Sunday January 17, 2010, 7:30 pm

At the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood

Los Angeles Filmforum presents

Bodies, Objects, Films: An Yvonne Rainer Retrospective (Part 4 of 8 ) Journeys from Berlin/1971 (1979)

Yvonne Rainer in person!  Moderated by Simon Leung.

Over the course of our 2009-2010 seasons, Filmforum is proud to present a full retrospective of the media works of Yvonne Rainer.  One of the most significant artists in dance and film of the last fifty years, One of the most significant artists in dance and film of the last fifty years, this is the first full retrospective of her films in Los Angeles.  Each appearance by Rainer will feature a Q&A led by a different moderator, to discuss with her varying aspects of her approaches to her art and life.

Tonight we will screen:

Journeys from Berlin/1971 (1979, 125 minutes, 16mm, color)

Featuring Annette Michelson, Amy Taubin, Vito Acconci, Cynthia Beatt, Ilona Halberstadt, Vernon Gabor, Yvonne Rainer and many others.

To explore the ramifications of terrorism, Rainer employs an extended therapy session--in which an American woman speaks to a series of psychiatrists- -to evoke the daily experiences of power and repression.

“Rainer's film questions duplicitous rehabilitation (psychiatric care/control) , the efficacy of radicalism, and conflicted political and personal motivations ... The collage essay technique of Journeys parallels the investigation of these conflicts on a formal level. She weaves the stories of 19th century Russian anarchists; the staging of identity as it occurs in therapeutic analysis, writing a diary or preparing a meal; and the fate of the Red Army Faction (Baader-Meinhof gang), which exposed the precarious and enforced nature of West German democratic freedoms in the 1970s.” – Konrad Steiner/kino21

“Journeys from Berlin/1971 is without a doubt the most ambitious, most risk-taking work of Rainer’s cinematic career ... the film is constructed out of a variety of filmic and literary materials.  Its two major sections involve a psychoanalysis session, which occupies much of the screen time, and a kitchen conversation, which resembles a radio drama that we hear but never visually witness.  The disjunction between the public and the private, always a central focus of Rainer’s work, here is made wider and more explicit through the counterpoint set up between the analysis session and the conversation about terrorism: the one an excavation of innermost fantasies and emotional traumas within an impersonal space, the other a debate of pressing social issues enacted as table-top repartee.  The counterpoint weaves in and out of that tricky terrain wherein the individual psyche connects up to the historical body politic.”  - B. Ruby Rich, from “Yvonne Rainer: An Introduction” in The Films of Yvonne Rainer (Indiana University Press, 1989, p. 17)

Advance ticket purchase available through Brown Paper Tickets. 

Click here to purchase!

About Yvonne Rainer:

When Yvonne Rainer made her first feature-length film in 1972, she had already influenced the world of dance and choreography for nearly a decade. From the beginning of her film career she inspired audiences to think about what they saw, interweaving the real and fictional, the personal and political, the concrete and abstract in imaginative, unpredictable ways. Her bold feminist sensibility and often controversial subject matter, leavened with a quirky humor, has made her, as the Village Voice dubbed her in 1986, “The most influential American avant-garde filmmaker of the past dozen years, with an impact as evident in London or Berlin as in New York.”

Rainer was born in San Francisco in 1934. She trained as a modern dancer in New York from 1957 and began to choreograph her own work in 1960. She was one of the founders of the Judson Dance Theater in 1962, the beginning of a movement that proved to be a vital force in modern dance in the following decades. Between 1962 and 1975 she presented her choreography throughout the United States and Europe, notably on Broadway in 1969, in Scandinavia, London, Germany, and Italy between 1964 and 1972, and at the Festival D’Automne in Paris in 1972. In 1968 she began to integrate short films into her live performances, and by 1975 she had made a complete transition to filmmaking.

In 1972 she completed a first feature-length film, LIVES OF PERFORMERS. In all she has completed seven features: FILM ABOUT A WOMAN WHO… (1974), KRISTINA TALKING PICTURES (1976), JOURNEYS FROM BERLIN/1971 (1980, co-produced by the British Film Institute and winner of the Special Achievement Award from the Los Angeles Film Critics’ Association), THE MAN WHO ENVIED WOMEN (1985), PRIVILEGE (1990, winner of the Filmmakers’ Trophy at the Sundance Film Festival, Park City. Utah, 1991, and the Geyer Werke Prize at the International Documentary Film Festival in Munich, 1991), and MURDER and murder (1996).

Rainer’s films have been shown extensively in the U.S. and throughout the world, in alternative film exhibition showcases and revival houses (such as the Bleecker St Cinema, Roxy-S.F.; NuArt-L.A; Film Forum-NYC, et al), in museums and in universities. Her films have also been screened at festivals in Los Angeles (Filmex), London, Montreux, Toronto, Edinburgh, Mannheim, Berlin, Locarno, Rotterdam, Creteil, Deauville, Toulon, Montreal, Hamburg, Salsa Majori, Figueira da Foz, Munich, Vienna, Athens (Ohio), Sundance, Hong Kong, Yamagata, and Sydney.

A half-hour video tape entitled YVONNE RAINER: STORY OF A FILMMAKER WHO… was aired on Film and Video Review, WNET-TV in 1980. THE MAN WHO ENVIED WOMEN was aired on Independent Focus, WNET-TV in, 1989, and PRIVILEGE on the same program in 1992 and during the summer of 1994.

In the Spring of 1997—to coincide with the release of MURDER and murder—complete retrospectives of the films of Yvonne Rainer were mounted at the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco and at the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York City.

“I love the duality of props, or objects: their usefulness and obstructiveness in relation to the human body. Also the duality of the body: the body as a moving, thinking, decision-making entity and the body as an inert entity, object-like… oddly, the body can become object-like; the human being can be treated as an object, dealt with as an entity without feeling or desire. The body itself can be handled and manipulated as though lacking in the capacity for self-propulsion.” (Rainer, Works 1961-73, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, New York, New York University Press, 1974, p. 134).

About Simon Leung:

Simon Leung is an artist who works across disciplines and mediums. His projects have been exhibited in the Guangzhou Triennial (2008); the Venice Biennale (2003); the Whitney Biennial (1993); the Museum of Modern Art, NY; the Museum of Contemporary Art; the Santa Monica Museum of Art; and the Generali Foundation in Vienna. In 2008, Leung received a Guggenheim fellowship in post-Studio art and the Art Journal Award for his essay "The Look of Law." In 2009 Leung danced in two versions of Yvonne Rainer's "Trio A"--as a part of "Trio A in ten easy lessons," a group performance at the Barclay Theater; and in "Simon Leung dances Yvonne Rainer," a solo performance for the PERFORM! NOW! Festival in Los Angeles. He has taught in the Studio Art Department at UC Irvine since 2001.

Upcoming in the Yvonne Rainer Retrospective

(four more 2010 screenings):

February 14, 2010 (Part 5 of 8):

Kristina Talking Pictures

February 21, 2010 (Part 6 of 8):

Lives of Performers and Trio A (with Rainer present)

March 28, 2010 (Part 7 of 8):

Privilege (with Rainer in person, Adam Hyman moderating)

DATE TBD

MURDER and murder (with Rainer in person, Catherine Lord moderating)

This screening series is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission and the Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Los Angeles.

Additional support is generously provided by the American Cinematheque.