Carte blanche au MoMA : At Home With…
The Museum of Modern Art’s film department accepted the Carte Blanche offered by FIFA by creating three thematic programs. The films, rarely presented in Canada, are mostly selected from MoMA’s own museum collections. The curated artworks are presented in the three following programs: At Home With…., Two Places and Eco City.
Curated by Sophie Cavoulacos, Assistant Curator, and Brittany Shaw, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Film, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Artists’ Cinema from The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Over The Museum of Modern Art’s eight decades of exhibiting, studying, and archiving wide-ranging motion picture practices, the artist-filmmaker has been a continuous interlocutor. Whether tied to artistic movements or pioneered by individual, adventurous, and experimental voices, films by artists constitute a vital counterpoint to the cinematic auteur in form and modes of viewership, exhibition and circulation. Eschewing the idea of a masterwork, the selection proposes a more open-ended and poetic experience of the MoMA film collection. Each of the three programs hold cinematic images as a set of social and spatial relations, in pursuit of new aesthetic, experiential, and political horizons. Through unexpected juxtapositions, new preservations, and rarely-seen works, the program hints at the multitudes of histories embedded within the Museum’s 30,000 titles, proposes connections between past and present, and celebrates those artists who model new ways of seeing.
MoMA’s Department of Film was established as the Film Library in June 1935, and in 1938 became one of the founding members of the Fédération Internationale des Archives du Film (FIAF). The department has an extensive archive of over 30,000 film and media works, including the world’s largest institutional collection of the works of Andy Warhol. Annual exhibitions include New Directors/New Films, Documentary Fortnight, The Contenders and To Save and Project, showcased across three theaters and a Virtual Cinema.
Program 1: At Home With…
Drawing inspiration from the MoMA exhibition Private Lives Public Space, currently on view, this program explores the connections between home movies, amateur filmmaking, and American avant garde cinema. Artists films (Cindy Sherman’s Bird, Mary Beams’s Going Home Sketchbook, Maria Lassnig’s Kopf) are presented here alongside family home movies (an artistically-inclined unidentified family’s New Orleans home movies, an unidentified filmmaker’s New York in summer 1981), highlighting a shared aesthetic and interrogating moving image hierarchies. These small gauge works evolve through time, as audiences project their own nostalgia and the works become imbued with the weight of the passage of time.
Going Home Sketchbook — Mary Beams. USA. 1975. 3 min. No dialogue. Digital scan of 16mm film.
Jack Smith in Paris - Howard Guttenplan. 1985. 3 min. Silent film. Digital scan of Super 8mm film.
Everybody and a Chicken - Frank and Joan Gardner. USA. 1970. 6 min. No dialogue. Digital scan of 16mm film.
Reel 3 — Joseph Szkodzinski. USA. 1977 – 78. 9 min. Silent film. Digital scan of Super 8mm film.
Home movies — Unidentified New Orleans family. USA. c. 1959. 22 min. Silent film. Digital scan of Super 8mm film.
Filming of Samuel R. Delany’s ‘Science Fiction Film in the Latter Half of the XXth Century (The Orchid)‘ — Wise family. USA. 1971. 26 min. Silent film. Digital scan of Super 8mm film.
New York — Victor Ginsburg. USA. c. 1981. 12 min. Silent film. Digital scan of 16mm film.
Bird — Cindy Sherman. USA. 1976. 3 min. Silent film. Digital scan of 16mm film.
Kopf — Maria Lassnig. USA. 1976. 3 min. No dialogue. Digital scan of 16mm film.
Curated by Sophie Cavoulacos, Assistant Curator, and Brittany Shaw, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Film, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Artists’ Cinema from The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Over The Museum of Modern Art’s eight decades of exhibiting, studying, and archiving wide-ranging motion picture practices, the artist-filmmaker has been a continuous interlocutor. Whether tied to artistic movements or pioneered by individual, adventurous, and experimental voices, films by artists constitute a vital counterpoint to the cinematic auteur in form and modes of viewership, exhibition and circulation. Eschewing the idea of a masterwork, the selection proposes a more open-ended and poetic experience of the MoMA film collection. Each of the three programs hold cinematic images as a set of social and spatial relations, in pursuit of new aesthetic, experiential, and political horizons. Through unexpected juxtapositions, new preservations, and rarely-seen works, the program hints at the multitudes of histories embedded within the Museum’s 30,000 titles, proposes connections between past and present, and celebrates those artists who model new ways of seeing.
MoMA’s Department of Film was established as the Film Library in June 1935, and in 1938 became one of the founding members of the Fédération Internationale des Archives du Film (FIAF). The department has an extensive archive of over 30,000 film and media works, including the world’s largest institutional collection of the works of Andy Warhol. Annual exhibitions include New Directors/New Films, Documentary Fortnight, The Contenders and To Save and Project, showcased across three theaters and a Virtual Cinema.
Program 1: At Home With…
Drawing inspiration from the MoMA exhibition Private Lives Public Space, currently on view, this program explores the connections between home movies, amateur filmmaking, and American avant garde cinema. Artists films (Cindy Sherman’s Bird, Mary Beams’s Going Home Sketchbook, Maria Lassnig’s Kopf) are presented here alongside family home movies (an artistically-inclined unidentified family’s New Orleans home movies, an unidentified filmmaker’s New York in summer 1981), highlighting a shared aesthetic and interrogating moving image hierarchies. These small gauge works evolve through time, as audiences project their own nostalgia and the works become imbued with the weight of the passage of time.
Going Home Sketchbook — Mary Beams. USA. 1975. 3 min. No dialogue. Digital scan of 16mm film.
Jack Smith in Paris - Howard Guttenplan. 1985. 3 min. Silent film. Digital scan of Super 8mm film.
Everybody and a Chicken - Frank and Joan Gardner. USA. 1970. 6 min. No dialogue. Digital scan of 16mm film.
Reel 3 — Joseph Szkodzinski. USA. 1977 – 78. 9 min. Silent film. Digital scan of Super 8mm film.
Home movies — Unidentified New Orleans family. USA. c. 1959. 22 min. Silent film. Digital scan of Super 8mm film.
Filming of Samuel R. Delany’s ‘Science Fiction Film in the Latter Half of the XXth Century (The Orchid)‘ — Wise family. USA. 1971. 26 min. Silent film. Digital scan of Super 8mm film.
New York — Victor Ginsburg. USA. c. 1981. 12 min. Silent film. Digital scan of 16mm film.
Bird — Cindy Sherman. USA. 1976. 3 min. Silent film. Digital scan of 16mm film.
Kopf — Maria Lassnig. USA. 1976. 3 min. No dialogue. Digital scan of 16mm film.
| Director | Howard Guttenplan, Mary Beams, Frank And Joan Gardner, Cindy Sherman, Joseph Szkodzinski, Maria Lassnig, Victor Ginsburg, Wise Family |
Image tirée du film Filming of Samuel R Delanys Science Fiction Film // Image from the film Filming of Samuel R Delanys Science Fiction Film
Image tirée du film Going Home Sketchbook // Image from the film Going Home Sketchbook
Image tirée du film Going Home Sketchbook // Image from the film Going Home Sketchbook
Image tirée du film Jack Smith in Paris // Image from the film Jack Smith in Paris
Image tirée du film Kopf // Image from the film Kopf
Image tirée du film New York // Image from the film New York
Image tirée du film New York // Image from the film New York
Image tirée du film Unidentified New Orleans Family Home Movies // Image from the film Unidentified New Orleans Family Home Movies
Image tirée du film Bird // Image from the film Bird
