Chez Bushwick in Brooklyn is screening three films by Yvonne Rainer over three weeks this month. Unfortunately I’m late in announcing this, and the first one, Lives of Performers took place last Wednesday, June 4th. There is still time to catch Murder and Murder, this Wednesday, June 11th, and Privilege next Wednesday, June 18th.

Yvonne Rainer was a member of Judson Dance Theater in the 1960’s, and is renown for her experimental innovations in dance, performance, and film. Here are two well-informed descriptions of her films being screened from Erin Brannigan’s essay on Rainer in sensesofcinema.com.

“MURDER and murder” (1996, winner of the Teddy Award,
Berlin Film Festival, 1997 and the Special Jury Award, Miami Lesbian and
Gay Film Festival, 1999), was made after Rainer’s characteristically public
and publicly self-analysed ‘coming out’ as a lesbian in 1991. (33)
The film also corresponds with Rainer’s breast cancer diagnosis and mastectomy.
MURDER and murder is considered Rainer’s fullest commitment to fictional
characterisation, being her first film to actually play out a relationship
between two characters on screen with dialogues replacing monologues.

…“Privilege” (winner of the Dramatic Filmmaker’s Trophy,
Sundance Film Festival, Utah, 1991 and the Geyer Werke Prize at the International
Documentary Film Festival, Munich, 1991), [is] a film that has a black-on-white
act of violence at its centre. As in many of Rainer’s films, she couples
her central idea with another unrelated but complementary one; in this case
menopause and female aging. Racial and economic issues gave Rainer a new
focus that emerged from the critique of feminism’s white middle-class profile.

Screening info:

Murder and Murder
By Yvonne Rainer
Wednesday, June 11th
7:30pm
$5
 
Privilege
By Yvonne Rainer
Wednesday, June 18th
7:30pm
$5
 

All  screenings will take place at:
 
Chez Bushwick
304 Boerum St., Buzzer #11 (At White)
Brooklyn, NY 11206
718.418.4405
info@chezbushwick.net