Breaking the Frame

Breaking The Frame is a feature–length portrait of the New York artist Carolee Schneemann by Marielle Nitoslawska. A pioneer of performance and body art as well as avant-garde cinema, Schneemann has been challenging art world assumptions about feminism, gender, sexuality, and identity for five decades.

Utilising a rich variety of film and high definition formats, Breaking The Frame is a critical meditation on the relation of art to the physical, domestic and conceptual aspects of daily life. It uses Schneemann’s autobiographical materials to narrate the historic upheaval within Western art in post-war America. The film captures Schneemann in her own words, images, and reflections. Excerpts from her film works are interwoven with documentation of performances including Meat Joy (1964), Interior Scroll (1975), and more recent museum commissions and exhibitions.

Breaking The Frame provides a textured mise-en-scène that resonates with Schneemann’s corporeal focus. The visual composition is complemented by the music of composer James Tenney, Schneemann’s companion and collaborator for many years. The two remained close friends until his death in 2006. Ultimately, Breaking The Frame presents the artist’s recollections and meditations on life/work in order to ask: what is space, where is form, and how do we look?

Marielle Nitoslawska, born in Canada, is a filmmaker, cinematographer and film professor who lives and works in Montreal.

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Screening at 2pm & 4pm daily.

Breaking The Frame | Marielle Nitoslawska | Canada 2012 | 35mm, 16mm, 8mm, HD CAM, HDV | 100 min

Breaking The Frame is a feature–length documentary portrait of the New York artist Carolee Schneemann by Canadian filmmaker Marielle Nitoslawska. Utilizing a rich variety of film and hi-definition formats, Breaking The Frame is a kinetic, hyper-cinematic intervention, a critical meditation on the relation of art to the physical, domestic and conceptual aspects of daily life and on the attributes of memory. It uses Schneemann’s autobiographical materials to narrate the historic upheaval within Western art in post-war America. Courtesy of Possible Movements and Picture Palace