ROBERT FRANK - FILM AND VIDEO WORKS 1959 - 2004

"A decision: I put my Leica in a cupboard. Enough of lying in wait, pursuing, sometimes catching the essence of the black and the white, the knowledge of where God is. I make films. Now I speak to the people in my viewfinder. Not simple and not especially successful." -- Robert Frank

Robert Frank (Zurich, 1924) is one of the world’s best-known photographers, but yet an unrecognized filmmaker. Frank’s significant contribution to photography in the mid-twentieth century is unquestionable and his book, The Americans, is arguably the most important American photography publication of the post-1945 period. However, at the very moment Frank achieved stardom status at the end of the 1950s, he abandoned traditional still photography to become a filmmaker. He eventually returned to photography in the 1970s, but Frank, the filmmaker, has remained a well kept secret for almost four decades. This retrospective may appear at first as a remedy to a great injustice, but it is, above all, a tribute to an audiovisual oeuvre of great value. Robert Frank’s films are micro-narratives, stories connected to his biography: his family, his friends, and his work as a photographer. Frank uses both cinematic forms (film and video) as ways of ‘mapping’ one’s life, which he is conscious of doing as an artist, and not as a private person. Robert Frank’s devotion to the transience of the moment is key in understanding his passage from the still to the animated image. In his oeuvre, film and video appear as priceless allies to the eyes of an artist principally concerned with “the present”. This rare programme will highlight the importance and singularity of their role in the totality of his output.

Fri 01.12.2006 18.15

Pull My Daisy
USA, 1959, 28’, 16 mm, b/w, sound, English spoken
Written and narrated by Jack Kerouac, Pull My Daisy marks Frank’s legendary entry into filmmaking. Documenting everyday life in a loft on New York’s Bowery, this icon of American independent filmmaking is a classic look at the soul of the Beat generation.

Conversations in Vermont
USA, 1969, 26’,16 mm, b/w, sound, English spoken
This film is about Robert Frank’s relationship with his children Pablo and Andrea. Photographed by Ralph Gibson, it is his first overtly autobiographical film. He follows his children to school in Vermont and interviews them about their feelings, their upbringing and what it was like to grow up in a bohemian world with artists as parents. In searching for answers about his children’s lives, Frank is – in effect - questioning his own world.

The Present
Switzerland, 1996, 27’, 35 mm, colour, sound, English spoken
Simple objects, photographs, and events prompt Frank to self-conscious rumination. From his homes in New York and Nova Scotia and on visits to friends, the artist contemplates his relationships, the anniversary of his daughter’s death, his son’s mental illness, and his work.

Sa 02.12.2006 18.15
In the presence of Michael Shamberg, producer of Summer Cannibals / Patti Smith

Life Dances On...
USA, 1980, 30’, 16 mm, colour & b/w, sound, English spoken
“Photographs in films should function as pauses and windows which show other times and other places.” A fragmentary, metaphorical, and personal film about mourning that proposes a final analysis of photography’s limits.

Summer Cannibals / Patti Smith
USA, 1996, 5’, 35 mm, b/w, sound
Shot in stark, rich black and white, this energetic short film documents Smith’s sensual, growling performance of her cryptic song ’Summer Cannibals’.

San Yu
Switzerland/France, 2000, 27’, 35 mm, colour & b/w, sound, English, French, Chinese spoken, English subtitles
Shot in Paris and Taiwan, the film is a requiem for San Yu, an important Chinese artist who died in anonymity in Paris. A film about art, history, dreaming and love, it also questions the authenticity of documentary depictions.

Su 03.12.2006 20.15

Me and My Brother
USA, 1965-1968, 91’, 35 mm, colour & b/w, sound, English spoken
Pitting the counterfeit against the authentic and acting against being, Frank’s first feature length film is a docu-fiction that describes the inner and outer worlds of Julius, the catatonic brother of poet Peter Orlovsky. The film was re-edited in 1997 to mark the passing of Allen Ginsberg.

Mo 04.12.2006 20.15

About Me: A Musical
USA, 1971, 30’, 16 mm, b/w, sound, English spoken
Originally intended as a film about music, About Me eventually became an ironic self-portrait featuring a young female actress playing Frank himself, and a moving gospel performed by African American inmates in a prison corridor.

Last Supper
Switzerland/UK, 1992, 52’, 16 mm, colour, sound, English spoken
In an empty lot in Harlem, an élite group of New Yorkers prepares for a book-signing party given in honour of a writer who never arrives. Neighbourhood residents must navigate the reception as the guests obsess about identity, status and success. Finally, the writer’s fears and doubts are understood, with ironic implications.

Fr 08.12.2006 18.15

Flamingo
CAN, 1996, 5’, video, b/w, sound, English spoken
“This is the time to say a few words: about building a house, about projecting slides.” Miranda Dali’s lyrical, dislocated voice comments on the construction of a new foundation for Frank’s house in Nova Scotia, while the black and white remains of a memory flow in a rapid montage.

