Meredith Monk
In 1977, a book of photographs captured an awakening - women shedding the cultural restrictions of their childhoods and embracing their full humanity. This documentary revisits those photos, those women and those times and takes aim at our culture today that alarmingly shows the need for continued change.
A rare and powerful solo performance by one of the most important and original artists in the world. Recorded in 1980 at a studio out on Long Island, Meredith is in full voice, relaxed and creatively inspired by a small audience of Monk cogniscenti. Recorded with a 3-camera shoot and then put on the shelf, Tzadik is proud to present the first release of this astonishing virtuoso solo performance. Featuring acappella compositions as well as pieces where she accompanies herself on the piano, this is an intimate view of this remarkable and sensitive Renaissance woman.
Profile of choreographer, composer and performer Meredith Monk, recorded on location in her home base, New York City. Monk discusses some ideas underlying her work: her attraction to the eloquence of the human voice, and the direct communication made possible by the abstract qualities of music; her emphasis on the poetic rather than the political; her belief in the power of images; her willingness to take risks. She describes her experiences in working in different media, such as audio recordings, films, and videos, and the challenge of weaving them together. Her statements are illustrated by descriptions of specific works, such as "Vessel" and "16 Millimeter Earrings", and musical excerpts from "Education of the Girlchild", "Do You Be", "Three Heavens and Hells" (set to poetry by Tennessee Reed), "ATLAS", and "New York Requiem", as well as clips from her film "Book of Days".
The Sensual Nature of Sound portrays four New York based composers and performers in terms of their musical lives and artistic passion. Though Laurie Anderson, Tania Leon, Meredith Monk and Pauline Oliveros are all pioneers in American music, each composer pursues a distinct direction of her own. Their rehearsals and performances show a common pursuit of lyrical storytelling through which a new set of contemporary narratives has been forged. Through body, sound, movement and composition, these women have forged their own path through the wild world of modern music.
This film is a rich and haunting reinvention of medieval life that never loses its contemporary perspective. When the plague afflicts a village, this world seems to go up in an apocalypse of hatred and disease that presages our own century.
With minimal tools and the limitation of a single image of a woman’s head a set of pearls activates a woman’s inner drive expressing freedom of movement. Animation suggests quickly a series of possible choices. The decision is ultimately hers. An animation exploring metamorphosis accompanied with music by Meredith Monk.
Turtle Dreams, produced for WGBH-TV, originally aired September 2, 1983. Shot by Ping Chong. Composed by Meredith Monk, performed by her and her Vocal Ensemble.
A television documentary produced for British Television directed by Peter Greenaway
Meredith Monk's "Ellis Island" is a haunting, reflective piece on Ellis Island and the immigrants who passed through there.
A re-creation for film of Meredith Monk's seminal dance/theater work incorporating film and original music, voice, guitar, and audiotapes. Originally performed in 1966, Judson Memorial Church, New York.
After World War II a group of young writers, outsiders and friends who were disillusioned by the pursuit of the American dream met in New York City. Associated through mutual friendships, these cultural dissidents looked for new ways and means to express themselves. Soon their writings found an audience and the American media took notice, dubbing them the Beat Generation. Members of this group included writers Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg. a trinity that would ultimately influence the works of others during that era, including the "hippie" movement of the '60s. In this 55-minute video narrated by Allen Ginsberg, members of the Beat Generation (including the aforementioned Burroughs, Anne Waldman, Peter Orlovsky, Amiri Baraka, Diane Di Prima, and Timothy Leary) are reunited at Naropa University in Boulder, CO during the late 1970's to share their works and influence a new generation of young American bohemians.
Monk’s meditation on WWII and recurring cycles of intolerance, fascism, and cruelty in history originated in 1976 as a live stage work utilizing elements of music, images, movement, dialogue, film, sound, and light. This film version, shot on 16mm in the Lepercq Space at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1977, was created in partnership with the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts as part of their initiative to document ground-breaking live performance for future restaging. QUARRY centers on a sick American child (played by Monk herself) whose world darkens as her illness progresses, this darkening including the rise of a dictator. A unique document of this innovative, boundary-blurring production, and a work of art on its own terms, replete with a film-within-a-film directed by Monk in 1975.
‘Mark Berger’s years of work as a representational painting can be found here, in this film portrait. Mark Berger was an actor in the Meredith Monk company and the House, from 1971 to 1974, and he uses an improvisation technique in this vision of interaction painter/subject, filmmaker/actor, artist/artist. Mark Berger’s camera records and interviews a relationship between himself and Meredith Monk, in the same way that Meredith Monk’s music as soundtrack, is a fundamental and structural aspect of film material editing. The shooting, like the painting of a portrait, was executed in a number of sessions, over a period of several weeks.’ A. Sichel.
Constructed around a found soundtrack in which a strict female voice delivers a test of perception and comprehension, Institutional Quality’s sound and image relationship become detached as the filmmakerloses interest in his subject.
Early 16mm film by Meredith Monk also presented as an installation piece to play continuously forward and backward for an unrestricted time period.
Made in 1980, this film explores the contemporary dance scene through the work of seven New York-based choreographers. They discuss the nature of dance and the evolution of their own work. Filmed at rehearsals, performances, and during interviews, the film is a unique primary source. The artistic roots of these seven artists can be found in Martha Graham's concern with modern life as a subject for dance and in Merce Cunningham's emphasis on the nature of movement. In the 1960s, the interaction of art forms generated choreographic innovations. Especially influential was John Cage, whose radical ideas served as a point of departure for much of the new choreography. Each of the choreographers in Making Dances draws inspiration from the Graham/Cunningham tradition, yet each makes a highly distinctive statement. Structure, movement in non-fictive time and space, and the nature of movement itself are recurring themes.
