Maria Lassnig Titles Distributed by GME Play at This Year's Berlinale
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STILL: SELF PORTRAIT (1973) BY MARIA LASSNIG. SOURCE: GARTENBERG MEDIA ENTERPRISES.
“Best known now for her rigorously precise but never humorless examination of herself, her own form and its failings, Maria Lassnig should prove to be a feminist visionary for the generation of artists to come.” —Astrid Wege, Artforum
DVD COVER ART FOR MARIA LASSNIG: ANIMATION FILMS. SOURCE: GARTENBERG MEDIA ENTERPRISES.
Beginning on February 19th, ten short works by experimental filmmaker and animator Maria Lassnig will play at the Berlin International Film Festival as part of a “Forum special programme” shown in conjunction with Anja Salomonowitz’s film SLEEPING WITH A TIGER. Lassnig’s early ‘70s films BAROQUE STATUES (1970—74), ENCOUNTER (1970), IRIS (1971), CHAIRS (1971), SELF PORTRAIT (1971), SHAPES (1972), and COUPLES (1972) will be accompanied by two of her works from later in the decade — 1974’s PALMISTRY and 1976’s ART EDUCATION — as well as her 1992 collaboration with Hubert Sielecki, THE BALLAD OF MARIA LASSNIG, which presents Lassnig’s life story in a 14-verse song performed by the artist (at the age of 73) in a variety of costumes. GME is proud to distribute all of these Lassnig titles in the collection MARIA LASSNIG: ANIMATION FILMS, which is available to the North American university market as both a DVD and a DVD/DSL bundle. GME also distributes a 72 minute-long compendium of unfinished works and works-in-progress by Lassnig, titled MARIA LASSNIG: FILM WORKS, as a DVD and DVD/DSL bundle.
Internationally recognized as one of the most important visual artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, Lassnig trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, and spent several years in Paris in the 1950s and ‘60s, where she was exposed to Art Informel and Surrealism. From 1968 to 1980, she lived in New York and worked extensively as a filmmaker, producing a series of remarkably inventive animations. Drawing on some of the same themes and subjects as her paintings, her filmic narratives emerged as astute observations of the complexities of male-female relationships and of the experience of being both a woman and an artist.
As noted in the Berlinale program notes: “Maria Lassnig’s cinematic works are exercises in body transformations: gratifying frictions, lively critiques, wonderful ideas, sometimes hand-drawn and sung by the director herself… Ideas about women in relationships are put slyly in motion.”
For more information about how to order Maria Lassnig films on DSL and/or DVD from GME, please visit our ordering info page.