Lucinda Childs

Also known as “Letter from Venice,” Susan Sontag’s fourth and final film tells of a relationship that is fragmenting as the partners tour the decaying ruins of a hallucinatory Venice.

Adam’s Passion is the moving first collaboration between two “masters of slow motion who harmonize perfectly with each other” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung). In the spectacular setting of a former submarine factory, American director and universal artist Robert Wilson creates a poetic visual world in which the mystical musical language of the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt can cast its meditative spell. Three of Pärt’s major works – Adam’s Lament, Tabula rasa, and Miserere, as well as Sequentia, a new work composed especially for this production – are brought together here using light, space, and movement to create a tightly-woven Gesamtkunstwerk in which the artistic visions of these two great artists mirror each other.

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.

The creative processes of avant-garde composer Philip Glass and progressive director/designer Robert Wilson are examined in this film. It documents their collaboration on this tradition breaking opera.

An intimate study of one of the most influential and provocative thinkers of the 20th century tracking feminist icon Susan Sontag’s seminal, life-changing moments through archival materials, accounts from friends, family, colleagues, and lovers, as well as her own words, as read by Patricia Clarkson.

Florence is found dead and mutilated. When Nathalie hears about this in the bar where she plays piano she becomes interested. She tries to get in touch with the people who knew Florence closely. Eventually she gets them to talk about Florence's destructiveness. About her deviant pleasure in hurting and injuring herself.

Produced in an era before 24-hour programming cycles, Video 50 was initially used as a late night filler on TV stations in Germany, France, Belgium, and Switzerland. Random, surreal, and unexpected, Video 50 resembles the dream cycle of a dormant TV station after it conscious programming has ceased. Its structure and form anticipate the dissociated sequence of moving images we are now accustomed to encountering on YouTube and social media.

In this "fourteen-part drill for the camera," Frampton created a portrait gallery of his art-world friends engaging in a variety of ordinary activities.