Program notes for Yvonnne Rainer Screening
(1/30/1991)
Contact: Janice Faller
Media Relations Officer (412) 622-3328
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LIBRARY OF PITTSBURGH MUSEUM OF ART MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY MUSIC HALL • PERFORMING ARTS SCIENCE CENTER
THE CARNEGIE MUSEUM OF ART PRESENTS FILMS OF YVONNE RAINER
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, January 30, 1991...A complete retrospective of the films of Yvonne Rainer will be presented by The Carnegie Museum of Art's Department of Film and Video on six successive Thursdays at 5:30 p.m. from February 7 to March 14. Rainer will appear in person on March 14 to introduce her most recent film, Privilege, which premiered at the 1990 New York Film Festival .
Yvonne Rainer, one of the most significant filmmakers in the American cinema, has been the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation "genius" fellowship and the American Film Institute's distinguished "Maya Deren Award." Her films have been presented in major museums and film centers in the United States, Europe, and Australia, including the Stadtisches Museum in Berlin, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and the British Film Institute in London.
Trained as a modern dancer, Rainer was one of the founders of the Judson Dance Theater, and she had a notable influence on dance and performance art in the early 1960's. Her early feature-length films developed from many of the same artistic issues she explored in her mixed-media performances.
Rainer has since produced one of the most distinguished bodies of work in contemporary film. Her films deal in particular with issues of the public versus the private self, with relations between men and women, and with new
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4400 Forbes Avenue Pittsburgh, PA 15213
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ways in which film can be structured to convey narrative. These internationally-acclaimed films are especially inventive in the ways they combine their audio and visual components.
Her first feature-length film, Lives of Performers (1972), unfolds in fourteen episodes which are related to earlier Rainer performances and which often explore real or imagined relationships between the performers.
Film About a Woman Who... (1974), rich with references to "fine" arts as well as to conventions of the movies, is a humorous and thoughtful work which combines melodrama with autobiographical elements.
Kristina Talking Pictures (1976) is on the surface a story about a female European lion tamer who comes to the United States to take up choreography. With a constant stream of dialogue culled from Simone de Beauvoir, John Cage, Susan Sontag, and others, the film deals with the disparity between individuals' political ideology and their public action.
Journeys from Berlin/1971 (1980) is a cooly beautiful film counterpointing political violence in Germany with a woman's psychoanalytic session. Gradually revealed is a terrible inner melancholy leading to a suicide attempt.
The script of The Man Who Envied Women (1985) was compiled from the writings of over a dozen figures, including Raymond Chandler, Michel Foucault, B. Ruby Rich, Frederic Jameson, Peter Wollen, and Rainer. The film is built around the familiar theme of the breakup of a marriage. This multi-layered work, ranging from witty one-liners to lengthy arguments, explores issues of aging, sexuality, power, and political activism.
In Privilege (1990), Rainer tackles the last frontier in film subjects --menopause. Mixing old educational films with a variety of fictional characters, Rainer has made an intelligent and entertaining film about
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sexual identity and the unequal realities of race, gender, and class.
All events in the Rainer series take place at 5:30 p.m. in the Museum of
Art Theater. The complete schedule follows:
Feb. 7 Lives of Performers (1972)
Feb. 14 Film About a Woman Who... (1974)
Feb. 21 Kristina Talking Pictures (1976)
Feb. 28 Journeys from Berlin/1971 (1980)
Mar. 7 The Man Who Envied Women (1985)
Mar. 14 Privilege (1990) Yvonne Rainer in person.
The personal appearance by Yvonne Rainer on March 14 is co-sponsored by the Film Studies Program and the Women's Studies Program of the University of Pittsburgh.
General admission to these events is $4.00. Admission for students, senior citizens, and members of The Carnegie is $3.00.
The film programs at The Carnegie Museum of Art are made possible in part by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Howard Heinz Endowment, The John D. and Catherine T.
MacArthur Foundation, and Dr. Lila Penchansky.
For more information, call The Carnegie Museum of Art Department of Film and Video at (412) 622-3212.
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