Primal, sensual, mundane, ceremonial, addictive, symbolic, beautiful… Nourish yourself with the myriad flavors and forms of food in this colorful repast prepared in the unconventional kitchens of the avant garde. Here, food and eating may be a source of comedy, pleasure, intimacy, or—as in the case of Hollis Frampton—an intellectual dissection that reduces the nutrients to aesthetic units. Often representing creation and creativity, the foods here may allude to the body itself, its vitality and its mortality, as in Thom Andersen’s death of a sundae. In its biblical and mythical form, food is enlightenment and taboo; it is repetition and ritual, inseparable from the rhythms of life and of art. The social and psychological aspects of consumption may eventually evolve into a complex, fraught relationship, depicted irreverently by George Kuchar in Gastronomic Get-Away and intimately by Anne Charlotte Robertson in her epic Five Year Diary series, one reel of which is included here.
This feast was primarily harvested from the fertile soils of those who tilled the experimental film fields for long, yet are no longer with us—including two who recently passed: and Carolee Schneemann and Suzan Pitt whose dense, animated dream vision Asparagus was recently restored by the Academy Film Archive and is shown here in a sumptuous 35mm print. Schneeman’s infamous carnal rite Meat Joy is a combination of three performances from 1964, which she re-edited in 2010. – Brittany Gravely
Special thanks: Tim Massett, Amy Sloper, John Quackenbush, Liz Coffey, Video Data Bank and the Harvard Film Archive.
Catfilm for Katy and Cynne – Standish Lawder (1972, color, 16mm, 4 min)
Carrots and Peas – Hollis Frampton (1969, color, 16mm, 6 min)
Kitchen Beets – Bea Haut (2019, b/w, 16mm, 1 min)
Melting – Thom Andersen (1965, color, 16mm, 6 min)
Meat Joy – Carolee Schneemann (1964/2010, color, DCP, 6 min.)
Magazine Mouth – ACR (1983, color, DCP, 7 min)
Gastronomic Get-Away – George Kuchar (1991, color, DCP, 14 min)
Five Year Diary, Reel 25 – Getting Fat Again – Anne Charlotte Robertson (1983, color, DCP, 23 min.)
Asparagus – Suzan Pitt (1979, color, 35mm, 18 min.)