-frame mode

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