Abigail Child Retrospective at Anthology Film Archives

This spring, Anthology hosts a long-overdue retrospective of the work of the moving-image artist, writer, and poet Abigail Child. A leading figure of the generation of experimental filmmakers that emerged in the late 1970s-early 1980s, Child has continued to make innovative and challenging work – in a dizzying variety of forms and on a wide range of topics – ever since.

filmmaker abigail child WILL BE PRESENT AT MANY OF THE SCREENINGS BETWEEN MARCH 24-28.

IS THIS WHAT YOU WERE BORN FOR? (USA, 1981 -1989)

The filmic work of Abigail Child, borrowing strategies from found footage, Appropriation Art, Language Poetry and experimental music, stands a a landmark in the experimental cinema of the 1980's. The processing of interruption and fragmentation inform the series IS THIS WHAT YOU WERE BORN FOR?, reactivating the stakes of montage applied in different artistic practices.

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Gartenberg Media distributes a special DVD edition of Abigail Child’s IS THIS WHAT YOU WERE BORN FOR?, which includes essays that articulate points of view formulated by film scholars, sound theorists, literary critics and art historians, in order to circumscribe the erratic poetics of Abigail Child's films.

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