Described by Meredith Monk as a “memorial piece for a world at war” and an “opera in three movements,” Quarry is a typically difficult-to-classify multimedia piece by Monk, combining dance, song, film, and theatrical performance. Set during World War II, Quarry is told from the expressionistic perspective of a sickly child (played by Monk), whose idyllic domestic life becomes increasingly distorted and terrifying as news of the world enters her home and reshapes her imagination.
Tag: 1970s
Krzysztof Kieślowski unmasks the prototype of the informer and opportunist (in a totalitarian society) exclusively from the latter’s own perspective. Even the commentary is by the ambivalent protagonist. Kieślowski later kept the film under lock and key in order not to harm his protagonist.
Two scheming ne’er-do-wells find a lost nuclear weapon in the ocean near Los Angeles. They decide to light-heartedly try to blackmail the city by asking for money from each citizen, which arouses the local authorities’ attention.
Follows contemporary American poet James Dickey on a three week lecture tour. Reveals the actual thoughts and feelings of the poet through his conversations and poetry readings.
Ondine and Sally Dixon “star” as ecstatic 19th-century lovers in Roger Jacoby’s first home-processed film. Nickelodeon imagery, school children of Pittsburgh, and the Pittsburgh Botanical Conservatory.
Biography of the legendary musician Huddie Leadbetter “Leadbelly” that deals with the problems he had in his youth due to racial segregation including his time and prison and his efforts to conquer a position in the world of music.
A poet-astronaut is shot through an area of space called the Chronosynclastic Infundibulum. He is duplicated into infinite copies of himself, each of whom finds himself in a bizarre situations on a different world. (These scenarios are all derived from the novels and short stories from Kurt Vonnegut Jr., including Cat’s Cradle, Welcome to the Monkey House, Harrison Bergeron, and Happy Birthday, Wanda June).
Non-narrated treatment of the activities carried out in an abattoir. An unlikely subject for a documentary, but the filmmaker captures the strength and terrible beauty in the daily preparation for slaughter. The sound track echoes with hard metallic knives being ground, tested and sharpened. No beast is actually shown being killed but the slaughter is mirrored in the blood-red faces of the men and the scenes of water flushing away the blood to a river – thus water purges but never really cleans the walls of the slaughter house. A powerful film – almost abstract at times. Perhaps even more effective because of what it leaves unsaid and unshown.