Moving Pictures
USA, 1994, 16’30”, video, colour & b/w, silent
Weaving between photography, found footage, projected footage, and filmed reality, this silent work reflects Frank’s interest in the temporal and spatial transitions between photography and film. Silence and emptiness prevail as the fragmentary nature of memory is reordered in an associative sequence parallel to the fragmentary nature of the photographic image.

C’est vrai! (One Hour)
France, 1990, 60’, video, colour, sound
A one-hour trip through Manhattan’s Lower East Side that captures the uncanny intimacy of New York street life and presents a volatile mix of chance and control.

Sa 09.12.2006 18.15

Run
USA, 1989, 3’25”, video, colour & b/w, sound
Frank’s video for legendary British band New Order features a fragmentary plot characterised by resignation and solitude. Run is a plea for deceleration, for the awkward and everyday.

read the text on ’Run’ by producer Michael Shamberg

What I Remember from My Visit (with Stieglitz)
CAN, 1998, 7’, video, colour, sound, English spoken
A re-enactment of Frank’s visit to the home of photographer Alfred Stieglitz, blending fact and fiction in a wistful analysis of the complex interplay between memory, language and images.

Home Improvements
USA, 1985, 29’, video, colour, sound
Frank’s first video project is a visual diary of consequential events that bridge his life as an artist and his personal life.

Paper Route
CAN/Switzerland, 2002, 23’, video, colour, sound, English spoken
Life on the move. On a wintry morning, Frank accompanies the high-spirited Robert MacMillan during his daily route delivering newspapers to towns in rural Novia Scotia. A humorous, laconic film inspired by Frank’s desire to better understand how people live their lives.

True Story
USA, 2004, 26’, video, colour & b/w, sound, English spoken
Speaking in voiceover, the artist narrates scenes shot in his homes in New York and Nova Scotia. His rambling commentary returns to familiar themes of memory, and the loss of friends and family members. Brief excerpts from earlier films are shown, along with Frank’s photographs, the art of his wife, June Leaf, and extraordinarily detailed letters written by his son, Pablo (1951-1994). Alternately poignant, reflective, self-mocking and angry, this candid autobiography reveals Frank’s late career preoccupations.

Mo 11.12.2006 18.15

Hunter
Germany, 1989, 37’, 16 mm, colour & b/w, sound, German spoken
In the words of Robert Frank, “This is about a man whose destiny is – not to find a destination… A man who fears that he will never find what his imagination compels him to look for, a mystical traveller going by train and by car through… landscape and landscape”. The film was shot entirely on location in Germany’s industrial Ruhr region in September/October 1989.

Energy and How to Get It
USA, 1981, 28’, 16 mm, b/w, sound
A spoof on documentary filmmaking, Frank’s entertaining reflection on truth and fiction stars William Burroughs as the Energy Czar and Robert Downey as a Hollywood agent.

Tu 12.12.2006 20.15

The Sin of Jesus
USA, 1961, 37’, 35 mm, b/w, sound

Based on a story by Isaac Babel, Frank’s second film is one of his most stylised, indicating his increasingly sophisticated cinematographic eye. In this bleak, Bergmanesque parable Jesus refuses mercy to a young woman, instead giving her a guardian angel whom she seduces.

OK End Here
USA, 1963, 32’, 35 mm, b/w, sound
This stunning short film about inertia in modern relationships indicates Frank’s interest in the French Nouvelle Vague and Michelangelo Antonioni, but the cinematic snapshots of urban life are very much in the style of his own photographic series The Americans.

We 13.12.2006 20.15

Candy Mountain
Switzerland/France/CAN, 1987, 91’, 35 mm, colour, sound, English spoken
Featuring cameos by Arto Lindsay, Joe Strummer and Tom Waits, Candy Mountain is a bitingly funny and unpretentious road movie documenting Julius Brooke’s quest for renowned guitar maker Elmore Silk.

Fr 15.12.2006 18.15

Life-raft Earth
USA, 1969, 37’, 16 mm, colour & b/w, sound
Whole Earth catalogue editor Stewart Brand and his friend Hugh Romney (Wavy Gravy) asked Robert Frank to document ‘The Hunger show’, a week-long fast staged by the Portola Institute in California. This was a ‘happening’ designed to make the problem of world hunger and malnutrition a personal matter for participants and observers. The film records the event which took place from October 11th to October 18th, 1969 in a parking lot in Hayward.

Keep Busy
CAN, 1975, 38’, 16 mm, b/w, sound
A spontaneous, improvised story about a group of people living on an island off Nova Scotia. Obsessed with daily aspects of their lives and the cycles of nature, the group is subjugated by a lighthouse keeper and his messenger, who have access to the only radio and therefore control the news.

This Song for Jack
USA, 1983, 30’, 16 mm, b/w, sound, English spoken
A swansong to commemorate Jack Kerouac, This Song for Jack was shot at a gathering of the Beats on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of On the Road’s publication.

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