May 29, 2012
Festival, SFFILM
Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present, (USA 2011), an enthralling portrait of the controversial performance artist directed by Matthew Akers, opens an exclusive San Francisco engagement July 6 at San Francisco Film Society Cinema (1746 Post Street).
Marina Abramovic has been called “the grandmother of performance art,” although she’s as youthful as ever in Matthew Akers’s fascinating, visually crisp documentary portrait, which tracks Abramovic’s celebrated 2010 MOMA retrospective. The Serbian-born artist made work in the 1970s concerning the limits and conceptions of the body that have long since become part of the modern art canon, yet she still continues to athletically press at the boundaries of performance art. Granted a yearlong all-access pass, Akers captures Abramovic’s many selves as she stages this major exhibition. The MOMA show, titled “The Artist Is Present,” was a marathon spectacle in which Abramovic faced viewers singly, silently–gathering ever more fervent followers along the way. Akers’ camera also captures her posing glamorously for fashion magazines; in guru mode, training young artists to enact her early work; sick in bed using chromatic therapies; domestic while cooking pasta; and emotionally raw while reconnecting with her former art and life partner, Ulay. Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present confidently meets built-in challenges, giving the oft-reviled, ephemeral medium of performance a sympathetic, mainstream platform and humanizing a woman who defies age as easily as stereotypes. The documentary befits its subject: It’s a sleek, unerring look in the eye of an extraordinary artist. 105 min. Photographed by Matthew Akers. 98 min. Distributed by Music Box Films.
Showtimes 2:45, 5:00, 7:15, 9:30 pm
Tickets $9 for SFFS members, $11 general, $10 senior/student/disabled. Box office opens May 30 online at sffs.org and in person at SF Film Society Cinema.
To request an interview contact hhart@sffs.org.
To request screeners contact bproctor@sffs.org.
For photos and press materials visit sffs.org/pressdownloads.
At SF Film Society Cinema, the stylish state-of-the art theater located in the New People building at 1746 Post Street (Webster/Buchanan) in Japantown, the San Francisco Film Society offers its acclaimed exhibition, education and filmmaker services programs and events on a daily year-round basis.
More upcoming San Francisco Film Society programs
Through May 31: Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
Opening June 1: Hide Away
June 2 only: An Evening of Wholphin Love
Eight consecutive Saturdays June 2-July 21: The Story of Film: An Odyssey
Opening June 8: The Wages of Fear
Opening June 15: The Woman in the Fifth
June 21: Master Class: The Politics of the Cutting Room Floor
Opening June 22: Found Memories
June 22-July 7: KinoTek: Adriane Colburn: Ways, Points and Means
Opening June 29: Corpo Celeste
August 24: Master Class: Les Blank on Documentary
TBA: KinoTek: Brent Green, sculpture and animation